Man, oh man, is there any woe a toxically masculine man isn’t responsible for today? The recent miniseries Adolescence, for instance, put the onus for much anti-female violence on the “manosphere.” And now we learn that, supposedly, the manosphere also mucks up the atmosphere, with a new study linking men to higher CO2 emissions.
Strangely enough, too, news outlets say “higher CO2 emissions” like it’s a bad thing.
The research is published at The London School of Economics and Political Science website. It’s titled “The gender gap in carbon footprints: determinants and implications.” As to its findings, The Independent reports:
Men generate significantly more climate-heating emissions than women, according to a new study.
Men’s choices in food and transport, two of the most polluting sectors, lead to 26 per cent higher carbon emissions than women’s.
Researchers studied over 15,000 people [in France] to analyse how gender shaped what we ate, how we moved, and how much we polluted.
Even after adjusting for income, job type and household size, a gap of 18 per cent remained.
The biggest culprits behind significantly higher emissions from men were red meat and cars.
The researchers found that these two lifestyle choices alone explained almost all of the remaining gap after accounting for biological and socioeconomic differences.
Red meat, for example, makes up only 13 per cent of the average food footprint but accounts for 70 per cent of the emissions difference between men and women.
Cars are responsible for the entire gap in transport emissions, with men more likely to drive alone and use more polluting vehicles.
By contrast, emissions from flights are similar across genders, suggesting not all carbon-intensive behaviours are split the same way.
“Riding in Cars With Boys”
Of course, as is generally the case, a certain mistake seems apparent here. That is, the researchers, and media reporting on their findings, behave as if the sexes live completely atomized lives. Consider driving, for example. While it’s true men drive more than women do, this is largely because they spend more time commuting to work. This isn’t surprising, since men are most likely to be their family’s sole or primary breadwinner.
Yet this means this extra driving isn’t just a “male-centered endeavor”; in fact, commuting is stressful. It’s a duty often undertaken on behalf of the family — including its female members.
(So unless a guy is late Haitian dictator Baby Doc Duvalier, who supposedly shut down highways to race his cars, men aren’t driving just for kicks.)
This is much as with reportage on the male/female earnings gap. Men often must work harder, or in more lucrative fields, to draw more income and support their wives and kids. Yet the media nonetheless will portray it as a battle-of-the-sexes phenomenon.
It’s similar with food intake, too. Sure, men naturally require more calories, being larger and having greater muscle mass. The sexes also do make different dietary choices. Regardless, there’s another reason men burn 500-1,000 more calories daily than women do on average.
Men perform virtually all the dangerous, dirty, labor-intensive work, such as in construction, roofing, logging, trucking, and mining.
(This is also why approximately 92 percent of workplace deaths involve men.)
And again, men don’t generally take these jobs because they fancy it fun working on an ocean-situated oil rig. Often they do it to support their families — or to make themselves more marriageable. (Women don’t usually wed men who earn less than they do.)
The Most Profound Sex Differences
Returning to the study, its authors also mention that women care more about “climate change.” As the hard-left Mother Jones writes:
The French researchers suggested the gender differences in emissions could explain why women tend to be more concerned about the climate crisis, arguing the greater personal cost of reducing their emissions could cause men to avoid grappling with the reality of the climate emergency.
Actually, the truth is that the sexes are generally just being themselves, driven by self-interest. Women east less red meat, for example, because they tend to worry more; this includes worrying about health. They’re also more likely to watch their diet because they have more trouble than men do keeping weight off.
As for being more supportive of climate alarmism, this merely aligns with women’s greater support for left-wing causes in general.
All this said, if we want to indict men for CO2-emission responsibility, there’s a more effective way to do it. Just consider an assertion made by famed liberal social critic and feminist Camille Paglia. “If civilization had been left in female hands,” she once wrote, “we would still be living in grass huts.”
Paglia meant, of course, that male endeavor has created modern civilization, as men have birthed virtually all technological innovation.
The Sky Is Falling?
Of course, all this presupposes that emissions of CO2, a naturally occurring gas necessary for life’s existence, pose a danger. But The New American has refuted the anthropogenic-climate-change thesis repeatedly, such as here, here, and here.
What’s more, it might be a good thing if man were increasing Earth’s temperature and CO2 levels. After all, some scientists are predicting a coming ice age. And, regardless, cold temperatures are generally more dangerous than higher ones. Consider, too, an astrobiologist’s 2013 warning that life on Earth may eventually end due to too little CO2.
So, ladies, help your man save the planet. Take a pleasure drive in his muscle car, and then start up the charcoal-fired barbecue and start grilling that thick, juicy steak.
