Feminist influencer Liz Plank opens her groundbreaking book For the Love of Men with a bold statement: “There is no greater threat to humankind than our current definitions of masculinity.” She means it at several levels, from the most intimate: how male partners are the leading cause of death for pregnant women in the US; to the most macro: how associating “eco-conscious behaviors with femininity and a repudiation of masculinity” is literally killing the planet. This Earth Day, it’s worth reflecting on why this is so and what can be done about it.

While it won’t come as news to most that, compared to women, men litter more, recycle less, and leave a bigger carbon footprint There’s something more extreme than simple thoughtlessness causing young men, in a form of anti-environmental protest known as “rolling coal”, to modify the diesel engines on their pick-up trucks to deliberately belch large amounts of grey-black exhaust, and then run Priuses and bicyclists off the road.

Similarly, the emotional satisfaction of “owning the libs” or the tens of millions in campaign contributions Trump has received from the fossil fuel industry cannot fully explain the pure spite driving his administration to force money-losing coal plants in Michigan to continue operating or cancel perfectly good already–80%–complete offshore wind projects in Connecticut. Not to mention launching another war for oil in the Middle East cowboy-style with zero strategic forethought.

What connects the dots here is something more unhinged and tangled: a hyper-aggressive, oil-soaked version of toxic masculinity known as “petro-masculinity”. And it’s crucial to understanding why we as a society are failing to rally behind a shared ecological vision.

Coined by political scientist Cara Daggett in a 2018 paper, “petro-masculinity” describes a pernicious fusion between fossil fuel use, climate change denial, and defense of authoritarian white patriarchal masculinity. Noting how fossil fuel extraction and consumption are coded “masculine”, while environmentalism and green technology are coded soft, weak and “feminine”; it tracks how insecure men are increasingly leaning in to a petro-masculine identity in order to assert traditional masculine authority in the face of climate change, threats to traditional extractive industries, and changing social norms.

For most people, petro-masculinity dramatically erupted into public view during the 2022 Twitter/X showdown between manosphere bully Andrew Tate and Greta Thunberg.

“Please provide your email address so I can send a complete list of my car collection and their respective enormous emissions,” Tate tweeted at Greta, along with a photo of him........

© The Guardian