We Can’t Talk About Earth Day without Talking about Masculinity

Look in any direction, and our planet is crying for help. Heat waves are intensifying, seas are rising, and natural disasters are mounting. Yet in the halls of Washington, Earth Day 2026 was commemorated with the continued assault on the nature around us, undergirded by the cynical claim that climate change is a marker of human flourishing. Meanwhile, young Americans grow more unsettled. Some, more than others.

Those of us in the gender equality space write regularly about the parallel realities young adults inhabit today. Climate change enters this conversation less frequently, but it belongs there, as one of many wedges dividing young men and women in the U.S. and around the world. On one of the defining existential threats of our lifetime, young men are increasingly tuning out.

Equimundo research has long found that men are less likely than women to view climate change as a serious threat, underscoring a persistent gender gap in climate engagement. Similarly, a 2024 Ipsos survey across 33 countries found that millennial and Gen Z men were the most likely groups, across age and gender, to hold fatalistic views about climate change – believing it’s too late for action and that individual behavior modification is fruitless. Indeed, Equimundo research finds that men are less likely to support or adopt lifestyle changes that reduce climate impact.

The gap hasn’t always been this wide. And the relationship between masculinity and environmentalism hasn’t always been so antagonistic.

I still recall my first run after moving to Washington, D.C., five years ago, a loop around Theodore Roosevelt Island. At the center of the serene ~1.5 mile trail is a statue of the 26th president, his hand raised alongside inscribed plaques, one of which reads: “The nation behaves well if it treats the natural resources as assets which it must turn over to the next generation, increased and not impaired in value.” In the Rooseveltian era and for much of the 20th century, protecting our land and resources was, in fact, a masculine virtue.

Yet as journalist Daniel Waite Penny has noted, the environmental movement’s public branding shifted in the late 20th century as Rachel Carson became the new face. Climate action has since become weaponized by bad actors as excessively emotional and feminine. Greta Thunberg, the foremost face of the modern environmental movement and a role model for millions, is regularly lambasted by the most macho-posturing corners of online culture. Andrew Tate infamously sparked a Twitter feud with Thunberg in 2022, posting (to 215 million views) a photo of him filling up his Bugatti, boasting of his 33 cars and their “enormous emissions.” Thunberg, and the youthful climate movement she represents, have become regular scapegoats for Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, or Dave Portnoy, for those who promote more individualistic and defiant templates for manhood.

How did the Earth fall into such bad graces?

For one, the narrative of man’s dominion over nature has never abated. Equimundo research shows how dominant ideals of masculinity have long been tied to control, conquest, and dominance over the natural world, shaping how climate action is perceived and resisted today. But we must also reckon with the vast sums of money pumped into the right-wing ecosystem over the past few decades to spread climate skepticism, money used to frame climate science as a threat to “modern industrial rationality,” money that props up the influencers and networks telling young men to look away, or to actively mock the Thunbergs of the world as hysterical true believers. These messages coincide with a conspiratorial age defined by distrust of our institutions and frustration with the elites who fly to Davos on private jets, seemingly only to lecture ordinary people about their consumption. As Penny notes, anti-green industries have targeted non-college-educated men in particular since the 1980s, calculating they’d be most receptive.

Less obvious is how climate action has gotten wrapped up in the language of “care.” Equimundo research helps explain why that matters. Boys are often socialized to be self-reliant and emotionally restrained, while caregiving is coded as feminine, shaping which roles feel acceptable or aspirational. Not unlike in the household, in their communities, and in the workplace, women are increasingly being tasked with caretaking the planet – a project that demands buy-in from every demographic. Tragically, this dynamic comes at a moment when women are already more likely to die from climate-related disasters, and when they carry smaller carbon footprints than men to begin with.

The atmosphere in the U.S. surrounding climate action is rather discouraging. A president who calls climate change a hoax, a Secretary of Health infatuated with massive red meat consumption, a Department of the Interior posting AI-generated images of a cartoon “coalie,” touting the ridiculous notion of “responsible coal mining.” When the men in leadership are actively dragging us backward on an issue that demands nothing but forward progress – and when the real-world impacts of a baking planet are transforming our world on hyperspeed – it’s tempting to write off the next generation of men as MIA in the climate cause.

But read Joseph Richardson’s piece, and you also find something more soothing: young men in local communities managing beehives, maintaining bikes, or pulling their sleeves up in the forests. He articulates how for the young men engaged in these programs, this “isn’t just environmental work. It’s care work. And changing the narrative on who gets to do it is vitally important.”

There are fixes, small (e.g., influencers who model wonder and reverence for the natural world) and large (e.g., increasing funding for national service programs that protect our public lands) that can help embed a caring relationship with the environment into our culture’s understanding of masculinity. The redemptive power of nature is as strong a force as any for true human groundedness and higher purpose. And there’s nothing more manly than that.