JORDAN PETERSON: One of the most useful things that you need I think was to work on this idea of the integration of the shadow because he was really interested in the idea of evil

What do you do with the part of you that's aggressive and and potentially malevolent? you just crush it? that's the super-ego response in some sense you just put it behind you so to speak is that a possibility or do you admit to its existence and bring it into the game?

DANIEL: You’re listening to Carbon Bros. I’m Daniel Penny

DANIEL: And that’s our old friend, Doctor Jordan Peterson, speaking in 2018 to a young man about integrating the so-called “shadow self.”

“Integration” is one of Peterson’s favorite concepts, borrowed from the psychoanalyst Carl Jung. It’s the idea that through a series of direct confrontations with our darkest fears and desires, we can come to accept and even channel that side of our personalities in a constructive way. You often hear about shadowwork from manosphere types when they want to defend the idea of masculine aggression.

PETERSON you should be able to do things that you wouldn't do that's that's like the definition of a genuinely moral person they could do it but they don't and then that's not cowardice and so that's you burn off the things that get in the way of that Integration.

it's a forest fire that allows for new growth because if you burn something off you might think well there's nothing left it's like that's not true if it's Deadwood then you have room for new growth.

AMY: Love that he’s using a forest fire as a metaphor, given all the climate denial he peddles.

DANIEL: Yeah I included that bit on purpose. But on this fourth and final episode of Carbon Bros, we’re thinking about Integration a little more broadly. The question we’re trying to ask is how do we bring men back into the climate movement? How do we shift the terms of the climate conversation from energy dominance and macho climate denial–

AMY: Or techno-fixes and planetary escape—to something else? Because the earth is getting warmer every year. We’ve already passed 1.5 C and with any limits on oil and gas drilling lifted, the Department of Energy putting out reports that climate change isn’t a big threat after all, and the all out assault on the EPA, we’re on track to hit 3C of warming by 2100. If we’re leaving men to get suckered by gender grifters and climate disinformation, we’re not going to fix things anytime soon.

DANIEL: So how do we integrate the shadow? The manosphere, and all of the angst and toxicity it represents? Because ignoring it didn’t work in 2024 and it’s not going to work in 2026 or 2028 (assuming we still have elections then). Is there a place for a different kind of masculinity in the climate movement?

That's what we're talking about on this episode of Carbon Bros.

Amy: Again and again, the biggest issue we kept coming up against in our research for this show is that men feel an intense social pressure to provide, and when faced with a choice between the economy and a livable planet, a lot of guys are choosing their jobs. This is the essence of “breadwinner masculinity.” And it’s especially true among energy workers, who are overwhelmingly white and male.

I believe the tariffs are a good thing. It is gonna bring jobs back to America. Um, and what comes with American jobs is energy.

President Trump, I just would like to personally thank you for what you do for the coal industry and what you're doing to make our everyday lives better.

President Trump, for the bottom of our hearts, truly thank you for everything you have done for the coal industry and for the hardworking blue collar American person. Um, we are truly better off today than we were under the last administration.

DANIEL: These are clips of coalminers the Trump administration brought to the white house recently. They’ve got these strange looks on their faces, like hostages reading off cue-cards.

AMY: Trump followed the same playbook back in 2017, blame Obama-era regulations for keeping fossil fuel workers out of jobs. And he’s doing it again now, blaming Biden’s climate policy. It’s an old trick the Republicans have been using since the Reagan era to divide the working class. But these frenzies of deregulation don’t actually bring back the jobs. In fact they’re just cutting more jobs.

DANIEL: Yeah, even though they’re making record profits, the oil and gas industry is shrinking its workforce because of automation. And the coal industry in the US has been declining for decades because coal is a more expensive source of energy compared to solar and natural gas. The cause of all this isn’t Washington or blue-haired trans climate protestors. It’s bosses and bottom lines. But the solutions Democrats have offered so far have sucked pretty hard.

BIDEN: “Anybody who can go down 3,000 feet in a mine can sure as hell learn to program as well. Give me a break! Anybody who can throw coal into a furnace can learn how to program, for God’s sake!”

AMY: Learn to code! Not surprisingly, most of these computer science retraining programs have been a bust. And telling fossil fuel workers they were just going to have to switch to entirely different careers reveals a deep ignorance of life on the ground for these guys and their families.

DANIEL: At the end of episode 3, we heard from Mike Levien, a social scientist  at Johns Hopkins who studies the oil and gas industries and the push for carbon capture in Louisiana. And toward the end of our conversation, I asked him about this problem. How to win over men who think their interests are with the status quo.

MIKE LEVIEN: You know, it's a problem I've thought a lot about. My mom's family's all from a small bayou in Louisiana, shrimpers and my grandpa's generation, the second generation, you know, didn't see much of a future in shrimping. And they all, a person, work in an industry, whether, you know, machinists and fabrication shops, or they're working in shipyards or, you know, as welders or they're doing something related to oil and gas drilling.

On the coast people think, “oh, we have these sort of backward looking coal miners and conservative guys who work out on oil drilling rigs, who are our opponents in dealing with climate change.”

if they could lead this whole thing, I mean, that would be amazing. But of course there is this huge problem and, you know, which is just that their current interests are completely aligned with the perpetuation of these industries because they depend on it for their livelihoods.

DANIEL: So how do we get these guys to join the climate movement?

I think this is where like, you know, thinking about this material program, but not just the material program, but kind of the cultural politics, which we could kind of challenge the hegemony of fossil fuel industries without kind of, you know, throwing lots of blue collar workers, uh, you know, out of their jobs with sort of nothing for them and emboldening of reaction and throwing them into strengthening the right wing, you know, counter movement against climate action.

your question about gender is an interesting one, right? Because. You know, you might be right that there's a, to toxic masculinity, you know, that is involved in people's identification with, um, work in the fossil fuel industry. Right. Um, and so, um, are we going to denounce people for being, you know, for, for that? Or are we going to, um, in a sense try to like tap into it or pivot from it in a way by saying like, there there is a, you know, a job here or there is a program here that you know, is recognizing like the sacrifice that you made, right? By working for all these years and risking black lung and risking occupational disease and, you know, all these other things.

AMY: There has been a lot of talk—and some real effort over the years about a just transition, which means everything from making sure energy is affordable to taking care of energy workers. But the idea of gender affirming jobs is uhhhh interesting!

DANIEL:  It also wasn't just that it had to be a gender affirming job, but that any kind of wage replacement program that would be initiated would have to be marketed and, and kind of conveyed in such a way that it's not seen as welfare.

DANIEL: Exactly. You know, that like we accept the idea of veterans benefits, but many people reject the idea of welfare for those who are out of work.

But those two I, those two things are actually like, pretty much the same. We've just decided that people who've served in the military get special social privileges because of the job that they had.

however we deal with all of the people (mostly men) who will inevitably be put out of work by the switch to renewables, we have to find a way to show they’re not being forgotten, that they’re not looked down upon. Even if I hate oil, I respect the people who put their lives in danger to drill it.

AMY: Yeah definitely! None of these folks are responsible for decisions being made in the C suite.

DANIEL: guess what, it’s capitalism. And of course the fossil fuel industry jumps at every chance to remind people that real men work the rigs and we’ll all be screwed if those jobs go away. But that doesn’t make any of it less 

al. In fact a recent Equimundo survey found that men are actually feeling more anxious about being a good provider than ever.

AMY: Yep, exactly. Surprise, surprise,. Um, it's like, of course everyone is feeling the pinch more and men have this additional layer of. Having this social expectation that they are providers and that they're, you know, breadwinners and all of that stuff.

Um, this Mundo report and survey was really, really interesting. I was surprised by a few of the stats that they found. So, um, I reached out to the researchers who led that effort, Caroline Hayes and Dr. Taveeshi Gupta to talk about it.

DR. GUPTA: so men who are in what we have called, and others in our field have called it the man box, right? And so this idea that when you are following these very stereotypical, rigid norms of masculinity, you're in the man box.

Those men tend to. Be the ones who are actually denying climate change. And from what we understand, this idea of sort of this very manliness of eating red meat and, driving these gas guzzling trucks, et cetera.

It's a sort of heuristic of what it means to be this very typical man box man as opposed to ,soy boys or beta males who eat things like plant-based diets or something like that .

CAROLINE HAYES: when we're thinking about, you know, as Taveeshi talked about the man box and norms around masculinity, you have things like hyper individualism. You have things like, um, resource accumulation in order to be the provider.

DR. GUPTA: And this idea of economic stress, right, which is linked to their kind of identity as a provider, has been so prominent as a finding for us, and it's consistent.

CAROLINE HAYES: taking those to the extreme and, and wealth extraction and resource accumulation. You can see the direct link between, you know, the, the consequences, um, for our environment when, when that sort of, um, you know, globalized on a mass scale.

DR. GUPTA:  When we think about the harmful aspects of masculinity. it is things like being dominant, self-reliant, being very tough, and all of all of that is in complete juxtaposition, right? To what we need to be, to be actually concerned about the climate and the environment, which requires care and compassion, and a desire to think about public good, ?

Compassion is something that we have seen in our work in terms of how we see men sort of, we actually come from a starting point that men are carers,

that we want men to be carers. We want men to be caring in all their relationships. Not just when they have children, but to partners, to their elderly parents, to their, to themselves, right? And then with that comes the idea that you care for your community. You care for your planet. So we, we have been trying to work on several solutions we, you know, that promotes caring masculinity as the core solution For this planet.

When men care, they have better mental health, they have better relationships, they're happier overall when they care for themselves.

DANIEL: Care is definitely at the core of this shift. And you’ll hear this keyword from a lot of the folks in this episode. One of the things I’ve been thinking about is this idea of the “girl dad,” when kind of macho guys have daughters and realize that women are human, too.

LOGAN PAUL CLIP: Thinking about having a daughter, my mind went to some dark places. I don’t want to sound like a woke asshole, but dude, women have it hard.

AMY REACTION:  . I'll take it. Fine. Logan Paul, I'm glad you realize women have feelings.

DANIEL: So I thought, there must be guys who go through  similar thing when it comes to the climate crisis. Like being a dad isn’t going to get you to believe in the existence of climate change, but it might increase how much you care about it, because now you’re thinking about the future of your child and the world they’re going to live in.

AMY REACTION: Totally. And actually we know that it impacts some people's, um, thinking around whether or not to even have kids.

DANIEL: So to understand the climate dads, I spoke to Jason Sandman. He's a community organizer and co-founder of a group called Climate Dads

DANIEL:  Jason, welcome to Carbon Bros.

JASON:. It is so nice to be here. Thank you for the time to, uh, share my perspective.

DANIEL: And, and you're, are you calling from a, a garage right now? Are you getting your car repaired?

JASON: Yeah, yeah.with the federal tax rebates, um, for electric vehicles closing pretty soon, my wife and I decided to. To purchase one, and we are at the dealership. they're redoing the software and updating it

JASON: we will be taking this conversation while I'm here at the. dealership. we're always multitasking as a parent,

DANIEL:  could you just tell the audience a little bit about what Climate Dads is and, who you are?

JASON: So climate dance has really started from just like, two guys, two dads with two sons about the same age, who, uh, both realized that they had some of the same concerns about raising a, a child, uh, during this time.

JASON:,  having a child is like this eureka moment. You're like, wow, I'm not only responsible for myself, I'm responsible for another human being forever,, until I die. So you start to think about. Like, what does that mean? How can I support and uplift them?

What challenges are they gonna face? And you get in, they have all these questions, you're like, oh, maybe this climate change thing impacts us.

DANIEL:  let's talk about the specific dadliness of it. Often it's moms or women in general who take more initiative, in terms of the family, you could say green lifestyle: things like composting, or even in advocacy, you know, putting, their identity as a mom first.

JASON:  We were way behind the moms Clean Air Force. Moms doing this, matriarchs, grandma's doing that. It's been for decades and I think I can say this, even though it's controversial dads, we got some catching up to do. It's not the burden of, of the mom to carry this stuff.

And so we just wanted to, like, part of climate Dads really is just to like change that stigma

And so it was like, let's lead by example. let's go get solar panels on our house and, and then say like, Hey, we can do this together and here's how dads can be a part of it. Let's, uh, let's start bringing our kids hiking or camping together and let them see the natural world and take the lead on that.

DANIEL:  So often the right is able to pit climate and environmental concerns against job growth, against wages, and that makes a lot of men in particular say, you know, okay, maybe climate change is real, maybe it's not, but I gotta worry about how much gas costs.

climate Dad was kind of a convener and almost a facilitator initially, locally.

Here's what's going on at the local utility. Here's how they're providing rebates, sir, here's a contractor that's doing this kind of work. Um, give them a call.

JASON: And then we just kind of found out through. unsolicited messages from a dad in Tempe, Arizona or or a, or a grandfather or an uncle in Australia. It was like, damn, kind of thinking about starting a chapter of climate dads out here. What are you guys working on? Can we, can we incorporate together?

DANIEL:  the 2024 election, in many ways was seen as, as kind of the, the, the toxic masculinity election,  powered by this kind of male grievance culture in addition to a lot of fossil fuel money.  How do we win some of those guys back?

JASON:  if you really want to get the, these fathers on board, it's not a responsibility of any one person

It's think about how you can maybe at the micro scale at your house, just kind of work on that and lead by example or your family work on, work on yourself. And then maybe, maybe that's an example of how like, oh, I feel pretty confident here. I did some things. This looks kind of good.

And then you, just, like you, you reach out to like a, your, your Reddit, your subreddit or to like your Facebook group or to like, you know, your local church group or like whoever you're with. Like, Hey, this kind of matters to me. Does somebody else, does it matter to anybody else? Let's talk about it. Let's get together.

AMY REACTION: This actually reminds me of one of the first episodes of Hot Take Mary Heglar and I did. We had done a couple of episodes talking about how the climate movement needed to be more intersectional and open up space for new leaders, and we were really surprised to get a flood of emails from climate concerned white guys who were like totally agree but also I care about climate and it sounds like you don’t want me here. So we did a whole episode about all the things you can do in between being in charge and not participating at all. Jason seems to be offering an option here!

DANIEL:  Yeah,  the people who have the most power in the climate movement in terms of being heads of organizations or involved in policy are men. But the everyday spaces of the climate movement have become so feminized that then when men are interested in participating, they feel this sense of like, well, is this even for me?

AMY:  Yeah, it's really interesting. It's a whole interesting dynamic.

DANIEL: and that's such a mistake, right? So we gotta, we gotta fix that. And I think, I think Jason is, is offering one way out of that trap.

AMY: These are middle-aged guys. And I think it’s great that Jason and the other dads are getting together to swap notes on heat pumps and bike lanes. And that does change how we perceive climate as a feminine or masculine issue. But there’s still the question of the young guys, the dudes we started with in episode 1 of this series, who swung for Trump because he appealed to their most bro-ish instincts.

DANIEL: Yes. There are a lot of rightwing fitness and martial arts influencers out there, but it’s a bit harder to find the lefty version. BUT I DID FIND HIM AMY! And his name is Colin Davis. Now I’m not saying Colin is the left’s Joe Rogan–and we don’t endorse the idea of trying to build one–but he is a charismatic fitness coach and former wrestler who comes out against the Andrew Tate types. And he’s been quite outspoken about climate. And it really gave me a moment of hope amidst so much despair.

COLIN:  I do personal training and coaching full-time. I guess I do social media full-time now. I mean, in the last three months, Instagram has become like a job. previous to that, it was still just an app on my phone. So this is a, this, this is a very new world for me, um, of like, like content creation for things that I really care about. And not just using it as like, for my personal training. Um, and all, like, all of the advice that I got from other coaches and people in the business was like, yeah, just don't talk about politics, just. Be apolitical, whatever you want to. I don't know how you can be apolitical right now

And then as soon as I started being open about my politics and essentially talking shit. my following blew up and I've had the opportunity to meet a ton of other leftists gym goers and people that I am politically aligned with that also are in the fitness space.

And it's been incredible. Um, 'cause I, yeah, I think it feels isolating for a lot of guys that are left-leaning and still traditionally masculine to be like, uh, where, who do I fit in with? You know, like, So, yeah, I'm trying to that gap a little bit. At least online.

DANIEL: Colin has a “silent majority” theory of the case, which is basically that the loudest right-wing fitness and manosphere voices don’t represent the views of their audience, but because they mostly go unchallenged, they win by default.

AMY:  That's fascinating actually. 'cause I have that same theory for climate deniers in general. Like, um, there's this huge perception in media that there's way more climate deniers than there actually are because they're the people who take the time to like write angry letters or actually call newsrooms.

DANIEL:  How does bodybuilding or strength training, or combat sports e, how do those things fit into a left leaning point of view, or a vision?

Transcription

The kings of the manosphere love to talk about “integrating” a man’s warrior and civilized self, but how about integrating men, and new ideas of masculinity, into the climate movement instead? What does that look like, who’s doing it, and where are there opportunities for repair and progress?

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Carbon Bros, Ep 4: Integration

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Carbon Bros, Ep 4: Integration

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