Understanding petro-masculinity and its role in climate politics

This year’s international climate conference, known as COP28, is scheduled to take place in the United Arab Emirates. The designated president of COP28 has significant ties to the oil industry, just like the lead negotiator for the European Union, Wopke Hoekstra, who is a former employee of prominent energy and consulting companies, with a well-documented history of supporting fossil fuels. This might result in unclarities or contradictions surrounding interests and aim of negotiations as observers fear. The outcomes of the negotiations are yet unclear, what we are able to explore though, are the circumstances that paved the way and gave power to these men to come into the positions they are in now. One way of approaching this is through the lens of petro-masculinity.

The term “Petro-masculinity” was coined by Cara Daggett in her paper “Petro-masculinity: Fossil Fuels and Authoritarian Desire.” In it, she describes this form of hegemonic masculinity as one defined by desires for control, dominance, and authoritarianism, in which fossil fuel has become a unique symbol of power and dominance. Petro-masculinity is what we observe when Andrew Tate brags about his large collection of gas-guzzlers to Greta Thunberg on Twitter or when Donald Trump expressed the need for the USA to achieve not just energy independence but rather energy dominance and in how he struggled to save the last remaining jobs in the clearly dying coal mining industry. The most literal display of petro-masculinity, however, might be the practice of “rolling coal” in the USA. Rolling coal is an illegal way to modify your diesel engine to not always fully undergo combustion and therefore produce thick black clouds of exhaust fumes that can be directed towards cyclists, electric cars, or protesters. This deliberate air pollution is a way of protesting the perceived need to become more climate-friendly and to display power and dominance through the burning of an unnecessary amount of fossil fuels. But petro-masculinity functions in more subtle ways as well. Holding on to fossil fuel related activities is often times less about the actual impact that they have, but more so their cultural significance. In order to understand how power is held by these men and in which ways it impacts the negotiations around market-based solutions at the COPs, we must first understand the origin of the need to dominate and control nature.

Within petro-masculinity, fossil fuels can be understood as being nature’s most valuable and therefore powerful good, which should be kept in mind while reading the following illustration of dualisms. Dualisms still dictate our view of the world in the global north and are a strong enabler of colonialism. As explained by Val Plumwood in “Dualism: the logic of colonization,” the Christian colonial world is separated not just into heaven and hell but also into various dualisms, including but not limited to:

human — nature

mind — body

male — female

self — other

master — slave

civilized — primitive

By the logic of dualism, these pairs (called linking postulates) don’t just exist as pairs but are connected via transitivity, which means they are interconnected within their respective sides. The right side of “other” is, therefore, also primitive, and the primitive is natural, and the natural is heavily linked to the female. It is important to understand that the two sides are by no means equal and don’t represent opposites. Instead, the postulates listed on the right side are simply defined by not being the things listed on the left side and have no merit or autonomy of their own. They are defined by the absence of the qualities of the seemingly superior, reasonable master and cannot compare to it; they exist solely as his homogenized background. The colonizers who needed this logic to justify their suppression of the other invoked this separation, which was then transported via culture and economy throughout the world.

The separation of nature and human was especially relevant, as now that humans were no longer part of nature, its exploitation and destruction were no longer in conflict with the self. After all, nature was made to be subdued/conquered by men. Over time, dualisms helped institutionalize other power structures such as the patriarchy and capitalism which is necessarily linked to racism. Men’s desire to hold on to their controlling grip on nature and fossil energy is not trivial because it is interlinked with controlling the feminine, the primitive other, and the economy as it is because the exploitative nature of capitalism depends on and was enabled through the principle of dualism.

This shows up in multiple ways at the current discussions at the UNFCCC COPs. We see clear pushes for market-based solutions, solutions that don’t challenge capitalism and the status quo. They instead lead to carbon certificate trade, which brings with it further privatization of ecosystem services and the atmosphere in the global south, which, as seen by examples like REDD+* and the operation of so-called carbon cowboys**, leads to further displacement and dispossession of frontline communities. This is a colonial continuity firmly rooted in the principles of dualism and patriarchy. When men feel threatened by environmentalist policies urging them to change the ways they engage with their surroundings, it is not just their diesel motors at stake, but the logic that has secured their position of power in the world.

We must acknowledge that finding technical solutions is not enough to effectively challenge the fossil fuel industry and stop the climate crisis from further escalating. A shift in culture, away from patriarchy and our colonial understanding of what it means to be a man, needs to be addressed just as urgently if we want to be truly effective.

Sources:

Daggett,C. (2018). Petro-masculinity: Fossil Fuels and Authoritarian Desire.Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 47(1), 25–44. https://doi.org/10.1177/0305829818775817

Plumwood, V. (1993). Feminism and the mastery of nature. Routledge. New York

Fraser, N. (2022). Cannibal Capitalism. How our System is Devouring Democracy, Care, and the Planet and What We Can Do About It. Verso. London

* REDD+ is the abbreviation for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation. It is the largest carbon offsetting mechanism for forestry and was developed by the UNFCCC to encourage countries of with rich, intact forest ecosystems to protect them by monetizing them via carbon certificates that can be acquired by heavily polluting (or milder: in need of a better carbon balance) nations and industries.

• * Carbon Cowboys are private actors who work as middle men between the industries and communities of the Amazon to negotiate carbon credits, often under disregard of the principles of free prior and informed consent which has a detrimental impact on said communities.

About the author: This article was written by Zora Lietzmann (they/them), a non-binary, white, able bodied person from Germany. “Understanding Petro-masculinity and its role in climate politics” is an attempt to explain the connection between the colonial logic of dualism and the petro-masculinity, asking which connection exists to climate politics today and what we can do to improve it.