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White men are the super spreaders of climate denialism

#9 of 69 articles from the Special Report: Climate of denial
Illustration by Ata Ojani for Canada's National Observer

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.

Fossil fuels provide petrol and plastic. But for some people — particularly white, conservative, North American men — they underpin culture, she explained. Measures to phase them out in the face of climate catastrophe can easily be perceived as a threat to these people's sense of culture and self-worth, imposed by a vague group of elites. These perceptions serve to make climate action a political hot potato.

There is a tight relationship between harmful forms of masculinity, right-wing extremism and the refusal to deal with the climate crisis. #ClimateDeniers #ToxicMasculinity #extremism

"We've seen … the climate denial groups morph into (misogyny) seamlessly, in a way that indicates it's a core value," explained Michael Khoo, a strategic communications expert and former lead campaigner for Greenpeace Canada. "A lot of those groups have been part of building the infrastructure of the radical right-wing, which is now an amorphous hotbed of vitriol that has taken on energy policy as a core tenet."

Peterson is among Canada's most infamous climate deniers. The ex-professor has become a household name for his regressive views and antagonistic opinions on culture war topics like gender, race, sexual politics and COVID-19. He has about 6.5 million YouTube subscribers and is often featured on right-wing podcasts and at public events.

Recent years have seen Peterson increasingly delve into the climate change conversation, largely by denying it exists and presenting erroneous pseudo-science to back up his claims. Take recent tweets promoting a pro-fossil fuel lobbyist or falsely suggesting climate measures will allow "tyrants" to take away people's "cars," "flights," or "luxury."

Canadian conservative content creators regularly decry climate change and gender equality on their platforms. These include People's Party of Canada Leader Maxime Bernier, who leads a climate-denying political party and has links to right-wing extremists. Like Peterson, he has attacked Thunberg for her climate activism.

While these kinds of online personalities play a major role in spreading climate disinformation and bolstering petro-masculinity, researchers have found that social media networks are equally important. A 2022 study of the use of the term "climate" on Facebook found some of the groups referring to it most widely on the social media platform were prominent right-wing groups known for spreading climate disinformation, most headed by men.

Topping the list was conservative communications strategist Jeff Ballingal's network of "Proud" pages, including Canada Proud and Ontario Proud. The pages received about 118,000 engagements on climate between December 2019 and December 2020, making them the sixth-most popular group to post about climate.

True North Canada, a right-wing content creator, was the 10th-most engaged-with group. The organization has helped spread climate disinformation and amplified the messages of right-wing influencers like Peterson. Senior researcher Cosmin Dzsurdza regularly attacks climate action — most recently plans to reduce emissions from fertilizer, bolstering months of disinformation and conspiracy theories — and progressive gender politics. A 2019 Canada's National Observer investigation uncovered that he has strong links to far-right groups.

Still, University of Regina climate sociologist Emily Eaton warned that while Peterson and his ilk take “up a lot of room and [do] a lot of damage," the fossil fuel industry poses an equal, or larger, threat.

"Behind the scenes, the industry has been working at ensuring their workers identify with a suite of things that are highly masculinized," like big trucks and "hard work" in the oilpatch, she explained. Peterson is "reflecting back something deeper and much more grassroots" that has been fostered by oil and gas companies and lobby groups for decades.

The fossil fuel industry "very knowingly" ties its products to nostalgia for a post-Second World War society where fossil fuels and patriarchy dominate, she said. Take a recent ad for a job at Suncor's Port Moody, B.C. marine terminal, where a short video touting the company's history extracting oil in northern Alberta frames its first refinery as "historic" and a "leap of faith" towards what former Alberta premier Ernest Manning dubbed the "continual progress and enrichment of mankind."

Or simply, ads for trucks.

These industry narratives are a boon for right-wing politicians and online personalities, who tap into "nostalgia" for the era's social norms and economic possibilities to push climate disinformation, Daggett, the Virginia Tech professor, explained.

"Losing oil is seen as a threat to that way of life — and it is," particularly for white men in industries linked to fossil fuels, she said. Governments and environmentalists need to acknowledge this, she added, and devise ways to tackle the cultural and economic shifts it entails. Without offering people alternatives to austerity politics, and ways to make up for real losses in job security, wages and functional public infrastructure, governments risk fuelling petro-masculine nostalgia and authoritarianism.

"It's important to stress that these things have to be addressed," she said. "Otherwise, we're facing a serious political crisis."

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