Most Americans like clean energy. So when conservatives wage campaigns against clean energy initiatives, they have typically resorted to fronting astroturf groups and paying fake protesters to generate noise.

Needing 100 anti-wind protesters by next week and apparently unable to find them, a mysterious firm advertised a “quick and easy $20″ on Craigslist. According to the ad, the only thing the “volunteers” would need to do for their pay is “stand next to or behind the speakers and elected officials/celebrities” at a rally against a wind turbine project in the UK.

View the screenshot (the ad was quickly pulled down after Grist made the catch):

We do not know who is behind the ad, but there is at least one wealthy opponent of windmills in Scotland, since they would obstruct the view of his golf course.

There is nothing new about anti-clean energy and anti-EPA campaigns fronted by corporate interests. Last year, coal groups threw its cash at an Environmental Protection Agency hearing, paying astroturfers $50 to wear pro-coal T-shirts. Wind has faced a particularly uphill battle against corporate interests, with a leaked strategy memo showing conservative think tanks leading an astroturf strategy to take down clean energy, at the same time a lobby group linked to the Koch brothers mobilized to defeat wind credits in Congress.

American Petroleum Institute ad campaign

In recent weeks, they have flooded television programs with television ads promoting the causes of the industry. The American Petroleum Institute (API) calls itself “the only national trade association that represents all aspects of America’s oil and natural gas industry.” With money from its more than 400 corporate members, the group has been running spots like “Vote 4 Energy,” trying to convert angry consumers into civic allies.

In the 30-second spot, a series of unidentified people claim that they vote and support key oil industry priorities.

I vote. I vote. I vote for American jobs. I vote. I vote for more domestic energy — energy from all sources, to get America working again. I vote. I vote. I vote for energy security that will come from developing our own energy resources. Like oil and natural gas. Right here. Right now. I vote. To re-energize America with American energy. Learn more at VoteforEnergy.org.

Watch the ad:

Other spots in the series take aim at “new energy taxes” and cheer oil imports from Canada.

As Greenpeace reported in December, the “voters” were fed lines by the media production company and the carefully scripted spots were far more astroturf than grassroots.

Companies like Chevron are also running ads on their own. It is running a series of similar feel-good sports highlighting the company’s support for small business and its work helping the economy of the oil-exporting nation of Angola.”

The ads of course, make no mention of the myriad environmental and safety risks of deregulated offshore drilling, hydrofracking, and tar sands pipelines.

But, in putting the industry on the side of voter participation, if nothing else Big Oil has created American jobs — for television ad-makers.

The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) — the coal-industry front group that greenwashes coal pollution and fights climate action — is seeking a new president. After 17 years at the helm, president Steve Miller is retiring a millionaire.

On Craigslist, a job posting for Steve Miller’s replacement to be the president of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity has appeared:

Are you a motivated go-getter who hates to let facts stand in the way of profits? Are you good at making something out of nothing? Do you sleep soundly at night, no matter what you’ve done? Do you reject the global anti-capitalist “science” conspiracy? Are you comfortable around unicorns, centaurs, and other so-called “mythical” creatures? Do you have experience in the tobacco industry?

If you answered yes to those questions, we want to hear from you. The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity is seeking a new President of our trade association to continue our work promoting a product that doesn’t actually exist: clean coal electricity. The ideal candidate would be able to alter the long-standing ironclad laws of chemistry to create clean coal (through magic or otherwise), but we’ll settle for someone that can say it exists with a straight face.

The apocryphal job posting continues with “key responsibilities” like “denying climate change over and over again.” Compensation? “Look, let’s just say you’ll be in that 1% those hippies are always talking about and Mitt Romney will not be uncomfortable around you.”

Miller was paid $1.65 million in 2010 as the group spent $45 million on lobbying, ads, Astroturf efforts, and campaign contributions. ACCCE spent $10.5 million lobbying Capitol Hill on climate in 2008 — more than any other organization solely dedicated to the issue. ACCCE’s accomplishments under Miller include clean coal carols, impersonation of veterans’ groups, and fomenting Tea Party disruptions of town hall meetings.

Download a copy of the parody “job posting” for ACCCE’s next president.

By Jessica Goad, manager of research and outreach, Center for American Progress Action Fund.

The Western Energy Alliance, one of the biggest and best-financed oil and drilling promoters in the Rocky Mountain West, has chosen former lobbyist Tim Wigley to be its new president, according to Greenwire today.

Wigley comes to WEA after a 10-year stint at Pac/West, a public relations and lobbying firm that counts the oil and gas industry as one of its clients. Pac/West previously employed disgraced former Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA), who once attempted to sell off national parks to tackle national deficit woes. The group is also notable for having secured a $3 million contract from Alaska’s legislature to “educate” Americans on the benefits of drilling in the state’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Wigley has spent much of his career lobbying on behalf of corporate interests. But perhaps most interesting is his previous role as campaign manager for two “astroturf” groups — those that purport to be grassroots when really they are just front groups for industry. According to a 2007 investigation by Public Citizen, Wigley headed up two major astroturf campaigns while working for Pac/West:

- Project Protect (logging): “This group spent $2.9 million on media purchases and other efforts to lobby for President Bush’s ‘Healthy Forests’ initiative. The group, which billed itself as ‘a grassroots coalition of western communities, natural resource groups, labor organizations, and conservationists,’ refused to disclose its donors. It listed an address at Mailboxes, Etc., in 2003. In 2004, it listed an address identical to that of the American Forest Resource Council, a group that lobbies for public land management policies that favor industry.”

- Save Our Species Alliance (endangered species issues): “This group sought to gut the Endangered Species Act…The campaign manager for Save Our Species Alliance was Tim Wigley…[who] told a reporter that the Save Our Species Alliance was a grassroots group of farmers, labor groups and others. Wigley did not divulge the identities of the group’s funders. ‘I think this line of questioning is misleading,’ he said to the reporter who asked.”

The Western Energy Alliance is a trade group with lobbying and PAC arms whose “Blueprint for Western Prosperity” is a hit list against public health and environmental safeguards and calls for policies like a “moratorium on new federal regulations.” WEA is notorious for accusing the Obama administration for blocking drilling on public lands, despite evidence that oil and gas drilling in America is higher than ever before.

American Petroleum Institute's fraudulent ad

An e-mail from API advertised an open casting call for “all ages and races to express their views” in a commercial spot. The basic qualifications read: “You are willing to go on camera and state your beliefs” and “You are comfortable portraying YOURSELF! They want REAL PEOPLE not Actors!”

But when Gabe Elsner of the watchdog Checks and Balances Project attended the commercial’s open casting, he wasn’t even allowed to finish his sentence about clean energy jobs:

Elsner is escorted to the sound stage and asked to repeat the following lines:
“I vote,” he is prompted.
“I vote,” he repeats.
“I vote!” more emphatically this time.
“I vote!” Elsner repeats.
“For American Jobs,” he is told.
“For American Clean Energy Jobs,” he responds.
“Just, ‘For American Jobs,’” the staffer says.
“For American Clean Energy Jobs,” Elsner repeats. “I’d like to add that…”
“Just deliver the line. That we have. Just, because, just cut for a second,” the staffer says. “Are you…I want to make sure that you are okay with what we are doing as far as the script goes.”
Elsner says, “Well I didn’t see the script. I was told that I was going to be able to deliver my views on camera.”

Elsner never finished his thoughts on camera; he was simply escorted away from the set. API tells an altered version, where it claimed in a followup blog post that “some activists” decided “not to spend their Saturday hanging around a bunch of other people who do support oil and natural gas.” But it is more likely API spoon-fed those supporters with favorable “views” just as they treated Elsner.

There is an inevitability that a Big Oil commercial must resort to insincerity and imaginary people’s opinions. The industry is sitting on enormous profits, even as 74 percent of Americans want to end the industry’s subsidies.

This isn’t the first time API has misled on its commercials. In 2009, API doctored the race of two iStock models in a promotional pamphlet. And while the newest API ad won’t be released until January, here is an older commercial with equally under-enthused, overly scripted Americans talking about oil:

Our guest blogger is Kiley Kroh, Center for American Progress Associate Director for Ocean Communications.

The Big Oil-backed Consumer Energy Alliance’s “Open The Gulf” campaign consists of eight ads and an initial two-week run in battleground states, featuring several people describing their hardships as a result of increased fuel cost and the temporary moratorium on Gulf drilling after the BP oil disaster, and advocating opening the Gulf of Mexico to increased offshore drilling. Here’s tugboat operator Cory Kief, backed by somber strings:

The ads, complete with sad music and images of abandoned barns and empty docks, also contain several glaring inaccuracies and misleading implications:

MYTH: Opening the gulf to new drilling will lower gas prices. Though Colorado farmer Marc Amesh and truck driver David Boyer may have legitimate concerns that rising fuel costs are putting their jobs and businesses at risk, increased drilling is quite simply not the answer. Instead of providing a real solution, the CEA campaign merely parrots Big Oil lies and perpetuates the falsehood that increased drilling will lower gas prices. Even the non-partisan Energy Information Agency found that whether we dramatically expand offshore drilling or stop selling offshore leases entirely, it will have virtually no effect on gas prices – ever.

MYTH: The Obama administration is not issuing offshore drilling permits or leases. According to statistics from the Bureau of Ocean Energy, Management and Enforcement, 68 new shallow water well permits have been issued since the implementation of new safety and environmental standards on June 8, 2010. Permits have averaged more than seven per month since fall 2010, compared to an average of eight permits per month in 2009. For deepwater permits requiring subsea containment, they have approved 112 permits for 34 unique wells, with 19 permits pending, and 21 permits returned to the operator with requests for additional information, particularly information regarding containment. And perhaps the team at CEA missed last week’s announcement that the administration has scheduled a massive sale of offshore leases in the Gulf of Mexico – an auction that encompasses more than 20 million acres in the western gulf.

Before complaining about the rate of issuing new permits and leases, the industry might want to take stock of what they already have – and aren’t using. A recent study conducted by the Department of Interior found that the vast majority of offshore drilling leases remain idle.

Royal Dutch Shell, whose alarming safety record includes numerous spills and violations, was recently given the green light to drill in both the highly dangerous Arctic and a new development well in the Gulf of Mexico. The company also confirmed that “all five of the floating rigs that Shell was operating in the gulf before last year’s BP oil spill and drilling moratorium are now back to work” – a fact that doesn’t jive with CEA’s deceptive ads.

MYTH: The economic potential of offshore oil and gas is worth the risk of another blowout. Despite BP’s efforts to convince the broader public that the oil is gone and the gulf is restored, the reality is much grimmer. While the ultimate toll of the spill won’t be known for several years, there is no denying the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history had a catastrophic impact on the Gulf Coast economy and its residents. An NRDC report found that the Gulf of Mexico saw a 39 percent decline in commercial fishing catches overall between 2009 and 2010, representing a $62 million loss in dockside sales. To date, the oil giant has paid out $5 billion in economic damages to individuals and businesses in the region – with 61,558 new claims received in the past three months – and faces billions more in Clean Water Act fines and NRDA liabilities. After their top execs admitted just one year ago that they weren’t prepared to handle a major offshore spill, CEA’s Big Oil backers might want to reevaluate whether that’s a risk they’re willing to take.

Instead of asking why America’s not doing more for Big Oil, maybe Cory the tugboater, Marc the farmer, and David the truck driver should ask BP, ExxonMobil, Shell, and the others why they keep grubbing for American taxpayers’ dollars to pad their obscene profit margins.