From an article in The New Republic
The Misogyny of Climate Deniers:
In 2014, Jonas Anshelm and Martin Hultman of Chalmers published
a paper analyzing the language of a focus group of climate skeptics.
The common themes in the group, they said, were striking: “for climate
skeptics … it was not the environment that was threatened, it was a
certain kind of modern industrial society built and dominated by their
form of masculinity.”
The connection has to do with a sense of
group identity under threat, Hultman told me—an identity they perceive
to be under threat from all sides. Besieged, as they see it, both by
developing gender equality—Hultman pointed specifically to the shock
some men felt at the #MeToo movement—and now climate activism’s
challenge to their way of life, male reactionaries motivated by
right-wing nationalism, anti-feminism, and climate denialism
increasingly overlap, the three reactions feeding off of one another.
“There is a package of values and behaviors connected to a form of
masculinity that I call ‘industrial breadwinner masculinity.’ They see
the world as separated between humans and nature. They believe humans
are obliged to use nature and its resources to make products out of
them. And they have a risk perception that nature will tolerate all
types of waste. It’s a risk perception that doesn’t think of nature as
vulnerable and as something that is possible to be destroyed. For them,
economic growth is more important than the environment” Hultman told Deutsche Welle last year.
The corollary to this is that climate science, for skeptics, becomes
feminized—or viewed as “oppositional to assumed entitlements of
masculine primacy,” Hultman and fellow researcher Paul Pulé wrote in another paper.
The deep irony is that the other ideology that bulldozed over nature in the interests of economic growth is the communism that the wingnut Right spend the rest of their limited brain cells panicking about as secretly taking over the world under the guise of "cultural Marxism" and "socialism".
It used to be about science, evidence and logic. Are you sure you ought not ask Jesus Christ to be your personal saviour? Not everyone is cut out to be agnostic or atheistic?
ReplyDeleteThese arguments may have some validity at those who are unwilling to accept the peak oil model in any shape or form. The peak oil model is not QUITE right because oil is abiotic. Its more a situation of plateau oil, from traditional oil wells. A plateau where you need more and more energy to maintain the 2005 levels of extraction. This has massive implications. Steve because of this you must forget your opposition to Thorium molten salt reactors.
ReplyDeleteWe need a CSP (concentrated solar power) energy corridor in the desert, using molten silicon and molten salts. We need molten salt, liquid metal batteries. And we need thorium molten salt everywhere. We can buy one or two then we need to get good at making all these things ourselves. Thats just the way it is. Because of peak oil. There is no way around it.