Carbon Bros, Ep 4: Integration

JORDAN PETERSON: One of the most useful things that you need I think was to work on this idea of the integration of the shadow because he was really interested in the idea of evil

What do you do with the part of you that's aggressive and and potentially malevolent? you just crush it? that's the super-ego response in some sense you just put it behind you so to speak is that a possibility or do you admit to its existence and bring it into the game?

DANIEL: You’re listening to Carbon Bros. I’m Daniel Penny

AMY: And I’m Amy Westervelt.

DANIEL: And that’s our old friend, Doctor Jordan Peterson, speaking in 2018 to a young man about integrating the so-called “shadow self.”

“Integration” is one of Peterson’s favorite concepts, borrowed from the psychoanalyst Carl Jung. It’s the idea that through a series of direct confrontations with our darkest fears and desires, we can come to accept and even channel that side of our personalities in a constructive way. You often hear about shadowwork from manosphere types when they want to defend the idea of masculine aggression.

PETERSON you should be able to do things that you wouldn't do that's that's like the definition of a genuinely moral person they could do it but they don't and then that's not cowardice and so that's you burn off the things that get in the way of that Integration.

it's a forest fire that allows for new growth because if you burn something off you might think well there's nothing left it's like that's not true if it's Deadwood then you have room for new growth.

AMY: Love that he’s using a forest fire as a metaphor, given all the climate denial he peddles.

DANIEL: Yeah I included that bit on purpose. But on this fourth and final episode of Carbon Bros, we’re thinking about Integration a little more broadly. The question we’re trying to ask is how do we bring men back into the climate movement? How do we shift the terms of the climate conversation from energy dominance and macho climate denial–

AMY: Or techno-fixes and planetary escape—to something else? Because the earth is getting warmer every year. We’ve already passed 1.5 C and with any limits on oil and gas drilling lifted, the Department of Energy putting out reports that climate change isn’t a big threat after all, and the all out assault on the EPA, we’re on track to hit 3C of warming by 2100. If we’re leaving men to get suckered by gender grifters and climate disinformation, we’re not going to fix things anytime soon.

DANIEL: So how do we integrate the shadow? The manosphere, and all of the angst and toxicity it represents? Because ignoring it didn’t work in 2024 and it’s not going to work in 2026 or 2028 (assuming we still have elections then). Is there a place for a different kind of masculinity in the climate movement?

That's what we're talking about on this episode of Carbon Bros.

BREAK

Jobs

Amy: Again and again, the biggest issue we kept coming up against in our research for this show is that men feel an intense social pressure to provide, and when faced with a choice between the economy and a livable planet, a lot of guys are choosing their jobs. This is the essence of “breadwinner masculinity.” And it’s especially true among energy workers, who are overwhelmingly white and male.

COALMINER CLIP:

I believe the tariffs are a good thing. It is gonna bring jobs back to America. Um, and what comes with American jobs is energy.

President Trump, I just would like to personally thank you for what you do for the coal industry and what you're doing to make our everyday lives better.

President Trump, for the bottom of our hearts, truly thank you for everything you have done for the coal industry and for the hardworking blue collar American person. Um, we are truly better off today than we were under the last administration.

DANIEL: These are clips of coalminers the Trump administration brought to the white house recently. They’ve got these strange looks on their faces, like hostages reading off cue-cards.

AMY: Trump followed the same playbook back in 2017, blame Obama-era regulations for keeping fossil fuel workers out of jobs. And he’s doing it again now, blaming Biden’s climate policy. It’s an old trick the Republicans have been using since the Reagan era to divide the working class. But these frenzies of deregulation don’t actually bring back the jobs. In fact they’re just cutting more jobs.

DANIEL: Yeah, even though they’re making record profits, the oil and gas industry is shrinking its workforce because of automation. And the coal industry in the US has been declining for decades because coal is a more expensive source of energy compared to solar and natural gas. The cause of all this isn’t Washington or blue-haired trans climate protestors. It’s bosses and bottom lines. But the solutions Democrats have offered so far have sucked pretty hard.

BIDEN: “Anybody who can go down 3,000 feet in a mine can sure as hell learn to program as well. Give me a break! Anybody who can throw coal into a furnace can learn how to program, for God’s sake!”

AMY: Learn to code! Not surprisingly, most of these computer science retraining programs have been a bust. And telling fossil fuel workers they were just going to have to switch to entirely different careers reveals a deep ignorance of life on the ground for these guys and their families.

DANIEL: At the end of episode 3, we heard from Mike Levien, a social scientist  at Johns Hopkins who studies the oil and gas industries and the push for carbon capture in Louisiana. And toward the end of our conversation, I asked him about this problem. How to win over men who think their interests are with the status quo.

MIKE LEVIEN: You know, it's a problem I've thought a lot about. My mom's family's all from a small bayou in Louisiana, shrimpers and my grandpa's generation, the second generation, you know, didn't see much of a future in shrimping. And they all, a person, work in an industry, whether, you know, machinists and fabrication shops, or they're working in shipyards or, you know, as welders or they're doing something related to oil and gas drilling.

you know, or petrochemicals, right?

On the coast people think, “oh, we have these sort of backward looking coal miners and conservative guys who work out on oil drilling rigs, who are our opponents in dealing with climate change.”

if they could lead this whole thing, I mean, that would be amazing. But of course there is this huge problem and, you know, which is just that their current interests are completely aligned with the perpetuation of these industries because they depend on it for their livelihoods.

DANIEL: So how do we get these guys to join the climate movement?

I think this is where like, you know, thinking about this material program, but not just the material program, but kind of the cultural politics, which we could kind of challenge the hegemony of fossil fuel industries without kind of, you know, throwing lots of blue collar workers, uh, you know, out of their jobs with sort of nothing for them and emboldening of reaction and throwing them into strengthening the right wing, you know, counter movement against climate action.

your question about gender is an interesting one, right? Because. You know, you might be right that there's a, to toxic masculinity, you know, that is involved in people's identification with, um, work in the fossil fuel industry. Right. Um, and so, um, are we going to denounce people for being, you know, for, for that? Or are we going to, um, in a sense try to like tap into it or pivot from it in a way by saying like, there there is a, you know, a job here or there is a program here that you know, is recognizing like the sacrifice that you made, right? By working for all these years and risking black lung and risking occupational disease and, you know, all these other things.

AMY: There has been a lot of talk—and some real effort over the years about a just transition, which means everything from making sure energy is affordable to taking care of energy workers. But the idea of gender affirming jobs is uhhhh interesting!

DANIEL:  It also wasn't just that it had to be a gender affirming job, but that any kind of wage replacement program that would be initiated would have to be marketed and, and kind of conveyed in such a way that it's not seen as welfare.

AMY: welfare or a handout or,

DANIEL: Exactly. You know, that like we accept the idea of veterans benefits, but many people reject the idea of welfare for those who are out of work.

But those two I, those two things are actually like, pretty much the same. We've just decided that people who've served in the military get special social privileges because of the job that they had.

however we deal with all of the people (mostly men) who will inevitably be put out of work by the switch to renewables, we have to find a way to show they’re not being forgotten, that they’re not looked down upon. Even if I hate oil, I respect the people who put their lives in danger to drill it.

AMY: Yeah definitely! None of these folks are responsible for decisions being made in the C suite.

DANIEL: guess what, it’s capitalism. And of course the fossil fuel industry jumps at every chance to remind people that real men work the rigs and we’ll all be screwed if those jobs go away. But that doesn’t make any of it less real. In fact a recent Equimundo survey found that men are actually feeling more anxious about being a good provider than ever.

AMY: Yep, exactly. Surprise, surprise,. Um, it's like, of course everyone is feeling the pinch more and men have this additional layer of. Having this social expectation that they are providers and that they're, you know, breadwinners and all of that stuff.

Um, this Mundo report and survey was really, really interesting. I was surprised by a few of the stats that they found. So, um, I reached out to the researchers who led that effort, Caroline Hayes and Dr. Isha Gupta to talk about it.

[music in]

so men who are in what we have called, and others in our field have called it the man box, right? And so this idea that when you are following these very stereotypical, rigid norms of masculinity, you're in the man box.

Those men tend to. Be the ones who are actually denying climate change. And from what we understand, this idea of sort of this very manliness of eating red meat and, driving these gas guzzling trucks, et cetera.

It's a sort of heuristic of what it means to be this very typical man box man as opposed to ,soy boys or beta males who eat things like plant-based diets or something like that .

when we're thinking about, you know, as Isha talked about the man box and norms around masculinity, you have things like hyper individualism. You have things like, um, resource accumulation in order to be the provider.

And this idea of economic stress, right, which is linked to their kind of identity as a provider, has been so prominent as a finding for us, and it's consistent.

taking those to the extreme and, and wealth extraction and resource accumulation. You can see the direct link between, you know, the, the consequences, um, for our environment when, when that sort of, um, you know, globalized on a mass scale.

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DR. GUPTA:  When we think about the harmful aspects of masculinity. it is things like being dominant, self-reliant, being very tough, and all of all of that is in complete juxtaposition, right? To what we need to be, to be actually concerned about the climate and the environment, which requires care and compassion, and a desire to think about public good, ?

Compassion is something that we have seen in our work in terms of how we see men sort of, we actually come from a starting point that men are carers,

that we want men to be carers. We want men to be caring in all their relationships. Not just when they have children, but to partners, to their elderly parents, to their, to themselves, right? And then with that comes the idea that you care for your community. You care for your planet. So we, we have been trying to work on several solutions we, you know, that promotes caring masculinity as the core solution For this planet.

When men care, they have better mental health, they have better relationships, they're happier overall when they care for themselves.

DANIEL: Care is definitely at the core of this shift. And you’ll hear this keyword from a lot of the folks in this episode. One of the things I’ve been thinking about is this idea of the “girl dad,” when kind of macho guys have daughters and realize that women are human, too.

LOGAN PAUL CLIP: Thinking about having a daughter, my mind went to some dark places. I don’t want to sound like a woke asshole, but dude, women have it hard.

AMY REACTION:  . I'll take it. Fine. Logan Paul, I'm glad you realize women have feelings.

DANIEL: So I thought, there must be guys who go through  similar thing when it comes to the climate crisis. Like being a dad isn’t going to get you to believe in the existence of climate change, but it might increase how much you care about it, because now you’re thinking about the future of your child and the world they’re going to live in.

AMY REACTION: Totally. And actually we know that it impacts some people's, um, thinking around whether or not to even have kids.

DANIEL: So to understand the climate dads, I spoke to Jason Sandman. He's a community organizer and co-founder of a group called Climate Dads

Climate Dads

DANIEL:  Jason, welcome to Carbon Bros.

JASON:. It is so nice to be here. Thank you for the time to, uh, share my perspective.

DANIEL: And, and you're, are you calling from a, a garage right now? Are you getting your car repaired?

JASON: Yeah, yeah.with the federal tax rebates, um, for electric vehicles closing pretty soon, my wife and I decided to. To purchase one, and we are at the dealership. they're redoing the software and updating it

JASON: we will be taking this conversation while I'm here at the. dealership. we're always multitasking as a parent,

KID BABBLING

DANIEL: this, is a perfect microcosm.

DANIEL:  could you just tell the audience a little bit about what Climate Dads is and, who you are?

JASON: So climate dance has really started from just like, two guys, two dads with two sons about the same age, who, uh, both realized that they had some of the same concerns about raising a, a child, uh, during this time.

JASON:,  having a child is like this eureka moment. You're like, wow, I'm not only responsible for myself, I'm responsible for another human being forever,, until I die. So you start to think about. Like, what does that mean? How can I support and uplift them?

What challenges are they gonna face? And you get in, they have all these questions, you're like, oh, maybe this climate change thing impacts us.

DANIEL:  let's talk about the specific dadliness of it. Often it's moms or women in general who take more initiative, in terms of the family, you could say green lifestyle: things like composting, or even in advocacy, you know, putting, their identity as a mom first.

JASON:  We were way behind the moms Clean Air Force. Moms doing this, matriarchs, grandma's doing that. It's been for decades and I think I can say this, even though it's controversial dads, we got some catching up to do. It's not the burden of, of the mom to carry this stuff.

And so we just wanted to, like, part of climate Dads really is just to like change that stigma

And so it was like, let's lead by example. let's go get solar panels on our house and, and then say like, Hey, we can do this together and here's how dads can be a part of it. Let's, uh, let's start bringing our kids hiking or camping together and let them see the natural world and take the lead on that.

DANIEL:  So often the right is able to pit climate and environmental concerns against job growth, against wages, and that makes a lot of men in particular say, you know, okay, maybe climate change is real, maybe it's not, but I gotta worry about how much gas costs.

JASON:

climate Dad was kind of a convener and almost a facilitator initially, locally.

Here's what's going on at the local utility. Here's how they're providing rebates, sir, here's a contractor that's doing this kind of work. Um, give them a call.

JASON: And then we just kind of found out through. unsolicited messages from a dad in Tempe, Arizona or or a, or a grandfather or an uncle in Australia. It was like, damn, kind of thinking about starting a chapter of climate dads out here. What are you guys working on? Can we, can we incorporate together?

DANIEL:  the 2024 election, in many ways was seen as, as kind of the, the, the toxic masculinity election,  powered by this kind of male grievance culture in addition to a lot of fossil fuel money.  How do we win some of those guys back?

JASON:  if you really want to get the, these fathers on board, it's not a responsibility of any one person

It's think about how you can maybe at the micro scale at your house, just kind of work on that and lead by example or your family work on, work on yourself. And then maybe, maybe that's an example of how like, oh, I feel pretty confident here. I did some things. This looks kind of good.

And then you, just, like you, you reach out to like a, your, your Reddit, your subreddit or to like your Facebook group or to like, you know, your local church group or like whoever you're with. Like, Hey, this kind of matters to me. Does somebody else, does it matter to anybody else? Let's talk about it. Let's get together.

AMY REACTION: This actually reminds me of one of the first episodes of Hot Take Mary Heglar and I did. We had done a couple of episodes talking about how the climate movement needed to be more intersectional and open up space for new leaders, and we were really surprised to get a flood of emails from climate concerned white guys who were like totally agree but also I care about climate and it sounds like you don’t want me here. So we did a whole episode about all the things you can do in between being in charge and not participating at all. Jason seems to be offering an option here!

DANIEL:  Yeah,  the people who have the most power in the climate movement in terms of being heads of organizations or involved in policy are men. But the everyday spaces of the climate movement have become so feminized that then when men are interested in participating, they feel this sense of like, well, is this even for me?

AMY:  Yeah, it's really interesting. It's a whole interesting dynamic.

DANIEL: and that's such a mistake, right? So we gotta, we gotta fix that. And I think, I think Jason is, is offering one way out of that trap.

AMY: These are middle-aged guys. And I think it’s great that Jason and the other dads are getting together to swap notes on heat pumps and bike lanes. And that does change how we perceive climate as a feminine or masculine issue. But there’s still the question of the young guys, the dudes we started with in episode 1 of this series, who swung for Trump because he appealed to their most bro-ish instincts.

DANIEL: Yes. There are a lot of rightwing fitness and martial arts influencers out there, but it’s a bit harder to find the lefty version. BUT I DID FIND HIM AMY! And his name is Colin Davis. Now I’m not saying Colin is the left’s Joe Rogan–and we don’t endorse the idea of trying to build one–but he is a charismatic fitness coach and former wrestler who comes out against the Andrew Tate types. And he’s been quite outspoken about climate. And it really gave me a moment of hope amidst so much despair.

Colin Davis

COLIN:  I do personal training and coaching full-time. I guess I do social media full-time now. I mean, in the last three months, Instagram has become like a job. previous to that, it was still just an app on my phone. So this is a, this, this is a very new world for me, um, of like, like content creation for things that I really care about. And not just using it as like, for my personal training. Um, and all, like, all of the advice that I got from other coaches and people in the business was like, yeah, just don't talk about politics, just. Be apolitical, whatever you want to. I don't know how you can be apolitical right now

And then as soon as I started being open about my politics and essentially talking shit. my following blew up and I've had the opportunity to meet a ton of other leftists gym goers and people that I am politically aligned with that also are in the fitness space.

And it's been incredible. Um, 'cause I, yeah, I think it feels isolating for a lot of guys that are left-leaning and still traditionally masculine to be like, uh, where, who do I fit in with? You know, like, So, yeah, I'm trying to that gap a little bit. At least online.

AMY: Alright, I’m intrigued.

DANIEL: Colin has a “silent majority” theory of the case, which is basically that the loudest right-wing fitness and manosphere voices don’t represent the views of their audience, but because they mostly go unchallenged, they win by default.

AMY:  That's fascinating actually. 'cause I have that same theory for climate deniers in general. Like, um, there's this huge perception in media that there's way more climate deniers than there actually are because they're the people who take the time to like write angry letters or actually call newsrooms.

DANIEL:  How does bodybuilding or strength training, or combat sports e, how do those things fit into a left leaning point of view, or a vision?

COLIN: I mean personally they fit because it like, it gives me autonomy. Like, I feel very capable that I can protect people that I love and protect myself when I need it. , like you can get strong and then also stand up to other strong people that are trying to put your friends down.

grappling cultures like jujitsu and wrestling are very progressive gyms most of the time. Two or three guys that you're like, oh, fucking the cop is here, right? And then you gotta go roll with the cop. But then you get to go beat up a cop, There I, it, it's just like the loudest voices of all of these subcultures are the ones that are right-leaning.

DANIEL:  I wanna talk about climate. You've post a lot about like saving, public land and you do a lot of kinda like outdoor content and i'm interested in the fact that so many men don't seem to believe in or care about the climate

COLIN:  I love the outdoors. Like I grew up as a boy scout and like the in nature and like I spend a ton of my free time hiking and swimming on state parks and national parks and like, that is a, a massive resource that I think is that the only thing that matters at some point.

Like none of these other issues matter if we have a failing climate. Right?

and then for men, I, I, I think I've been having a lot of these conversations about like. What's the problem with young men, or men in general? And the thing that I keep boiling down to is like empathy and apathy, right? So many men just don't care, like at all about anything. That's like their baseline existence is just like, eh, whatever.

Like I'm gonna work this job, I'm gonna do this thing. It's all bullshit. Like I'm just living my life as I'm supposed to as a man. Like I'm gonna provide, I'm gonna check all the boxes. And they have no connection to the world around them. They have no genuine passions or interests, and it makes it really hard to care about like using a plastic bag at the grocery store or not.

If you could care less if you're dead or alive. again, a larger problem, like seeing empathy as weakness or as like feminine or. Whatever, like is a big problem that a lot of guys have where they feel like they can't care because you're a bitch if you care.

Like, I don't, I don't wanna be this weak guy that's like, oh, weak. Oh, you care about the straws? . like patronizing, like making fun of you for caring. Um, and I think once more men realize, like, once that happens, you can go, yeah, I do care.

You don't? like, what the fuck? Like,turning it around and almost like bullying people into empathy, has been the strategy that I've found works the best.

DANIEL: But that does require a certain level of,, confidence and,, ability to reflect in real time and, and a level of security in your own self that I think, most men don't, have

COLIN: and I think I have specific advantage also of being like muscular and jacked and like grew up fighting and wrestling and so in these male dominated spaces, r.. Like they are forced to listen to me because of all of these things that they find respectable.

Which is dumb. Like my ability to lift weights and punch someone in the face has no bearing on like who I am as a person, But like those qualities are immediately disarming

AMY: So other than relying on personal charisma, how do we win these guys back?

DANIEL: Yeah, you can’t do it with riz alone

COLIN:   I think first and foremost, they have to have, like, they have to feel like things are actually gonna change

like, they can't be bothered to care about the world when like my life is falling apart financially. If I don't have a job and I don't have a house and I can't afford food, I don't give a fuck if the rainforests are on fire, what I think most of the mindset is.

I've had conversations with like Democrat people that are like, how do we get young men back to Democrats?

And I'm like, you're not. We need to go farther left. solution is not to like go back to liberalism. The solution is to move the needle way farther back to like actual. Real progressive socialist policies that will help people, you know, like jobs programs and work programs and housing programs.  like all of that will get people on board with whatever social and climate issues you wanna attach with it.

DANIEL: I loved that. Imagine trying to run a focus group for the DNC with this guy. Not the message you wanna bring back to your bosses. But Colin did have some strategic advice as well.

COLIN:  Every podcast talks about fucking jiujitsu and bow hunting and whatever like, but yeah, there's like, again, this lack of a) political messaging from the left, that it's all either preachy and inherently political and like putting it down your throat or. It's not political at all, like fully outside of politics as just like, yeah, I have these politics but I'm not gonna talk about it 'cause I don't wanna lose money. And then you have the right where they kind of blend it together. I think that mix of. Being political but not beating people over the head with like, Hey, you have to agree with me, you have to do this, these, these are all the problems in the world.

COLIN:  And then offerings, people, some form of action, Like I think young men especially, they need to feel like they have a sense of agency and like control and like importance in whatever movement they're a part of. And. Establishment dims have given them none of that

COLIN:   And I think if there was an alternative on the left of being like, yeah, like you can be strong and like you can be important and like you can tell fascists to go fuck themselves, and you can go punch nazis. Like that kind of leftism appeals to a lot of men.

DANIEL: The problem was that that type of leftish had its throat slit by establishment dems in 2016 and 2020. Remember the Bernie Bro?

AMY: RIP

DANIEL: And then a lot of those guys ended up voting for Trump, because at least it wasn’t more of the same pablum. The trick is that if Dems want those guys back (which they should, since winning elections is kind of the point) they can’t blame these ex-Bernie Bros for getting suckered by Trump’s populism.

COLIN:  people got conned and they're, they're coming to terms with the fact that they got conned, and it's been very difficult, think, for a lot of people to accept them back be like, Hey, like you, I, I was right. I'm not gonna tell you I told you so, but like. Do we agree now?

Can you like put this silliness aside and like come try to actually build a better world? a lot of these, a lot of these men

they're starting to come to terms with the fact that like, oh, like he doesn't care. Like he doesn't care about me. These people don't care about me. Democrats don't care about me, Republicans don't care about me. And there's this like wash of like, where do they go?

Amy:  This actually reminds me of, something that happened since we started taping this season, which is that, there was that strategy memo that, that the DNC had put together that got leaked to someone. I'm sure it was like purposely sent to a reporter because it was so dumb.

But they're really mulling this question of like, how do we win these guys back? And what appeals to them and this, that and the other, and I'm like, uh, you guys could just hand that over to the progressives of your party who were already winning them before.

but something interesting has been happening just in the last couple months, a really big something. The manosphere has started to kind of change its tune a little bit.

Andrew Schulz: People are like, they’ll DM me and they’ll be like ‘You see what your boy doing?’ They’ll be like ‘You voted for this.’ I’m like ‘I voted for none of this!’ He’s doing the exact opposite of everything I voted for.

DANIEL: That was Andrew Schulz, host of the manosphere-adjacent podcast, Flagrant. You heard his voice in episode 1 saying: “I cannot think of one single reason why global warming is bad.”

DANIEL: Is Schulz an idiot who has no real grasp of politics, science, or much else for matter? I’ll let you answer that question for yourself. But he’s not that different from a lot of the guys who swung to the right in recent years, those same dudes Colin was talking about a minute ago. And his recent public rebuke of Trump, and his confusion about why the promises of the far-right have not come true can teach us something really important.

AMY: Because if you’ve been listening to this show, you might be thinking things are pretty hopeless. That men are basically a lost cause, and if there’s going to be a future at all, it’s female. But the recent flipflopping of Schulz and his bros like Rogan and Theo Von shows just how fragile Trump’s masculine coalition really is. And it offers an opening for another narrative.

Abdul: My name is Abdul El-Sayed. I am running for Senate in Michigan.

Amy: Oh man, I am so thrilled you got to talk to Abdul al Sayed.

Daniel: Yeah I mean, from Mamdani in New York to Sayed in Michigan to Bernie’s sold-out Oligarchs tour…it’s not like the left doesn’t know how to appeal to young men, it’s just that the DNC is terrified of letting those guys do the talking. And no surprise that the folks I just mentioned are all unequivocal about the need to act on climate, too. Right alongside income inequality and labor rights.

Amy: Because once again for the folks in the back: it’s all connected!

Daniel: Exactly. Here’s El-Sayed pulling it all together perfectly:

Abdul: one of the things that has become overwhelming, I think for most of us is that it just shouldn't be this hard to get by in the richest, most powerful country in the world. You shouldn't have to worry about the quality of air you breathe or the water that you drink. Or whether or not you can go see a doctor or whether or not you can afford your groceries or walk in your community without being victimized by a neighbor or the state itself. All of these things come back to one central issue, which is that we've allowed corporations and would be oligarchs to dominate too much of our lives in the ways that they can use their money and their power, uh, to buy politics and buy politicians, uh, that allow them to rig the system for them.

DANIEL:  Many attribute,, the failure of f Kamala Harris's race to like an inability to connect with men. I'm curious, how you're thinking about winning back this demographic.

ABDUL:  I just think we have a clear message that can be bold, fun, and willing to take on the status quo of who wrote the rules in the first place. And I think that we need to lean into that. The problem is that the majority of the Democratic party cannot, because there is nothing transgressive about asking a corporate PAC to write you a check to uphold the status quo that they wrote.

Because we're not willing to do anything structural. We've leaned in on this whole social conversation, and so we end up sounding like a nineties era sociology textbook,

And every time you hear the word masculinity among people on the left, it's usually a. It usually comes with that toxic trope. Now, if there's not another option about a non-toxic masculinity, then at some point you're basically condemning a whole group of people and you know, if you don't offer them anything, why is it surprising that they're gonna go in a different direction?  I wanna talk about what masculinity is that doesn't feel shitty.

AMY: And what is that masculinity, dear sir?

The zeitgeist has basically said that because all masculinity is toxic, ergo we're going to get rid of all masculinity, and I think we missed the opportunity to say, actually the masculinity I grew up with was one where you are someone who takes the risk first, but you always, you always eat last in the sense that you protect resources and you protect for the people who have to come first.

I would much more, um, have wanted to be able to say, actually no.. Like, this is extremely selfish behavior and it's small and it's petty and it's unbecoming of the way that I understand masculinity.

It's unmanly to be this way. Right. And I think. In a lot of cultures when you, if you said that you would be making a very, very powerful argument, right? And a lot of folks would say, no, no, no. It's my duty to people who, who don't have like the same strength or capacity that I do to make sure that I'm doing the things to protect them right in this society

And so let’s talk about what masculinity means? Does it mean you punch down at people you perceive to be weaker than you? Or does it mean that you are a promoter and protector and empowerer of other people? That you can do that in a way where you can live in a society where everybody's got a great shot at things and you can still enjoy doing the things that you know bros enjoy doing, which I enjoy doing also.

And I, I come at this honestly, like I'm not, A lot of Democrats are like, well, let's pretend like we like working out. You're like, well, if you don't like working out, don't work out. Like just be who you are, number one. But, you know, I say this as, as a, as a guy who grew up, you know, doing the traditional bro things, who still enjoys doing these things

DANIEL:  What are those bro things? If you, if you don't mind my asking.

I mean, like I, I, I played football in high school. I captained my wrestling team and lacrosse team and my football team. I played lacrosse in college. I work out I mountain bike. Like those are like things that bro code. But like, let's be clear, some of the like gnarliest lifters I've ever seen in the gym are women, like including my own wife who, you know, deadlifts 1.5 x body weight for reps, which I’m like “:that’s incredible”.

Amy: Hell yeah.

Daniel: But he did point out that it’s been tough to connect the climate crisis to the rest of it. Or really that it’s been tough to communicate that connection.

Abdul:  One of the hard parts of the climate crisis is that it's like a really challenging problem to clearly connect, cause and effect. And that's because it exists because of a whole system of energy production. Which any of our participation is really, actually quite small,

but exists at a level that's higher than us, which is the, the, you know, the, the level of the factory that burns stuff that comes out of the ground to heat and provide energy for our homes.

And then it happens on a time horizon That's not direct in the sense that a lot of what we're experiencing now is a function of things that happened five to 10 years ago, and then there's a lot of money being spent to push back on. A clear understanding of cause and effect.

And the problem with that is that people who want to actually solve the climate crisis too often fixate on emblems of that crisis that people have no actual, um, connection to. So like for a long time the emblem was like starving polar

But the thing we, we ignore is that every moment that we're releasing climate gases . into the atmosphere. They're being sieved through the lungs of our children. So you can see not too far from where I am right now, images of kids playing in a playground with a smokestack right behind them. And we failed that in large part because, I hate to say it for a lot of us, right, who have the privilege to be insulated from those smoke stocks, right?

The image was a polar bear over there. Rather than, Hey, look, this is about what our kids are feeling right now

Amy: I think he's so right. One of the things that I actually thought the Harris campaign did well, but climate folks actually totally criticized them for was focusing on clean air and clean water, as opposed to talking about climate explicitly as like a main thrust of their campaign. So like. As you know, I follow all of these weird lone wolf anti-climate operatives as like harbinger of, you know, talking points to come.

And because of that, um, I know that these guys have been really worried for actually a really long time that the climate movement will realize that regulating air pollution achieves basically the same. Ends as regulating greenhouse gas emissions. Um, and it's a lot easier sell to the public to talk about clean air and dealing with air pollution and, you know, asthma and all those kinds of things than it is to talk [00:52:00] about the atmosphere.

Daniel: Yeah, I mean, a lot of what El said just seems like common sense. Why not connect this big, overwhelming, abstract issue to the stuff people are dealing with every [00:53:00] day?

Amy: Exactly. Exactly. And there's something else he talked about that has come up a lot over the course of this season. The big elephant in the room, it's capitalism or really the effect that capitalism has on men in particular, the Mundo people talked about shifting the focus to care, which seems like a good place to start since we're probably not gonna over overhaul the economic system in, you know, a year or two.

Daniel: And I think, you know, when it comes to this. Question of care and economic change. It just seems like, yeah, if you don't care about people, if, if the party appears to have so little, uh, concern for the lives of most of its voters, it, it's not going to [00:55:00] make for an appealing sell. Even, even if what the manosphere sells is based on lies, for the most part, it articulates a, a legitimate grievance.

when RFK gets up to talk about the, you know, poisons in our food supply, he's not, yeah, he's not wrong.

Amy: Naomi Klein talked about that in her most recent book too. that people have a sense that like they are being lied to and that the system is rigged And like the Democrats approach has mostly been [00:56:00] to kind of be like, no, no, no, it's fine. Whereas the Republicans, even though in many cases they are the ones that rigged that system in the first place have been pretty good at like speaking to. The, the problems.

Amy: I mean, people are dealing with their houses falling apart and they can't fix 'em.

Or they're [00:59:00] working as hard as they've ever worked and doing worse than they've ever been, and no one's speaking to that. I'm like, yeah, that's the problem. That's why people are so open to being told, oh, it's feminists that are the problem. Or it's these, elitist climate activists or whatever, right?

something is wrong and no one seems to be addressing it.

Daniel: But we [01:00:00] are.

Amy: we're now we're trying.

Daniel: So we gotta wrap this thing up. We've talked to a lot of people in this series. We've talked to researchers.

Amy: Pollsters,

Daniel: [01:01:00] scientists,

Amy: government officials.

Daniel: techno evangelists,

Amy: Actual evangelist.

Daniel: Activists,

Amy: A leftist bodybuilder influencer.

Daniel: And a candidate for the US Senate.

Amy: We've been circling around the problem of masculinity and its link to climate denial. Meanwhile, the planet is [01:02:00] still getting hotter. The fossil fuel industry is going wild, and the manosphere is just getting stronger and more influential. Like one of those hurricanes they've had to invent a new category for because five just doesn't cut it anymore.

So where do we go from here, Daniel? How do we fix it?

Daniel: We're. No, I'm, I'm joking, but we've got a long road ahead. the climate crisis isn't just a problem to be solved by science and technology, a better media strategy, policy tweaks, or even economics alone, climate has become a cultural issue. A question of values, stories, and imagination rooted in our identities.

That may sound kind of wishy-washy, but. I think we've done a pretty good job of showing how and why that's true. [01:03:00] So now the question is how to undo the way that masculinity and climate denial have been intertwined and how to build an alternative. And I'm sorry to say, Amy, there's no silver bullet.

Amy: This one secret trick will get men to care about climate. Nope.

Daniel: No, but I think we've got a few starting points. So here are three pitches that I have, and let's see what you think of them.

Amy: Okay, let's, okay. [01:04:00] Okay.

Daniel: Okay. One. Leading up to the 2024 election, the left was so busy worrying about who was canceled, that they abandoned the most influential digital media channels, which were all online.

In the case of climate, it meant that deniers and skeptics owned the manosphere. And we saw back in episodes one and three, these comedian podcaster dudes. Are not experts. They're not qualified to challenge talking points crafted by the Heritage Foundation and laundered by Jordan Peterson. But we are so Joe Rogan, invite us on the pod [01:05:00] debate me bro.

Amy: Actually, I have to say there was a period of time where I think a lot of climate people and leftists in general were afraid to, go on Joe Rogan, If you debate these guys, then you're giving them a platform,

But yeah. I don't know how you felt about Charlie Kirk [01:06:00] going to debate Cambridge University kids.Like at, at first I was like, maybe they shouldn't have taken him so seriously, but actually I've been, um, getting fed a steady diet of him getting owned by 19 year olds and.

CHARLIE KIRK: Maybe you can educate me. Can you point to me a great power that endorsed same sex marriage, not cohabitation, but marriage?

CAMBRIDGE STUDENT: ancient Mesopotamia

CHARLIE KIRK: as marriage?

CAMBRIDGE STUDENT: as recognized marriage.

CHARLIE KIRK: How did that work out for them?

CAMBRIDGE STUDENT: It worked out perfectly fine. It was an accepted norm of society.

0:32

CHARLIE KIRK: Okay, I still think it's wrong.

Daniel: Yeah, the the debating union at Cambridge is really serious.

Amy: Yes.

he kind of went on this whole tour of going to campuses and doing this, like yeah, debate me and, and like the more, um, people who could actually like, provide a very well reasoned case for why he's wrong, the better. Like it's actually really, I think had the opposite of his intended effect. I saw even and then, the Cambridge kids that verbally beat him up the most they've become like viral sensations.

Daniel: it turns out Charlie Kirk is not the master debater. He thought he [01:09:00] was.

let's not leave it to Gavin Newsom to have like fake debates on his podcast with Charlie Kirk and, and other right wingers like. We as journalists and you know, other people who are members of civil society, like we need to be pressing the case

.

Daniel: Okay. Number two, if men are offered a choice between jobs and polar bears, they choose jobs. But if we make, yeah, but it, but if we make [01:12:00] the climate crisis concrete and specific to their lives and concerns, skyrocketing grocery prices. Air that will poison your family uninsurable homes. I think it's much easier to sell, and it's not hard to go from caring about your family to your community or neighborhood and maybe even eventually your planet, but we have to tie the health of the climate to our lived reality.

It's not about atmospheric. CO2, the people who are talking about CO2. that is not the right. Tactic. It's about billionaires ripping up this planet for profit.

Amy: Like, I love you. Climate scientists never change. But, um, but like, also, it's completely ridiculous that anyone ever expected climate [01:13:00] scientists to be like the messaging masters of this problem. part of that is a response to climate denial and to the fossil fuel industry's attacks on the climate movement.

in responding to that, people have gotten into this mindset of like, I have to be super, um, data based and not emotional and all of these things because they're. Reacting to this accusation that like they're alarmist And it's like, yeah, no charts [01:14:00] and graphs and batteries are never gonna do it.

Daniel: Yeah, we need to change the conversation.

Okay, number three. Masculinity isn't toxic, but domination is so. Despite what Andrew Tate may claim, most guys don't dream of becoming Cam girl e pimps and crypto scammers. They, they just want to provide a comfortable life for themselves and their families. The will to power and violence we've talked about on this show are not what defines a man.

And in fact, the ideas of care or protection or duty can be just as powerful. So the climate movement needs to embrace this messaging and the guys who can credibly embody it.

Amy: Yeah. I think that, again, instead of amplifying all of like these aspects of masculinity. What a lot of people on the left and in the, the climate movement did was like, [01:17:00] um, you know, browbeat the bad masculinity and kind of like paint a lot of it with the same brush.

So of course that's gonna, you know, make people feel left out. You know, that is not saying, don't talk about marginalized people or don't talk about women's rights or trans rights, or any of these things. It's just like we can talk about it all. Like there's room in here for all of us.

Everyone has got stuff going on in this [01:18:00] system is bad for all of us.

Daniel: And we all live on Earth, so.

Amy: Exactly. We all live on earth.

Like you're gonna need to rely on your neighbors for help. You know, you're gonna need to like have [01:21:00] and build and maintain a community.

So like. You know, we gotta do it one way or the other.

Daniel: Alright, so I want to. Leave some room for our listeners to throw in their 2 cents. If you're not satisfied with our answers, good. send us an email or a voice note with your own solutions for a special mailbag. Bonus episode of Carbon Bros. Tell us about your ideas, experiences, or criticisms of the show having to do with masculinity and.

The climate crisis.

On tape!

Amy: what did we miss? What did we leave out? And also where are there solutions that you've seen that you think we should be paying attention to? I feel like actually one of the things in the list of solutions is having more of these conversations.

Daniel: Yes. Alright. Well thank you to everyone who has come along for this ride. Carbon Bros. Has been a great experience to work on and obviously we're doing it because we want people to listen to it and to enjoy it, and also to take what they're learning or thinking about into their lives and whatever respect that might be.

we hope that this show has had some impact for you or has helped you reframe [01:24:00] something or think more critically about this relationship because, you know, it's, it's our contention that this is one of those key cultural problems that no one has really wanted to step on and we need to address it.

Amy: "Thanks for listening so far - send us your emails, voicemails, and snail mails, and we'll see you back here for the final bonus episode in a few weeks' time"

Daniel: And if you’ve gotten this far and haven't liked, subscribed or reviewed yet, please, we beg you. Hit that like button like you’re punching a Nazi or an oil executive. See you next time!