Knock on the doors of the manosphere, and what I have discovered isn’t merely a collection of grievances and muscle-flexes – it’s an entire microclimate, its own weather front pressing against the future. Here, in these digital territories, fossil-fuelled bravado becomes the very air young men are taught to breathe, each exhale a small act of defiance against what they perceive as a feminised world closing in around them.
The iconography is unmistakable: smoke-bellowing supercars, private jets carving contrails across amber skies, and steaks cooked rare over open flames – a trinity of consumption positioned as the antithesis of hemp milk and the quiet efficiency of electric vehicles. In these echo chambers, carbon gets the same treatment as testosterone: more is always better, and caring about emissions becomes tantamount to surrendering one’s place among the brotherhood.
Yet this isn’t simply about cars or meat – it’s about stories. The stories we tell about what it means to be strong, to be valuable, to matter. As a teenager navigating this landscape myself, I watch these narratives unfold in everyday conversations with friends or rather the lack of conversation. It’s as if admitting you care, or even speaking up, is an unspoken social risk – like there’s an invisible rulebook that says showing too much concern might knock a few points off your “man card.”
The numbers tell their own story. In the UK, 44 per cent of girls worry deeply about climate change, compared with just 27 per cent of boys. (“Climate Change and Sustainability Education: A survey of students in England” – UCL Discovery) This isn’t merely a difference of opinion – it’s a chasm carved by cultural expectations about who gets to care and how that care can be expressed without losing face. Recent research reveals that men who perceive their masculinity as threatened are significantly more likely to deny climate change, as if rejecting environmental concern becomes a way of reclaiming something they feel slipping away. (Remsö, A., et al. (2024). “Gender differences in climate change denial in Sweden.”) This cultural friction is increasingly reflected in the political arena, where parties like Reform UK have gained traction by appealing to voters resistant to mainstream climate agendas, positioning them against “net zero stupid”.
Step into any school assembly where climate change is discussed, and the geography of engagement reveals itself with unsettling predictability. The girls lean forward, hands raised, questions tumbling out about fast fashion and biodiversity loss. They linger afterward, sketching plans for tree-planting initiatives or discussing the merits of rewilding school grounds. The boys – not all, but many – arrange themselves differently in the room’s emotional topography. Some observe with genuine curiosity held in check by social calculation. Others deploy the practiced indifference of adolescence, arms folded against what they’ve learned to recognise as somehow soft, somehow suspect.
This isn’t an absence of environmental awareness – recent studies show that many young men, particularly in economically disadvantaged areas, already live some of the lowest-carbon lives imaginable. They walk to school, rarely fly, and get by without the endless churn of fast fashion. But this quiet environmental virtue rarely gets named or celebrated because it doesn’t align with the stories of masculine achievement that dominate their cultural landscape.
Neither does it align with the stories of environmental stewardship that the political left talk about. Too often, the environmental movement is content to spotlight the loud, the visible, the self-declared “activist” – those who march and speak and post – while overlooking quieter forms of care and everyday restraint. In its rush to craft heroes and villains, the movement sometimes misses the subtle negotiations and small acts of consideration that, though less photogenic, are equally vital. Environmentalism has been branded with colours and codes that for many young men look alien – like a secret handshake they never learned, locking them out before they even approach the door. Unless climate narratives start celebrating the quiet, the sideways, the “not-supposed-to-care” stewardship, we’ll keep reinforcing the club’s velvet rope – policing belonging while planet-sized opportunities slip by unnoticed.
The paradox runs deeper still. While 33 per cent of Gen Z and millennial men believe there’s no point changing their behaviour because it won’t make a difference – compared to just 19% per cent of older generations. This fatalism isn’t born of apathy, but of a particular kind of powerlessness. (Kings College London 2021 “Who cares about climate change? Attitudes across the generations”) They’ve inherited a world already damaged, been told simultaneously that they must fix it and that caring too much about fixing it marks them as weak.
The manosphere exploits this contradiction masterfully. Figures like Andrew Tate polish their supercar collections not merely as displays of wealth but as talismans against what they frame as an encroaching tide of feminine concern. In this worldview, environmental anxiety becomes another form of hysteria, climate action another attempt to domesticate the wild energies of masculinity.
JD Vance famously dismissed such displays by mocking what he called “soy boys” – a label designed to belittle men perceived as weak or overly sensitive, especially about social and environmental issues.
Yet this over the top masculinity has very real environmental impacts. You may have recently been shocked to read in research across France, scientists found that men’s food and transport carbon footprints are 26% higher than women’s, driven largely by red meat consumption and car use – both goods that have become culturally coded as masculine. (“The gender gap in carbon footprints: determinants and implications” – Grantham Research Institute on climate change and the environment, 2025 ) Even once socioeconomic differences and biological factors are accounted for, men still produce more carbon emissions suggesting social differences. But knowing this creates an opportunity: if these consumption patterns are learned rather than inevitable, they can be unlearned too.
The challenge isn’t simply convincing young men to care about climate change – many already do, privately, quietly, in ways that don’t fit the prescribed narratives of either environmental activism or masculine performance. The challenge is creating space for that care to breathe, to be expressed without fear of social exile or ridicule.
Perhaps one of the last frontiers in climate action isn’t policy or technology but this: the stories we tell about courage, about what it means to be strong when the world is changing faster than our cultural scripts can accommodate. Breaking free will require more than facts or guilt – it will demand reimagining not only our relationship with the planet but the very myths we use to understand ourselves. Thus breaking this gendered divide requires breaking the walls of the forts of toxic masculinity, building a more inclusive society which is both safer for women and more welcoming to men.
Standing at sixteen, I see how these pressures shape my peers’ choices daily. The boy who bikes to school but won’t join the environmental club. The friend who quietly eats less meat but rolls his eyes at Greta Thunberg. The classmate who knows climate science inside out but keeps that knowledge carefully contained, like a fire that might spread if acknowledged too openly.
These aren’t failures of education or awareness – they’re symptoms of a deeper cultural weather system, one where caring has been gendered in ways that leave half the population feeling they must choose between environmental concern and social belonging. Until we recognise that strength might look like vulnerability, that leadership might require listening, and that the future demands not the performance of invulnerability but the courage to admit how much we have to lose, we’ll continue to fight the climate crisis with only half our hearts engaged.
It also requires breaking down myths. You don’t have to give up what you love to be a climate advocate. I still like fast cars – just electric ones! I still like burgers – just the Beyond Beef version!
Being climate conscious means evolving your pursuits – finding new ways to keep the spirit alive, but with respect for the planet and those who share it. There’s room for everyone in this movement, no matter where they are from and what they used to believe. I believe that meeting people where they are is the most powerful tool environmentalists have.
If we can succeed in converting young men into environmentalists, the benefits may be huge. In the same study in France, if the country’s male population met the carbon emissions of women in food and transport, emissions in these sectors would fall by 13 million tonnes each year, three times the French government’s net zero targets in these sectors! (“The gender gap in carbon footprints: determinants and implications” – Grantham Research Institute on climate change and the environment)
The weather is changing, in more ways than one. The question isn’t whether we’ll adapt – it’s whether we’ll do so with grace, together, or remain trapped in atmospheric systems of our own making, breathing air that grows thinner with each passing season.
Lucas Brendon
Youth climate communicator and Director and Head of Media at Roots Media CIC.
