Speaker 1: It might be hard to remember at this point, but
Speaker 1: think back to just after the election. This is what
Speaker 1: a lot of the news sounded like.
Speaker 2: Did an election that was supposed to revolve around women's
Speaker 2: issues actually come down to the flight of.
Speaker 3: Men young men.
Speaker 1: The headline was that men, and especially young men, swung
Speaker 1: big for Trump. His campaign even consulted Baron Trump for
Speaker 1: tips on which podcast he should go on, which young
Speaker 1: male influencers he should court, and with the help of
Speaker 1: money from big oil, Peter Teal and Elon Musk. It worked.
Speaker 1: Not because Trump went on those podcasts per se, but
Speaker 1: because he tapped into the ethos of those guys and
Speaker 1: made himself the candidate for aggrieved young.
Speaker 4: Men of the people. I want to bend to know
Speaker 4: boys An ross Uh, theil baughn also with the boys
Speaker 4: and left, but not least the mighty and powerful Joe Rogan.
Speaker 1: And practically the same breast. Trump promised to roll back
Speaker 1: the rights of women and trans people, conduct mass deportation
Speaker 1: of immigrants, get the EPA, and get rid of anything
Speaker 1: that looks like climate policy. At this point, you might
Speaker 1: be wondering why we're talking about the manosphere. On Drilled,
Speaker 1: a climate podcast. The answer is simple, the long standing
Speaker 1: and ever increasing overlap between male grievance culture and climate
Speaker 1: denial and delay. In this four part mini series, we're
Speaker 1: going to explore how gender and environmental issues have intersected
Speaker 1: throughout history, what the fossil fuel industry has done over
Speaker 1: the past century to feminize caring about climate change, and
Speaker 1: what on Earth we might be able to do about it.
Speaker 1: We're calling it Carbon Bros. I'm Amy Westervelt, and to
Speaker 1: guide us through much of that story, I'm very happy
Speaker 1: to introduce my co host for this season, the great
Speaker 1: Daniel Penny. Daniel's been writing and thinking about these issues
Speaker 1: for a lot longer than I have in GQ, The
Speaker 1: New York Times, The New Yorker, and on his own
Speaker 1: podcast on this subject, Non Toxic.
Speaker 3: Thanks. Amy, So excited to be doing this show together.
Speaker 3: There are a lot of ways malesculinity and climate are
Speaker 3: tied up in our culture and politics, and we'll be
Speaker 3: diving into a few of them. But I think you're
Speaker 3: right that the most obvious place to start is the
Speaker 3: so called manosphere. This is the write coded online world
Speaker 3: of dudes like Joe Rogan, Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson, Charlie Kirk.
Speaker 5: Stephen Krauda, Matt Walsh, Tucker Carlson, Van Manteno, Theo Wong,
Speaker 5: Jake and Logan, Paul.
Speaker 6: Lever, King, Andrew Huberman.
Speaker 3: Ben Elk, Boys, Flagrant, and many others.
Speaker 1: Okay, so I've heard of some of these guys, but
Speaker 1: that is a long ass list, and honestly, some of
Speaker 1: these names sound like they've been made up. I don't
Speaker 1: buy it.
Speaker 3: It's impossible to keep up with all of them, and
Speaker 3: because we live in such a fractured media ecosystem, you're
Speaker 3: not going to hear about many of these guys unless
Speaker 3: you're actively seeking them out, or you've got a man
Speaker 3: in your life who's a big fan, which I feel
Speaker 3: bad for you if you do. Some of these guys
Speaker 3: are explicitly anti feminist, but most are just entertainers who
Speaker 3: like to talk about typical men's hobbies sports, martial arts, cars,
Speaker 3: science and tech, sex and dating with a bit of
Speaker 3: right wing climate denile mixed in.
Speaker 7: If you're a male in a society with that ethos,
Speaker 7: you're associated with rapaciousness and despoilation on the natural front,
Speaker 7: and then oppression and atrocity on the social front. It's like, well,
Speaker 7: then if you're the least bit conscientious, because this sort
Speaker 7: of accusation hurts conscientious.
Speaker 8: Young man the most.
Speaker 7: Then the best you can do is, well.
Speaker 3: Let's say castrate yourself. How would that be?
Speaker 9: This climate change narrative, this is a really coofy thing
Speaker 9: that people on the left are talk about. This is
Speaker 9: because of climate change. This is climate change causes fire.
Speaker 9: It's just la. It's not climate change.
Speaker 5: Climate change is real, but it's not the most serious
Speaker 5: environmental problem in the world. It's not the end of
Speaker 5: the world, and we need to be telling kids the truth.
Speaker 10: If you don't recognize those voices, that was Canadian psychologist
Speaker 10: turned podcaster Jordan Peterson, failed comedian turned MMA announcer turned
Speaker 10: podcaster Joe Rogan, and a relatively new intrant to the
Speaker 10: manosphere Breakthrough Institute co founder turned to Twitter files thread guy,
Speaker 10: self proclaimed journalist and newsletter star somehow not yet a podcaster,
Speaker 10: Michael Schellenberger.
Speaker 1: We included him here because he's a super obvious example
Speaker 1: of why we're even talking about the manosphere undrilled in
Speaker 1: the first place. Shellenberger is like horseshoe theory come to life,
Speaker 1: and his journey from environmental pr guy to climate skeptic
Speaker 1: to dipping a toe in the misogyny and anti trans universe.
Speaker 1: Illustrates just how porous the lines between these two worlds is.
Speaker 1: And there are plenty of other dudes like them popping
Speaker 1: up all the time. The podcaster Dan Bongino is actually
Speaker 1: deputy director of the FBI, so I guess there's always
Speaker 1: hope that podcasting will land me a powerful government job.
Speaker 1: I still cannot get over that that, like someone from
Speaker 1: this list is working a pretty high level government job.
Speaker 3: For these guys, masculinity and climate are linked in a
Speaker 3: larger reactionary project. They want to return world to some
Speaker 3: imaginary golden age when energy was cheap and men were
Speaker 3: in charge. And their message is resonating, not just with
Speaker 3: the out of work blue collar guys pundits were so
Speaker 3: obsessed with. After Trump's victory in twenty sixteen. Those guys
Speaker 3: in the diner remember them, but with younger educated men,
Speaker 3: black men, Latino men, and plenty of others. According to
Speaker 3: Exit Holding in twenty twenty four, Trump won one fifth
Speaker 3: of black men and nearly half of Latino men. They
Speaker 3: might be strange to quote Andrew Breitbart, but I agree
Speaker 3: with him when he said politics is downstream from culture.
Speaker 3: For the past decade, these dubiously credentialed but very influential
Speaker 3: men have shaped the conversation not just around masculinity, but
Speaker 3: around climate too. Sometimes in the same breath.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is the piece that feels pretty new to me,
Speaker 1: and also like something that has been pretty strategic and
Speaker 1: intentional and in a pretty smart way. This masculine sort
Speaker 1: of reactionary politics has been around for a long time,
Speaker 1: but it's been adapted really easily to tap into some
Speaker 1: real issues facing young men today inflation, wage stagnation, and
Speaker 1: pin those issues on feminists and climate activists.
Speaker 3: Peterson and Rogan don't always talk about climate, but they're
Speaker 3: doing so more and more these days. Just like fitness
Speaker 3: instructors and guys who give business advice on TikTok have
Speaker 3: been solely blending political talking points into their podcasts, Peterson
Speaker 3: and Rogan have been incorporating fossil fuel talking points into
Speaker 3: their shows.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, Schellenberger has long been a so called reformed environmentalist
Speaker 1: raising an eyebrow at climate action, but he's only recently
Speaker 1: come around to what I've been calling the gentleman grift. So,
Speaker 1: you know, the relationship between climate deniers and gender warriors
Speaker 1: goes both ways. Here's a clip of Schellenberger talking at
Speaker 1: a recent conference for a new fun little group created
Speaker 1: by Peterson called the Alliance for a Responsible Citizenship. It
Speaker 1: brings a lot of the Manosphere folks together with climate
Speaker 1: skeptics like Puren Lomberg and Vivic Ramaswami, hardcore Brexit folks
Speaker 1: like Nigel Farage, far right politicians from the US, UK,
Speaker 1: Australia and Canada, gender critical anti transactivists, and of course
Speaker 1: a sprinkling of dreadwibs.
Speaker 5: The moralizing men, the woe men are actually weak men.
Speaker 5: Manly men are an improvement. Without any morality or sense
Speaker 5: of concern or empathy, they become an Andrew Tait. We
Speaker 5: can strive for something better, to be gentlemen. Gentlemen are
Speaker 5: men that have the power of violence and aggression, but
Speaker 5: they would never use it to take advantage of the
Speaker 5: week and the vulnerable. Instead, they would use it to
Speaker 5: build a civilized society.
Speaker 3: Andrew Tait is a useful foil for the gentleman battalion
Speaker 3: of the Manisphere Army. They can always point to Tate,
Speaker 3: an alleged sex trafficker and Ponzi schemer and say we're
Speaker 3: not misogynists, We're not like that guy, while still spreading
Speaker 3: their regressive ideas about gender and their reactionary social views
Speaker 3: and complacency about climate change. Even Florida Governor Ron DeSantis,
Speaker 3: enemy of all things woke, had this to say when
Speaker 3: the Tate Brothers landed in his state to fight a
Speaker 3: recent case.
Speaker 5: No, Florida is not a place where you're welcome with
Speaker 5: those that type of conduct.
Speaker 3: And I don't know how it came to this. These
Speaker 3: guys go on each other's shows to grow their audiences
Speaker 3: and reinforce one another's message, or to just get paid
Speaker 3: because there's a lot of fossil fuel money slashing around
Speaker 3: the manisphere too. Just sticking with podcasts. Nine out of
Speaker 3: the ten with the largest followings across platforms or right leaning,
Speaker 3: with a total following of more than one hundred and
Speaker 3: ninety seven million, all but one of them hosted by men.
Speaker 3: The leading conservative cable news channel Box gets around three
Speaker 3: million viewers during prime time. To understand exactly how the
Speaker 3: pieces of this puzzle fit together, I sat down with
Speaker 3: Kayla Gogherty, author of a new report from Media matters.
Speaker 11: What our findings underscore is that the rights as a
Speaker 11: disproportionate reached to a wide variety of audiences. We looked
Speaker 11: at about three hundred and twenty top online shows that
Speaker 11: either have a right leaning or left leaning ideological bent,
Speaker 11: and what we found was that a lot of these
Speaker 11: shows are not outright saying that they're ideological, and yet
Speaker 11: when you dig into the content of the shows, you
Speaker 11: start to see how some of these right wing talking
Speaker 11: points are seeping into their conversations. And so these audiences
Speaker 11: are not going to these shows for politics and news,
Speaker 11: and yet they are starting to hear it during these
Speaker 11: conversations amid celebrity interviews and other comedians that you know
Speaker 11: you might like and want to listen to, and now
Speaker 11: you're hearing some of these right wing talking points. During
Speaker 11: the election, specifically, you know, we saw Trump appear on
Speaker 11: several of these large podcasts, Joe Rogan for instance, Full Send.
Speaker 11: And that's why some people have kind of dubbed it
Speaker 11: the podcast election.
Speaker 3: Boys. I know a lot of you guys are thinking,
Speaker 3: like me, You're seeing what's happening in this country.
Speaker 5: Everything's just getting.
Speaker 3: Really really weird.
Speaker 7: You got men plan and women's sports, the borders wide open.
Speaker 5: This election might be the most important election in.
Speaker 3: US is three and of the restoration.
Speaker 11: They're not going there for news and politics. They're going
Speaker 11: there to hear from their favorite comedians. They're going there
Speaker 11: to hang out with the bros basically, and so they
Speaker 11: go on different shows and they kind of have this
Speaker 11: camaraderie and that makes these your listeners kind of feel
Speaker 11: like in the club, you know.
Speaker 1: But how did these dudes who just love martial arts
Speaker 1: and comedy before become mouthpieces for misogyny and climate denial.
Speaker 3: So there are really a few different species of these dudes.
Speaker 3: Some of these guys started as legacy media conservative darlings,
Speaker 3: like former Fox host Tucker Carlson, who has endorsed the
Speaker 3: idea that wind turbines kill whales and that sunning your
Speaker 3: scrotum increases sperm quality. And then you've got guys like
Speaker 3: Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA, or Dennis Prager of
Speaker 3: the conservative edutainment company Prager You and Ben Shapiro, who
Speaker 3: started The Daily Wire, which hosts Jordan Peterson's show. By
Speaker 3: the way, these guys represent the next generation of right
Speaker 3: wing voice with deep connections to fossil fuel donors like
Speaker 3: the Texas fracking billionaires Farris and Dan Wilkes. Amy. I
Speaker 3: know you're very familiar with the Wilkes brothers.
Speaker 1: Yes, there's been a few really great pieces of reporting
Speaker 1: on these guys over the years. The one I always
Speaker 1: think of is this article that Jeff Dembickie wrote for
Speaker 1: Vice News a while ago where he talked about how
Speaker 1: the Wilkes brothers have really tied this into kind of
Speaker 1: evangelical Christianity as well. So, for example, at his church,
Speaker 1: Dan Wilkes requires women to quote keep silence and has
Speaker 1: told his congregates that climate change is God's will. Here's
Speaker 1: a quote from a twenty thirteen sermon he delivered, just
Speaker 1: to give you a flavor. He said, if he wants
Speaker 1: the polar caps to remain in place, then he will
Speaker 1: leave them there.
Speaker 3: And conservatives have been doing this for a long time,
Speaker 3: building networks of talent to get out their message. Here's Kayla.
Speaker 12: Conservatives and conservative donors. They put money into building these networks,
Speaker 12: and they have been doing that for years. We saw
Speaker 12: them dominate you know, right wing talk radio for instance,
Speaker 12: back in the nineties and early two thousands. You know
Speaker 12: the rush Limbas and the Glenn Becks, they really dominated
Speaker 12: that space. Then you saw them move into cable and
Speaker 12: that you know, now you see Fox started to really
Speaker 12: dominate that space. We saw that with social media as well,
Speaker 12: and now we're really seeing that with the online media ecosystem.
Speaker 12: So these they kind of are thinking about the big
Speaker 12: picture and trying to build out this infrastructure and have
Speaker 12: been doing that for years.
Speaker 1: Okay, so there's an obvious reason why donors like the
Speaker 1: Wilks Brothers would be investing money to boost the careers
Speaker 1: of climate denying anti feminist podcasters.
Speaker 3: But then there are the dudes like Joe Rogan or
Speaker 3: the guys from Flagrant who didn't always have an opinion
Speaker 3: on climate change, or their opinion seems to shift all
Speaker 3: the time. Sometimes in the case of Brogan, he was
Speaker 3: having guests like David Wallace Wells, the climate columnist for
Speaker 3: The New York Times and author of the book The
Speaker 3: Uninhabitable Earth, which is all about what unchecked climate change
Speaker 3: will look like in a few years. So Rogan has
Speaker 3: really shifted in recent years, as has his audience, and
Speaker 3: part of his shift maybe algorithmic. We've all heard about
Speaker 3: the way YouTube and TikTok can radicalize their viewers by
Speaker 3: showing them increasingly extreme content just to keep them watching.
Speaker 3: So Kayla's team at Media Matters actually did an experiment
Speaker 3: about how this works, using clips from the top five
Speaker 3: podcasts on TikTok, which include a lot of our guys.
Speaker 11: And the algorithm is really good at kind of leading
Speaker 11: you down these rabbit holes. We actually just published a
Speaker 11: study within the last few days TikTok new TikTok account
Speaker 11: and we followed five of the leading podcasters. So we
Speaker 11: followed a page that had full sense content for instance,
Speaker 11: that had Joe Rogan's content for instance.
Speaker 8: Well, the third type.
Speaker 9: That got mentioned on mission was reptilios.
Speaker 8: They don't want to talk about the reptilion presence at all.
Speaker 9: Was there any sort of an explanation did anybody give
Speaker 9: you of why they don't want to talk about it?
Speaker 11: But we wanted to see what following some of these
Speaker 11: kind of podcasters and seeing this content once you're starting
Speaker 11: to see that content, we.
Speaker 12: Wanted to see where TikTok's for you page would lead you.
Speaker 11: We found that the algorithm started leading us down to
Speaker 11: conspiracy theories and toxic masculinity videos and by Toxic Toxic
Speaker 11: Masculinity videos.
Speaker 12: They were often framed as motivational.
Speaker 8: What's your dream my father asked, grinding until my bank
Speaker 8: account looks like a phone.
Speaker 11: They had clips of like expensive watches and boats and
Speaker 11: cars and and you know, very.
Speaker 12: Kind of Andrew Tate esque.
Speaker 11: I would say, where he's talking about, like, you know,
Speaker 11: getting rich?
Speaker 3: Really I decided to get rich rich.
Speaker 4: Step one is I've tried decided to be very logical
Speaker 4: about it.
Speaker 3: Just player right, So it's like, I want money? What
Speaker 3: is money?
Speaker 11: Using even some of his voiceovers, So some of the
Speaker 11: sounds would use his voice and would talk about, you know,
Speaker 11: coaching men about their girlfriends.
Speaker 12: In one instance, we.
Speaker 11: Saw a video say, uh, tell her that you're going
Speaker 11: to quit your job because you want to chase your
Speaker 11: dreams and run your own business.
Speaker 12: Those sorts of things.
Speaker 1: Wow, that is wild. And how many people are starting
Speaker 1: with these podcasts and then winding up watching these clips.
Speaker 3: So it's hard to say exactly because these clips are
Speaker 3: broken up in so many different ways and distributed around
Speaker 3: the internet. But Kayla, you know, could say more people
Speaker 3: are tuning into podcasts and online shows, for instance, than
Speaker 3: they are into cable news. We did it, Daniel, We
Speaker 3: did it. Unfortunately, I'm not so sure that non toxic
Speaker 3: or drilled are included in those top podcasts, but you know,
Speaker 3: we're trying. And Kayla also had some interesting data to
Speaker 3: back her up, which was that according to Nielsen streaming viewership,
Speaker 3: it's forty three percent of Americans versus twenty four percent
Speaker 3: who watch cable or broadcast news, and Pew had a
Speaker 3: study that majority of Americans fifty four percent, get most
Speaker 3: of their news online.
Speaker 11: Wow.
Speaker 3: Another Pew study from the previous year in twenty twenty
Speaker 3: three found that eighty seven percent of people who hear
Speaker 3: the news on podcasts said they expect it to be
Speaker 3: mostly accurate, and thirty one percent said that they even
Speaker 3: trust the news they hear from podcasts more than traditional news.
Speaker 1: That is terrible because, unlike US, most podcasts do not
Speaker 1: fact check like at all. I mean, Jogan is sort
Speaker 1: of famously anti fact checking. Okay, so we know that
Speaker 1: people in general are getting their news from podcasts and
Speaker 1: trusting it more than they should, and we know that
Speaker 1: more men are getting surprised political talking points when they
Speaker 1: tune into Manosphere podcasts, But is that actually translating to
Speaker 1: the voting booth, especially on climate Do we know how
Speaker 1: differently men and women actually view the climate crisis and
Speaker 1: how that is turning up in their votes.
Speaker 3: So about seven to ten Americans believe in climate change
Speaker 3: and think humans are contributing to the warming of the atmosphere.
Speaker 3: But there's a gap between men and women, and it's
Speaker 3: pretty large, especially when you drill down by age or party.
Speaker 3: If you're listening to this podcast and you're a man,
Speaker 3: you probably care about climate change. And if you're not
Speaker 3: a man, you probably know men who care about climate change.
Speaker 3: But I'm sorry to say that drilled and non toxic
Speaker 3: listeners aren't not representative of the average American.
Speaker 6: Now, Well, we do see differences between men and women
Speaker 6: when it comes to climate change.
Speaker 3: This is Alec Tyson, Associate director of Research at pe
Speaker 3: Research Center.
Speaker 6: Women tend to be more concerned about the issue and
Speaker 6: more willing to either take action or see themselves as
Speaker 6: playing a role in addressing the issue.
Speaker 1: Wow, that is really fascinating and I'm honestly kind of
Speaker 1: surprised that this is still the case. I know that
Speaker 1: from stuff that I've worked on before. The pollsters working
Speaker 1: for the fossil fuel industry figured this out a long
Speaker 1: time ago, like in the nineties, and really leaned into it.
Speaker 1: I did not realize it was still working quite so well.
Speaker 3: Right, It is interesting how much that gender gap is
Speaker 3: still very present today, and it may actually be getting wider.
Speaker 3: Alex studies public views on science and technology, and he's
Speaker 3: been looking at the particular differences between men and women
Speaker 3: when it comes to whether climate change is happening and
Speaker 3: how ct is that we deal with it.
Speaker 6: Seventy two percent of women view it as a very
Speaker 6: or moderately big problem. That shares fifty six percent among men,
Speaker 6: So a sizeable shares of both groups, but a sixteen
Speaker 6: point gap here where women are expressing more concern about
Speaker 6: the importance or urgency of the issue.
Speaker 3: Here, and for the men who don't believe in climate
Speaker 3: change or who don't think it's salient, how does that
Speaker 3: lack of interest in climate or lack of belief in
Speaker 3: the climate crisis track with other political beliefs or political identities.
Speaker 6: So just among men men who lean or identify with
Speaker 6: the Republican Party, just twenty nine percent view climate change
Speaker 6: as a salient problem. Let's talk about men who leaner
Speaker 6: identify with the Democratic Party. Ninety percent view climate change
Speaker 6: as a highly salient problem. That's a sixty one point
Speaker 6: gap within men. We're talking about men. We're staying within
Speaker 6: gender here, but this partisan difference between Republican men and
Speaker 6: Democratic men is enormous.
Speaker 1: Okay, so there's a sixteen point gap, sixteen point gap
Speaker 1: that really that does kind of blow my mind between
Speaker 1: American men and women. But then there's also this huge
Speaker 1: divide among men on the importance or even the reality
Speaker 1: of climate change depending on their political party affiliation. What's
Speaker 1: that about.
Speaker 3: So it turns out that climate denial doesn't just correlate
Speaker 3: with being a man, but with a particular type of men.
Speaker 3: Men who care about the idea of traditional masculinity are
Speaker 3: way more likely to be climate deniers. Here's alec on that.
Speaker 6: We have great colleagues who did a survey on men
Speaker 6: in masculinity, and they share who describe themselves as highly
Speaker 6: masculine or very masculine, they tend to be older men
Speaker 6: and more politically conservative men. So I looked at that
Speaker 6: same group and we looked at some climate attitudes and descriptively, absolutely,
Speaker 6: there's a difference that older, more politically conservative men are
Speaker 6: both more likely to be themselves asi masculine and more
Speaker 6: likely to be skeptical about human contributions to climate change,
Speaker 6: and also less concerned about the issue generally.
Speaker 1: Hearing your conversation with alec, I was actually reminded of
Speaker 1: something we did on Drilled. All the way back in
Speaker 1: season one. There was a story about a group of
Speaker 1: fossil fuel executives who wanted to change the narrative about
Speaker 1: climate change and discovered something very interesting about how masculinity
Speaker 1: relates to climate change messaging.
Speaker 3: Tell me more.
Speaker 1: Okay, So the group was called ICE, not Immigrations and
Speaker 1: Customs Enforcement, the new bad ICE, but the Information Council
Speaker 1: for the Environment. This is early nineteen ninety one, the
Speaker 1: summer of nineteen eighty eight, just a couple of years before,
Speaker 1: had seen Jim Hansen's testimony before Congress that climate change
Speaker 1: was now visible. We had a burning planet on the
Speaker 1: cover of Time magazine. A little bit after this, the
Speaker 1: Real Earth Summit is coming in nineteen ninety two. So
Speaker 1: climate change is on everyone's mind and there's growing census
Speaker 1: that governments need to do something about it.
Speaker 3: I'm guessing the fossil fuel industry didn't like that.
Speaker 8: No, they did not. The nationwide heatwave, remember it technically
Speaker 8: because it were on a vacation, we were going to
Speaker 8: have on the eastern shore, on the Chesapeake Bay, on
Speaker 8: the World Waters all one drive.
Speaker 1: This is Fred Palmer, a cole lobbyist who worked on
Speaker 1: the ICE campaign, talking to Guardian reporter Graham Redfern.
Speaker 8: Jim Hansen, who never was muscled in any circumstances by anybody,
Speaker 8: came in front of that subcommittee and announced this with
Speaker 8: the leading ede catastrophic global warming, with his loaded dice
Speaker 8: and the internet and the best international the next morning,
Speaker 8: and we've been harding about it evercess Well, you know,
Speaker 8: at the time, I don't think people really understood the
Speaker 8: import of it. But I did understand the import of it,
Speaker 8: and I engaged immediately. But ICE was not my idea.
Speaker 8: The pr pro where was not my idea. I've always
Speaker 8: been about education. But I think being professional channibly did it.
Speaker 3: Palmer says he eventually got disillusioned with ICE and decided
Speaker 3: to focus more on science and education. But what exactly
Speaker 3: did he mean when he said we did it? What
Speaker 3: did ICE do? So?
Speaker 1: ICE was part of a really successful campaign. They figured
Speaker 1: out specific audiences to target with climate Nile talking points,
Speaker 1: and it really moved the needle from the majority of
Speaker 1: Americans accepting the science and being concerned to more or
Speaker 1: less the mess we have. Now here's Kurt Davies, a
Speaker 1: longtime Greenpeace researcher who's now at the Center for Climate Integrity,
Speaker 1: telling us all about their campaign back on Season one
Speaker 1: of drilled.
Speaker 13: Data indicates eighty nine percent say they have heard of
Speaker 13: global warming, eighty two percent claim some familiarity with global warming,
Speaker 13: eighty percent claim the problem is somewhat serious, while forty
Speaker 13: five percent claim it is very serious, and thirty nine
Speaker 13: percent back federal legislation without any quantification of cost. And
Speaker 13: only twenty two percent of those consider themselves green consumers.
Speaker 1: So this thing that he's talking about is really important.
Speaker 1: It's again nineteen ninety one. Governments are starting to get
Speaker 1: behind the idea of not just national policy, but actually
Speaker 1: global agreements to tackle emissions. And it's not just environmentalists
Speaker 1: who know and care about this. It's breaking through.
Speaker 13: So it's penetrated. A vast majority have heard of the issue,
Speaker 13: think it's serious, and the campaign is to reverse that,
Speaker 13: is to change that. The strategies quote unquote include repositioning
Speaker 13: global warming as a theory parentheses, not fact. They talk
Speaker 13: about specifically the target audiences of this test round that
Speaker 13: they're going to do to see if their theory works,
Speaker 13: that they can move people, and it says people who
Speaker 13: respond favorably to such statements are quote older, less educated
Speaker 13: males from larger households who are not typically active information
Speaker 13: seekers and are not likely to be green consumers.
Speaker 3: Let's put that in plain English. They figured out that
Speaker 3: old white dudes without college degrees were susceptible to climate
Speaker 3: disinformation exactly.
Speaker 1: Also fun fact, both Palmer and the Edison Electric Institute
Speaker 1: are still around today and still pushing a lot of
Speaker 1: the same talking points. They're still trying to protect coal too,
Speaker 1: although Edison is also very into protecting gas at the moment.
Speaker 1: Ice is no longer around after an expose decades ago
Speaker 1: leaked their internal documents, but they were really, really effective
Speaker 1: at the time, and their success became the basis of
Speaker 1: one of my favorite sociology studies of all time. Daniel,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm going to say, Cool Dudes truly
Speaker 1: an excellent title for an academic I've honestly never seen,
Speaker 1: never seen a better title. The subtitle was quote the
Speaker 1: denial of climate change amongst conservative white males in the
Speaker 1: United States. It was conducted by the sociologists Air Micwright
Speaker 1: and Riley Dunlap, and they found that conservative white men
Speaker 1: were and I'm quoting here, significantly more likely than other
Speaker 1: Americans to endorse denihialist views, and that these differences are
Speaker 1: even greater for those conservative white males who self report
Speaker 1: understanding global warming very well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's the guys who are doing their own research.
Speaker 1: As soon as I read that line, I'm like, oh God,
Speaker 1: I know these I know these men very well. I
Speaker 1: love how blunt and straightforward they are. In this study,
Speaker 1: they write, we conclude that the unique views of conservative
Speaker 1: white males contribute significantly to the high level of climate
Speaker 1: change denial in the United States. Well, not a lot
Speaker 1: of gray there, No, It makes it really easy to
Speaker 1: see how we get the conservative talk radio star climate
Speaker 1: denier and anti feminist you know them and love them,
Speaker 1: Rush Limbaugh. Right around this time as well. Ice actually
Speaker 1: wrote an ad for Rush Limbaugh's show back in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety two. We unfortunately don't have a clip of that ad,
Speaker 1: but we've got hours of Rush's rants about climate change.
Speaker 1: Here's a little taste. We've had numerous stories in recent years.
Speaker 2: About expeditions to Antarctica to study climate change and global
Speaker 2: warming getting stuck in ice so thick that icebreakers couldn't
Speaker 2: even reach them, and they were shocked, and they were stunned.
Speaker 2: They believe their own nonsense that the ice at the
Speaker 2: North and South Pauls is melting when it's not.
Speaker 3: It's getting bigger again. That was not true.
Speaker 1: The North and South Pools are actually melting faster than
Speaker 1: many scientists initially predicted. But the upshot of all this
Speaker 1: is that we're still dealing with the results of this
Speaker 1: ice media campaign. It's reflected in those opinion numbers that
Speaker 1: Alec from Pugh is talking about. Over the last thirty years,
Speaker 1: climate de nile has become a core part of conservative
Speaker 1: male identity.
Speaker 3: But it's not as simple as just blaming the coal
Speaker 3: and oil industries for targeting men with misleading information, which
Speaker 3: they did. The twisted relationship between masculinity and the domination
Speaker 3: of the natural world runs a lot deeper. If we
Speaker 3: want to understand why the climate denial messaging of the
Speaker 3: far right and the manosphere has been so effective, we
Speaker 3: need to wind back the clock to a time when
Speaker 3: men were real men, women were real women, and trucks
Speaker 3: only needed electricity to power their cigarette lighters.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's our story next time.
Speaker 3: Carbon Bros. Is an original series from Drilled and Non
Speaker 3: Toxic written by me Daniel Penny.
Speaker 1: And me Amy Westervelt. Our senior producer and sound designer
Speaker 1: is Martin Zelt's. He also composed our theme song.
Speaker 3: Our audio engineer is Peter Duff.
Speaker 1: Fact checking by Shilpa Jindia.
Speaker 3: Original artwork by Matthew Fleming.
Speaker 1: Marketing by Maggie Taylor.
Speaker 3: As the pod Bros, we've been talking about, love to say,
Speaker 3: smash those like and subscribe buttons.
Speaker 1: Check out the Non Toxic podcast for more on the manosphere,
Speaker 1: and go to Drill dot Media for more climate reporting
Speaker 1: and to support our work.
Speaker 3: Lastly, if you know a dude who should be listening
Speaker 3: to this show, please share it. See you next time.