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Energy, retail, transportation, food, and other corporate sectors are backing away from their original sustainability goals. For example, US automakers have announced tens of billions of dollars in losses attributable to their EV investments, but many of them had lobbied vigorously for rolling back vehicle emissions regulations. The refusal to acknowledge the human, climate, and environmental limits of production and consumption have at their core tremendous conflations of power and identity. With all these upheavals, discussions of “petromasculinity” have reemerged on the global stage.
What is Petromasculinity?
Political scientist Cara Daggett coined the term “petromasculinity” to describe links among über male identity, authoritarian yearnings, and fossil fuel power. “The concept of petro-masculinity suggests that fossil fuels mean more than profit,” she describes. “As the planet warms, new authoritarian movements in the West are embracing a toxic combination of climate denial, racism, and misogyny.” Petromasculinity feeds into a swirl of nostalgia, rage, and entitlement. After these high emotions are triggered, there is a resulting call to order: restore fossil rule, patriarchal dominance, and hierarchical racial divisions.
