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Mike Smith: "It was the Lowman fire. It was one of the first mega-fires by modern standards. It's actually not even all that large, but it put up a mushroom cloud.
As a child of the Cold War, I mean, mushroom clouds kind of get your attention.
I'd come to find out later, it's called a Pyrocumulonimbus cloud. It's when a fire burns so hot, it literally changes the weather, kind of punches up into the stratosphere.
Now fires are 10, you know, 20 times the size of that fire. But for a kid like that age, that was a huge fire. It felt like the whole state was on fire at the time. It was just very, very memorable to me."
It was 1989 and Mike Smith was only nine years old. But the fire that burned at least 46,000 acres of forest in central Idaho, has stayed with him deep into his adulthood. So much so that it ultimately informed his career. Ultimately… because as a young man, his life took off in a very different direction.
Mike Smith: "I started actually as a pilot for the US Navy, flew F-eighteens for about 12 and a half years active duty."
He was stationed in Japan, did three deployments to the Western Pacific, spent lots of time at sea aboard the USS Kitty Hawk, and later moved to Italy, where he helped to run US cruise missile operations.
He loved flying fighter planes; breaking out through stormy weather into sunshine above the clouds; landing on the ship on a dark night or zipping over the rooftops in major American cities.
He also trained other pilots and spent a year as a demo pilot - flying air shows around the US.
And like many young men do, he got married.
Keen to include his new wife in his upbringing, he took her to Idaho. He wanted to show her his childhood haunts, give her a sense of where he was from. But he wasn't prepared for what he saw when they got there.
Mike Smith: "You know, when you go back to the place you grew up, you see all the things that have changed. And so what became jarring was seeing the thing that hadn't changed. It was just black, still black dirt, 22 years later."
The landscape he knew so well from a childhood of backpacking, hiking with his grandparents and even building a home with his father, had not recovered from the devastating Lowman fire he's seen as a boy. Witnessing the charred remains got to him… So he made a radical decision.
Mike Smith: "I decided I was going to leave the Navy. I started a company focused on post-fire reforestation for carbon offset production - which is a real hard turn out of the Navy."
It was 2014. Equipped with some knowledge of carbon markets, and emboldened by what he calls a fighter pilot's arrogance and entrepreneur's naivety, he ended up planting a couple of million trees.
He has since become what he calls more of a pure climate guy. And now runs Aclymate, which helps businesses without sustainability teams to measure, reduce, report, and offset their footprints.
He's also become a father to two kids. And for a while he was bringing it all together by hosting a now-shuttered podcast called 'Climate Dad'.
Mike Smith: "Within my own company, nobody on my staff originally was like a climate person. What they said was, is that kind of like what a parent does with their child, which is you take something that's scary and complex and you make it a little less scary and a little less complex. And my staff said I had that vibe where I was climate dad to them."
He'd understood the importance of talking to non-climate people in ways that don't make them feel stupid. Or as if they are to blame for the storms, floods and droughts linked to the rising temperatures caused by burning fossil fuels. In his podcast, he looked at things like pets, insurance, mining and mind-set in connection with climate. And though he wasn't aiming to exclusively reach men, they were certainly a part of his thinking.
Mike Smith: "One, if there's a chance I can make other people feel a little less confused about what's going on, regardless of gender, I'm in. I wanted people to be able to access the information without having to be overwhelmed by it. But I also think the climate movement is in many ways led by women, which is something I have zero problem with. But I do think that there's a missed opportunity and being able to bring a few more men into the cause, and so speaking man-to-man, I think that can be of value."
Welcome to Living Planet. I'm Neil King and in this week's episode, we're looking at what is sometimes called the green gender gap. That's the idea that women are more likely to care about the climate crisis and its impact than men. Mounting research claims men are less climate concerned. So how does it all hang together?
Amanda Clayton: "When we looked at the global data, a pattern just hit us between the eyes. It stood out over and over and over again in every dataset we looked at, which was not only does the gender gap not exist in countries outside of the global north, but in fact there's a really steady linear relationship whereby the gender gap grows as a function of country wealth."
That’s Amanda Clayton, a political scientist at the University of California - one of the many experts trying to find out more about the so-called green gender gap.
Amanda Clayton: "It's actually that men tend to decrease their concern about climate change as countries become wealthier. So the growing gender gap is actually men's growing scepticism in the global north.
Amanda and her co-researcher found a more even gender distribution of concern in the global south. Which is not to say men and women in poorer countries experience the climate crisis equally. Women are often responsible for securing food, water and fuel. And as the climate changes, these can be in shorter supply, meaning women have to travel further and work harder to get it. Girls are often taken out of school to help their mothers or married off young to lower costs of living to the family.
But these tend not to be concerns in the global north, where opinions about climate might turn on money.
Amanda Clayton: "It really was a puzzle that we thought about for a long time and talked about with a lot of people and did a lot of reading and tried to collect as much data as we could. So our theory is rooted in the idea that there are certain costs that come with thinking about the transition away from fossil fuels. And that these costs of climate action tend to be felt more acutely in the global north."
And felt in particular by some groups of men. Particularly those who subscribe to more traditional gender norms, such as having to be the ones to bring home the bacon. Which is also where politics enters the picture.
Amanda Clayton: "When countries become wealthier, we begin to see that climate change becomes more politicized, both on the left and on the right. And when climate change becomes a political issue on the right, we see political elites and industry elites starting to promote climate skeptical beliefs."
US President Donald Trump speaking at Davos:
"One thing I've noticed is that the more windmills a country has, the more money that country loses and the worse that country is doing."
Amanda Clayton: And when climate skepticism enters into the political discourse, we think the messages that right-leaning parties tend to use, tend to resonate with men more than they resonate with women."
Messages around being forced to give up meat or no longer drive gas-powered vehicles. Or the threat to jobs in the fossil fuel sector, which employs more men than women.
SFX: Trump:
“As you've heard me say many times, we have more liquid gold under our feet than any nation on earth and now I fully authorized the most talented team ever assembled to go and get it. It's called, ‘Drill, baby, drill!”
Breaking through such narratives to get men to be more climate conscious or concerned can be hard. American political philosopher Cara Daggett coined the term petro-masculinity to describe the idea that fossil fuels don't only represent monetary gain. They also contribute to forming character.
Amanda Clayton: "You're tapping into deeply held identities and beliefs that are hard to change, particularly if you're living in a place where you're being told by the politicians that you look up to that it's a hoax -- and you don't yet personally feel the effects of our changing climate."
SFX: Trump
"The carbon footprint is a hoax. Made up by people with evil intentions and they're heading down a path of total destruction."
Amanda Clayton: "So when political elites are both telling you that climate change is a hoax and they're telling you that women's rights have gone too far, it's all a very consistent ideology of things need to stay exactly how they have been. When we were in a fossil fuel-based society, when men and white people were squarely on top, and anyone that's telling you otherwise is lying to you."
President Trump has made no secret of his disdain for climate action. He infamously pulled the US out of the 2015 Paris Agreement -- not once, but twice. But he also repeatedly refers to climate change as a scam and a con-job and regularly slams wind power. But he is not the only politician singing from that playbook.
There is a correlation between climate change denial or skepticism and several European far-right parties. Including in Sweden where the Sweden Democrats form part of a center-right coalition.
Swedish Vidar Vetterfalk works with an organisation called MÄN, which engages boys and men around gender equality and an end to male violence. His area of expertise is masculinities in the climate crisis. And he is familiar with the scenario Amanda describes.
Vidar Vetterfalk: "The Swedish Democrats and the Liberal Party are the most extreme ones, but others also on the right side are really copying Trump's, 'drill, baby drill' and connections to masculinity and ways of talking. It's this destructive mix of militarism and petro masculinities. And they are successful. They reach the boys and the men with this because it's the easy answer and it's very populistic. And it's a way to promise something where boys and men feel a bit lost.
We go backwards, promise the old order back, that men should be men. Make Sweden great again. Make men great again."
Vidar had been working with MÄN for some time when the organisation started to look at the environment. He said there was a slow dawning of realization that maybe masculinity norms about dominance and exploitation was the very root cause of the climate crisis. It was not only an opportunity to explore the issue with other men. But a chance for him to bring nature into his work. Which had been his wish as a teenager – until male ideas got in the way.
Vidar Vetterfalk: " I grew up on a biodynamic farm. My parents were farmers and we had this close connection with nature, with the animals, everything was connected. And I was very happy in that. And my dream was to become a farmer.
And then I realized in my teenage years that that was not really a popular thing to become.
It happened at a very certain moment. We had a one-week school holiday and I was home working with the cows at the farm, and while I was working there all week, I was 14. I was thinking about the girls in my class. That I kind of was in love with, especially one girl and they were interested in horses.
So I was thinking when I come back after this holiday, when the teacher is asking us, what did you do during the school holidays? And I say, I worked with the cows all week, then they would appreciate that because they love animals too. So that, that will give me points.
So I came with high expectations back from that holiday, and when the teacher asked that question, I was sitting kind of in the front row in the classroom, and I shared that I've been working with the cows and I was expecting this kind of sympathy or something from behind where the girl was sitting.
And what I heard was, 'oh what a farmer.' And it was at that moment I killed the dream inside myself. It was not that I was thinking about all the machines and like that kind of farmer masculinity thing, but it was the care and the presence with the animals and with living nature that I expected the girls to appreciate. They didn't.
I realized, I should do something else in order to be kind of a real man, attractive. And I shut that dream down and that was very painful. And it's crazy because I kind of killed one of the most beautiful dreams and parts of me that I've been missing since then."
Decades after that school holiday as an impressionable young teen, Vidar clearly sees it as a tale of masculinity.
Vidar Vetterfalk: "It's a story about how masculinity norms works, and how so many boys and men block the connection and the care and those kind of soft and strong parts of us as humans."
How those norms influence male engagement with climate was something Michael Haselhuhn, associate professor of management at the University of California Riverside has been looking into.
Michael Haselhuhn: "I think a lot of the focus has been on why are women more concerned? And there's been less of a question about, well, why are men less concerned?
It started with the observation–slash-question of what do we think about people who express concern about climate change and say, 'hey, there's a problem here, we need to fix it.' And I predicted that the people who express concern about climate change would be seen as caring and compassionate, right? They're looking out for the world, they're looking out for other people, etc. which sounds like a great thing.
But if you are a man and you're feeling like your masculinity is threatened in some way, you know you want to prove to others that you're a manly man. Well, appearing, caring and compassionate isn't such a good thing. It makes you, you look a little more feminine maybe than you'd like to look. So with that premise, I predicted that men who are really concerned about being a manly man, those, guys are going to be the ones who are less likely to say, 'yeah, there's a problem that needs to be fixed with the climate.'"
And that was exactly what he found. One study revealed men who express concern about climate change are seen as caring and compassionate. And three others found a link between climate change concerns and perceived threats to masculinity.
Michael Haselhuhn: "Things like losing a sports competition, crying in front of your children, making less money than a spouse, things like that are all things that threaten masculinity - that men kind of have to be on the lookout for all the time."
Whether subconsciously or very consciously.
Michael Haselhuhn: "Some of it is, you know, 'I personally want to feel like a man', but a lot of it is, 'I wanna make sure others think that I'm a man.' That's kind of where the research has pointed is it is these public displays."
In his research, Michael tried reframing the climate crisis to present it as protecting family and future generations, rather than talking about saving the planet. Just to see if it would produce different results. But it didn't.
Michael Haselhuhn: "There was statistically no difference depending on whether I framed masculinity along traditional lines, like kind of reminded men, 'oh, you're supposed to be manly men and aggressive and whatever else.' Or if I reminded men, 'hey, part of masculinity is looking out for others like your family, especially your children, and protecting the planet is part of that.' It didn't matter which type of masculinity I reminded them of. If they were afraid of not looking like a man, they didn't care about the climate."
What his research could not reveal was whether, deep down, there is a concern about the climate crisis that some men are not willing to reveal to themselves – let alone anyone else.
Michael Haselhuhn: "One possibility is that men who are concerned about their masculinity genuinely aren't concerned about climate change. They don't believe in it. Another possibility is 'yeah, there's a problem here. Something's wrong, but I don't want to say that there's something wrong because then I'm going to look like I'm caring and compassionate. So even though these surveys are completely anonymous, I'm never going to know who these men are who are taking my studies, there still might be that element of 'I don't want to admit it, maybe even to myself, that I care so much about the planet.'"
You're listening to Living Planet with me, Neil King and we'll be heading into a very short break in just a bit. But first, I've got a question for you. Are men really less concerned about that climate than women? And if so, why do you think that is? You can send us a voice message at dw.com/livingplanet or email us at livingplanet@dw.com. We'll be right back after this short break.
Trailer promo
Men burying their worries is something Vidar Vetterfalk has become very familiar with. He works with groups of men who struggle to freely acknowledge their own thoughts and feelings about what is happening to the world. The idea is that participants listen to each other. As in, really listen. Each person can talk for a certain time and nobody is allowed to interrupt or ask questions.
Vidar Vetterfalk: "Masculinity norms and patriarchal structures are disconnecting us, so we are looking at different ways to connect because that's where care comes. One of the first questions is 'what do you love and appreciate in nature?' And that creates a connection instead of starting talking about the problem and the challenges with the climate crisis or the statistics and guilt and blame game on men. The next step is to connect like, so what are you worried about when you hear about the climate crisis?'"
The idea is to offer men a space to explore what they might be holding back. Not just from each other and their families, but from themselves. They are also asked to talk about the kind of world they would like to see for future generations and what steps they might be able to take towards creating that future. And he says the process is effective.
Vidar Vetterfalk: "It's painful but it's very appreciated. A lot of men share already after the first round that they've never spoken with other men in this way before or listened together with other men in this way before. It's a way to get organized and to find others who are already working on creating that sustainable and just world."
But not all men are drawn by the idea of coming together and sharing. And Vidar says many of those who join the groups are already teetering on the brink of interest. So how to get more reluctant men to take an interest in the climate crisis? Former pilot, Mike Smith also believes in having conversations around the role of men in the 21st century.
Mike Smith: "There is this redefinition of what it means to be a man, what masculinity means, and the people that talk about gender mostly tend to be women, and when they do that, they tend to look at it through a woman's lens, which is appropriate. That's their own lived experience. But what their idea of what a man needs to be and what a man's idea of what a man needs to be are very different. Most people, what they really need is a sense of purpose and drive and mission. And I think that that's maybe the key to where we can go with masculinity and climate is a sense of drive and purpose and mission."
He says there are quite a lot of male veterans that end up in the climate space, which doesn't surprise him since they joined the military to have a cause. That has not gone away just because they are no longer in uniform. And personally, he finds it can be influential when talking to men who are less interested in climate.
Mike Smith: "So one thing, ex-fighter pilot, nobody ever gets to take my man card away. Like I just get to lay that on the table whenever, right? And so that gives me a little bit of room to manoeuvre when I'm talking about things that may be a little bit more traditionally coded as feminine."
Because his works brings him into contact with customers who are new to climate thinking, he gets to play that card. But he says he has the sense that most people already care about the planet – even if it's not their top priority. That assessment chimes with US public opinion surveys showing almost two-thirds of Americans are concerned about climate. Even more are worried it will impact future generations. Mike believes positive lived experience is one way to get men engaged…
Mike Smith: "We are now in the place where climate needs to become mass adopted. And I think that starts to look in the realm more of business and maybe like civic institutions rather than at the national level.
Like, we can build a new world and it can be one that's awesome. Right? And I think the idea of building also kind of resonates a little bit with men."
He recalls how installing solar panels at his home and investing in EVs shifted his thinking around his family's energy use.
Mike Smith: "Like, actually, I don't want to consume more energy than I'm producing. We just bought our second EV so we're now a fully EV family, which means we have to take it on road trips. I'm driving slower. Why? Because it is more energy-efficient. A gas car would've been fuel-efficiency and I would've just blown past it because like, whatever. But now like that I'm thinking about it and it was like, how can I extend my range and do this a little bit more? Have fewer stops. Now I'm like, okay, well we're just going to set the cruise control to the speed limit rather than like, yeah, I'll see if I can push it five or 10 miles an hour faster."
And he's seen how other men have been brought into climate thinking, and even advocacy off the back of products.
Mike Smith: "One of my favourites, a little example here, is one of my employees, he and his wife they live up in the mountains at 10,000 feet right here in Colorado. He had previously worked in software, but then had like a little midlife crisis… and started a business as a lumberjack, actually like clearing trees and then turning into firewood. Big pickup truck. Likes doing all the outdoor stuff. Avid mountain biker. And so he came and joined this little climate tech company and you're like, okay, wouldn't have expected it from this dude. Right?"
What came next, Mike describes as a positive epidemic. The logger traded in his pickup for a good value lease on an EV and decided he loved driving an electric car. Loved it so much in fact, that he became an advocate for the switch from gas-powered vehicles across his mountain community.
Mike Smith: "You know, he wears a beard. He likes smoked meats and drinks beer and he's like a guy's guy. But it just took that one guy to be like, yep, cool. Let's go do this thing. And then it became okay. It became coded enough masculine enough that everybody else is like, yeah, this is like a no brainer, let's go do it."
And speaking of cars, some companies are cottoning onto the idea of marketing EVs as major man machines.
Amanda Clayton: "They really try to make it appear very masculine, like so that electricity is very masculine rather than fossil fuel. So if you know a storm goes down and your power's out, you can use your car as a generator. You can use it on a work site to charge your drill. All of these things, they're just trying to make electricity seem masculine rather than gas and oil seeming masculine. And I'm here for it. Like, if that's what you need in order to convince groups that have a cultural attachment to fossil fuels."
Amanda Clayton says that kind of narrative is more likely to grab male attention than headlines highlighting the very real climate-related gender and racial injustices inherent in the climate crisis in many parts of the world. Which is why she sees the need for a multi-pronged approach.
Amanda Clayton: "It's understanding issues of feminism or environmental racism and treating them very real. But then when designing policy and thinking through public discourse, it's much more about, 'okay, how can we convince people that we just very practically need to like, electrify everything?'"
But Vidar Vetterfalk in Sweden is skeptical of what he calls the green colonialism that comes with the fight for the minerals needed for the energy transition. He says there are limits to technical fixes such as solar panels or electric cars. And that they ignore the deeper issue of the need for systemic change. In which men have a role to play.
Vidar Vetterfalk: "We need also to look at the root causes and how these patriarchal structures and masculinity norms are important parts of the root causes. And this whole idea that we can and should dominate and exploit in order to kind of get higher status and be rewarded in so many ways. That can be very important, like basic worldview change and a change of the view of who we are. If we are a burden for the earth or if we are actually a companion with Earth, then we have tasks of caring for it. Because it makes such a difference how we view ourselves."
He would like to see an end to masculinity norms altogether. And to see them replaced with human rights that allow men and boys to grow up without being expected to use violence or accept that in order to be a real man, they should be tough. Getting there is likely to be a long haul. And in the meantime, communicating as widely as possible is key.
But in his experience, Mike says male voices are not always welcome in more female-dominated climate spaces. Which potentially leaves the messaging to louder, climate-denying male voices that could work against generating a greater groundswell of support from more men.
Mike Smith: "I think if the only people speaking to men are the ones that say like, you know, let's roll some coal. Like if, if they're the only ones talking, then they're the only one in the conversation, right? … I find for human beings, the best way to get help is to ask. And if you need help from people, from of any demographic, you should ask them for help. I think the same thing here is for men broadly."
In keeping with the nuance of this issue, Vidar's experience is different. He says he has always gone into more women-led climate spaces showing a clear willingness to listen and has been made to feel very welcome. Perhaps sometimes more than he feels is justified.
Vidar Vetterfalk: "The women are part of the patriarchal system, so they also give a lot of attention to the few men who actually come there as well. So becomes like, 'wow, a man is here.
Like when men started to care for children, 'oh, he is doing fantastic work', but you're just doing the same as they've been doing for hundreds of years."
And perhaps this is a good moment to mention children. Since the work that both men now do is informed by early experiences, how important is it to appeal to the young? Vidar cites climate active youth effectively asking their fathers to change their behaviours. And for Mike, home life offers plenty of opportunities to get conversations started. With his son and his daughter.
Mike Smith: "I tend to talk about my own experience and I think I'm trying to model masculinity, both to my daughter - who I have no idea what her gender preference is yet because she's prepubescent. Chances are she's probably going to be hanging out with men. I want her to make sure that she understands like how a man is supposed to behave. My son is definitely going to be a man, and so I also want him to understand how a man is supposed to behave. I feel like part of my fatherly duty is to challenge both of my children into what a man should look like and to protect and appreciate the outdoors."