Al Gore-backed climate group plans wider ad buy to ‘get this done’

The Alliance for Climate Protection plans to expand a recent TV ad buy that is pressing Senate centrists to support broad climate and energy legislation, the group’s CEO said Wednesday.

“We are going to continue to expand into other states all the way until we get this done,” said Maggie Fox, who heads the group Al Gore founded in 2006.

{mosads}An arm of the group called Repower America launched ads in Indiana, Missouri, Maine and Arkansas this month. The spots feature residents touting jobs created by “clean energy” and calling on their senators to get on board.

The ads use videos culled from the “Repower Wall,” which is a website to which people upload messages supporting low-carbon energy sources.

“There is such cacophony out there that we thought that the most effective thing to do was actually to go into the states and find the individual people who live there, and put their voices out in a way that would allow them to be heard more than just a phone call,” Fox told The Hill.

She said the group has organizers in 18 states, although she did not say where the new ad buys will be.

Fox spoke at the close of the Hip Hop Caucus Clean Energy Now! bus tour, which wrapped up with a rally at the Capitol on Wednesday. The bus tour, which began in New Orleans, is touting the potential of a “clean energy economy” to create jobs and tackle global warming.

“This is really to rebuild our economy, reclaim our community and to restore our planet,” said the Rev. Lennox Yearwood, the president of the Hip Hop Caucus, from the stage at Wednesday’s rally.

“This is our lunch-counter moment of the 21st century,” he said.

Update: The ads are funded by the Climate Protection Action Fund, which is a group allied with the Alliance for Climate Protection that engages in legislative campaigns and other politically-related advocacy.

This post was updated at 4:28 p.m.