Same-sex marriage strategy for climate change advocates

Washington

TWO months ahead of a federal court hearing on US President Barack Obama's signature climate change rule, a coordinated public relations offensive has begun - modelled after the same-sex marriage campaign - to influence the outcome of the case.

A national coalition of liberal and environmental advocacy groups, state attorneys-general, mayors and even some businesses are adhering to the strategy that a network of gay rights and other advocacy groups began in the months before the Supreme Court heard arguments in the same-sex marriage case, Obergefell v Hodges, last year. Those advocates cannot be certain, but they said they believed it had influenced the opinions of the justices, who ruled last June that the US Constitution guarantees a right to same-sex marriage.