Rocketman
In “Petro-masculinity: Fossil Fuels and Authoritarian Desire” (2018), Cara Daggett explains why, with white men, #climate denial and #misogyny so often go together.
She makes a powerful argument that the patriarchal power structures in our society are deeply entwined with our fossil-fuel based economy.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0305829818775817
Chris Adams
@bluejekyll @mekkaokereke racism is going to make climate change so hard to deal with – so many people are massively invested in suburbs which are barely sustainable (if at all) but are convinced that transit or infill density will bring hordes of Them (the more liberal will unconvincingly say homeless). It seems more than coincidental that all of the macho-decorated truck/SUV sales boomed as white people started openly talking about needing to run over “dangerous” protesters to get home.
Benjamin Fry
@mekkaokereke I’ve become more convinced that there is a stronger correlation between climate denialism or indifference and someone’s dependence or perceived dependence on cars.
So many people believe they need cars, that no matter the threat of climate issues that stem from them, they will fight for more parking, wider highways, faster speed limits.
#carculture has ruined our planet.
mekka okereke :verified:
This is a well written and thoughtful article, that touches on a key point that other articles like this miss: It points out that "masculinity" as defined here, means "white masculinity,"
Non-white men are *more* likely to be alarmed about climate change than white women. 🙂🙃
In fact, non-white boomers and silent generation, are more concerned about climate change than white Gen-Z women. 🤦🏿♂️
So the primary driver of this climate denial is unlikely to be masculinity in general.
tinydoctor
Concur, @acdha, as an older white guy. @mekkaokereke @noyes @sepdroid @bluejekyll @Npars01
Chris Adams
@mekkaokereke @noyes @sepdroid @bluejekyll @Npars01 seconding this. As a middle-aged white guy some of the things people feel safe saying around me is 🤯 – it’s definitely not just wannabe klansmen.
There’s been an entire industry pushing scary story for decades (Fox is not unique in this regard) and with that kind of priming it’s easy to dredge up fear which will take a conscious effort of rationality to dismiss.
mekka okereke :verified:
@noyes @sepdroid @acdha @bluejekyll @Npars01
I think what's happening instead is that Black people are right about how many of your neighbours are racist*. 🤷🏿♂️
(*About the same proportion that would vote for an openly racist candidate, or that would say "slavery was good actually").
mekka okereke :verified:
@noyes @sepdroid @acdha @bluejekyll @Npars01
No?
Who would be paying them? And why? How much would they be being paid? How would the paid agitators get access to local information in all of the neighbourhoods? A paid agitator could only influence people in that local neighbourhood, so the scaling opportunity is necessarily limited. So how much would an influence operation cost?
Very different than Twitter trolls, that amplify national news.
Not saying this never happens, just unlikely.
J.H.Noyes
@sepdroid
Have you ever wondered how many people on Nextdoor are paid agitators?
@acdha @bluejekyll @mekkaokereke @Npars01
Sepideh
@acdha @bluejekyll @mekkaokereke Ooh, boy. We have free public transit in July and August this year because air pollution is very bad in those months. The people of Nextdoor are saying stupid things about how public transit has brought more homelessness to town.
Bruno Girin
@unicorndeburgh @heathborders @LauraLangdon @acdha @mekkaokereke @bluejekyll yep, that's how it was explained to me by someone who lived in those suburbs, voted against the MARTA extension for exactly that reason and was apologising for their mistake after having visited our London office and seen first hand how good public transport works.
unicorndeburgh
@heathborders @LauraLangdon @acdha @mekkaokereke @bluejekyll
I've heard that's why Atlanta's MARTA doesn't serve all of the suburbs.
Heath Borders
@LauraLangdon @acdha @mekkaokereke @bluejekyll this same thing happened in St. Louis in the 1990s when the light rail system proposed a line out to the exurbs where I grew up.
"People from [Black neighborhood] are going to ride the [light rail] out here and steal your TV!"
🤦🏻♂️🤦🏻♂️🤦🏻♂️
Laura Langdon
@acdha @mekkaokereke @bluejekyll 🎯 My Bay Area suburb grumbled for decades about how we’d been paying in to BART since its inception and it still didn’t connect to our city, then when we had the chance a bunch of loud residents said if BART came into our downtown then “people” from “Oakland” would use it to come in and rob/shoplift/mug shops/people here and our City Council declined to bring BART here.
Literally, precisely, 100% what you said. We can’t have BART because racism.
Chris Adams
@mekkaokereke @rsynnott @SteveClough @LauraLangdon @bluejekyll I note the degree to which it’s still normal to lie about the causes of the civil war. Textbooks will have vague things about states’ rights but if you look at what the secessionists wrote in their declarations or constitutions it’s quite explicit and if quoted (“hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the Institution of Slavery”) almost certainly would not pass a textbook review committee without heavy protest.
mekka okereke :verified:
@rsynnott @SteveClough @acdha @LauraLangdon @bluejekyll
Every country has racists, and most white people are not violent racists. But only the US has gone to such an extreme level of letting the minority of violent racist white people have such power over the majority of non racist white people, while simultaneously lying to the majority of white people that super racist things aren't really racist.
US exceptionalism!
And we're still doing it! The racism and the lying about it!
mekka okereke :verified:
@rsynnott @SteveClough @acdha @LauraLangdon @bluejekyll
Yeah, the US is objectively, demonstrably more racist, both in outcomes, and in intention.
For many of these racist systems, we don't have to assume if the harm was intentional, because the racists conveniently wrote down "We are doing this for racist reasons, specifically to harm Black people, whom we do not like."🤷🏿♂️
Most of the "conversations" about changing US history curriculum, is about pretending that these admissions don't exist.
Rob Synnott
@SteveClough @acdha @LauraLangdon @mekkaokereke @bluejekyll Yeah, we have racists in Ireland as well, like everywhere, but "transport policy is arranged for the convenience of racists" does feel like another level. I'm not sure that the US actually is more racist than us, or than other European countries, but they sure seem to defer to the racists more often on policy.
Schroedinger
@acdha @rsynnott @LauraLangdon @mekkaokereke @bluejekyll I really try not to assume that everything stupid from the US is racist in origin. I want to think that there is a broader discussion there, more nuanced issues and debate.
But so often it is racism. To a degree that we don't see in the UK (I cannot say about other European countries). We have our issues of racism here, but not to the degree that it seems to fundamentally underlie every discussion there.
Chris Adams
@rsynnott @LauraLangdon @mekkaokereke @bluejekyll In general, anytime you find something in the U.S. which seems counterproductive but you can't easily explain why we put up with it, assuming it's due to racism is a safe bet.
American suburbs grew after WWII but especially after key court cases found that white people had to share city infrastructure. Those suburbs were designed prevent walking & transit which was increasingly identified with being poor/brown.
https://kinder.rice.edu/urbanedge/racism-has-shaped-public-transit-and-its-riddled-inequities
Rob Synnott
@LauraLangdon @acdha @mekkaokereke @bluejekyll Has anyone done serious research into how it got to be like that? My impression is that it’s mostly an American thing; expensive suburbs in most European countries tend to have decent transport (and the lack of it can depress prices). Recently residents of one of the most expensive Dublin suburbs were _extremely_ angry at the possibility that they’d have fewer direct trains into the city due to a network extension.
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