9/10/26

Real men don’t do climate change

Research on the gender differences in how people think about global warming suggests campaigns and communications may need a rethink

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This article is republished from The Financial Times

If you are a man who cares about climate change, are you a bit of a dweeb?

Put another way, if a man says global warming is rubbish, does he seem more manly?

If a man says global warming is rubbish, does he seem more manly?

In my 15 years of writing about climate change, these are not questions I have considered before.

But I have begun to do so since coming across research that suggests a lot of men brush off the climate problem for fear of seeming too feminine.

Research suggests a lot of men brush off the climate problem for fear of seeming too feminine.

The analysis by Michael Haselhuhn, an associate professor of management at University of California, Riverside, helps to answer one of the more baffling climate questions: why do studies and polls across the world consistently show that men care less about global warming than women?

Some studies suggest that men feel they have more to lose from policies to fight climate change.

Others conclude it is because women are socialised to care more about things like the environment.

But researchers who focus on socialisation tend to look at it from the perspective of the women being socialised.

Haselhuhn thought the same patterns of conditioning might be having a separate but overlooked effect on men.

So he did a series of linked studies that suggest this is indeed what is happening.

Using data from the US, and a long-running survey of more than 40,000 people across Europe, he showed that men who say they want to save the planet are perceived to be more warm and caring.

In keeping with this finding, he also showed that men who are strongly concerned about maintaining their sense of manhood express less concern about the climate problem and say they feel less responsibility for managing it.

This does not, of course, mean that all male climate sceptics are worried about their manhood.

Other views also matter.

A study of more than 9,000 scientists in 115 countries published this week shows that those who believe technology will largely solve the climate problem are 23 per cent less likely to go on a climate march, sign a petition or take similar civic actions, compared with scientists who lack such faith.

The techno-optimists are also 18 per cent less likely to make big lifestyle changes to cut carbon.

In other words, many personal views matter, even for experts.

But Haselhuhn’s work does raise a question about the best way to sell the need for climate action, especially to men.

He is now trying to determine which messages might land best, with mixed results.

At first he thought it might be effective to suggest that real men take care of their family and are good parents, but that “just didn’t move the needle at all”, he told me.

More success came when highlighting the financial benefits of climate action.

For example, when men are choosing between a regular showerhead and an energy-efficient one, about 80 per cent of them will choose the greener one if it is described as a way to save money.

But if told that the same showerhead uses less water and is more environmentally friendly, that support falls by 10 percentage points.

Taking out the word “environment” seems to help, says Haselhuhn.

All of this gels with the ideas of climate scientists such as Katharine Hayhoe, a Texas Tech University professor who has worked extensively on effective ways to talk about climate change.

This includes advice on dealing with the inevitable uncle who tells you at every family gathering that the climate has always been changing and today’s record temperatures are just part of a natural cycle.

It doesn’t help to spout scientific facts to show why he is wrong, Hayhoe told a recent FT conference.

That’s because the real issue here is not science denial but solution aversion, or concern that climate policies will clash with a person’s identity, ideology or ideas about a better world.

Because it’s unpleasant to say openly that you don’t want to fix a serious problem, people use so-called motivated reasoning to find grounds for why climate change cannot be real or serious.

In other words, they process information in ways that align with what they already believe or want, rather than with objective evidence.

Happily, Hayhoe says, the same uncle’s views can reverse completely if he buys solar panels that save him money or does something else that improves his own circumstances as well as the climate.

There is a message here for those of us who rightly worry about warming temperatures.

Scientific facts really matter, as does the health of the environment.

But there will be times when the best thing you can do for the planet is not talk about it at all.

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