Is caring about the climate unmanly?

Mike Smith had been a US fighter pilot for more than a decade when he took what he describes as a 'hard turn' out of the navy.

He decided to trade a life of deployment, fighter jets and cruise missile operations for one of planting trees and sustainability.

Though he didn't realize it at the time, the seeds for that change of pace and path were sown when he was just nine and watching a mega-fire burn through forest near his home in central Idaho.

The Lowman fire wasn't enormous by today's standards, but to a boy raised in the outdoors it felt apocalyptic. The blaze burned so fiercely it formed what looked like a nuclear mushroom cloud.

"It felt like the whole state was on fire at the time. It was just very, very memorable to me," Smith said. 

The fire didn't only scar his memory, but the land it tore through. More than 20 years later, when Mike returned to Idaho with his wife to show her where he grew up, what he saw stopped him cold.

"You know, when you go back to the place you grew up, you see all the things that have changed. And so what became jarring was seeing the thing that hadn't changed. It was just black, still black dirt, 22 years later."

He started a company focused on post-fire reforestation for carbon offset production. He got involved in planting a couple of million trees and founded a climate tech company that helps businesses cut emissions.

Along the way, he became aware of more women in the climate space than men. 

Do men and women relate to the climate crisis differently?

What Smith was seeing was not unique to his experience but is in fact a widely recorded phenomenon known as the green gender gap. In short, the idea that women are more concerned about the climate than men. 

And as Amanda Clayton, a University of California political scientist found during her research on the topic, "the gender gap grows as a function of country wealth."

As countries get richer, it is more likely that women will be the ones expressing greater concern about climate change. But not because they are suddenly more concerned.

"It's actually that men tend to decrease their concern about climate change as countries become wealthier," Clayton said. "The growing gender gap is actually men's growing skepticism."

One reason seems to be a fear of the perceived costs — financial and cultural — of transitioning to a clean energy future. Costs that feel especially threatening to men raised with the traditional expectations of being the provider. Which is where politics comes in, because she also found that as countries get wealthier, climate change becomes politicized.

"And when climate change becomes a political issue on the right, we see political and industry elites starting to promote climate skeptical beliefs," Clayton said.

This might involve narratives that target men more than women. Messaging around being forced to give up gas-powered vehicles; or the threat to jobs in the fossil fuel sector which is more male-dominated. In short, burning oil, gas and coal can become part of an identity sometimes referred to as petro-masculinity.

And as other recent research revealed, there is a direct link between climate change concerns and perceived threats to masculinity. 

Different ways of talking climate to men

Psychologist Vidar Vetterfalk is working to get underneath this thinking. In his role with MÄN, a Swedish organization that engages men and boys to challenge stereotypical masculinities, he asks groups of males to express what they like about the natural world and their worries for its future.

"That creates a connection," he said, rather than assigning guilt and blame for the climate crisis.

Connection, he says is exactly what is missing in masculinity norms, and although the experience is hard for many participants, it is also appreciated.

"A lot of men share already after the first round that they've never spoken with other men in this way before or listened together with other men in this way before."

Making climate action a mission 

While the kind of men who show up to such workshops are likely to be those who are already kind of interested in climate, reaching those who have never engaged can be more difficult. 

Mike Smith believes down-to-earth, blame-free conversations can go a long way to engaging men on why caring about the planet matters. And he has found his own background useful here. 

 "One thing, ex-fighter pilot, nobody ever gets to take my man card away," Smith said. "That gives me a little bit of room to maneuver when I'm talking about things that may be a little bit more traditionally coded as feminine."

He also believes men are more likely to get interested in climate action if they see how it can improve their own lives — by installing solar or driving electric vehicles to save on fuel costs, for example. Seeing 'manly' men going green can also help to change thinking and behavior.

This is something car companies have also begun tapping into. Some are now marketing EVs as major man machines that can charge drills or become generators if a storm cuts off power.

"They're just trying to make electricity seem masculine rather than gas and oil seeming masculine," Clayton said. "And I'm here for it, if that's what you need in order to convince groups that have a cultural attachment to fossil fuels."

But ultimately Smith says it's all about creating the same kind of motivation that made him join the navy as a young man. 

"Most people, what they really need is a sense of purpose and drive and mission," he said. "I think that's maybe the key to where we can go with masculinity and climate."

Edited by: Sarah Steffen

This article was adapted from a DW Living Planet podcast. To listen to the full episode, click here.