White men are the super spreaders of climate denialism
By Marc Fawcett-Atkinson | News | March 7th 2023
First article from the Special Report: Climate of denial
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Valentine's Day on Twitter is typically a day when most people flood the platform with sappy tweets and acerbic quips on singledom. Not Jordan Peterson. The right-wing provocateur marked the day by trolling 20-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg with a creepy tweet about her new book on climate solutions.
"What's the carbon footprint of the book, dearie?" goaded the 60-year-old climate denier before ironically suggesting she was "so important, such niceties don't apply." The post was one among a flood of similar attacks on Thunberg — cue her epic December Twitter battle with professional misogynist and alleged sex trafficker Andrew Tate — by right-wing male climate deniers.
That is no coincidence. Researchers have found a tight relationship between harmful forms of masculinity, right-wing extremism and the refusal to deal with the climate crisis. Fostered by the fossil fuel industry, this confluence has been dubbed "petro-masculinity" by Cara Daggett, a Virginia Tech professor and climate sociologist, to describe a form of masculinity where using fossil fuels is a way to express an individualistic and patriarchal type of masculinity.
Symbols of petro-masculinity, like souped-up trucks and highly gendered divisions of labour, show up repeatedly in climate disinformation where they simultaneously hinder climate action and fuel authoritarianism. Environmentalists and politicians must consider this mindset in their efforts to tackle the climate crisis, gender inequality and political polarization, she said.
https://www.nationalobserver.com/2023/03/07/news/white-men-super-spreaders-climate-denialism
