I was recently told I was fear-mongering and missing the facts by a person on Facebook when I revealed the environmental dangers of using (and abusing) single-use plastics (specifically Styrofoam); earlier that day a gentleman called me an anarchist after I promoted individual responsibility over government and corporate responsibility on the issue of bottled water in Canada.

At the time, these accusations upset me—I’m a scientist, after all, and truth is #1. Then I realised that they were part of my journey toward activism to save this planet and humanity along with it. It was, in fact, a good day for me. I did have the facts; and they were scary. And, in revealing them and expressing my opinions, I had succeeded in breaking people’s inertia and had challenged them to think outside their comfort zone.  I had created fear in them and I had created anarchy in their ordered world. This promted a strong defensive response. The more intense their defence, the more I’d upset their comfortable inertia. That is what happens when you break through a hegemony or dogma and challenge people to re-evaluate and change their actions or habits—essentially forcing them out of their complacency and bringing it back to personal responsibility.

In both cases, I’d brought it back to personal responsibility and personal action. Too many of us settle for a narrative in which others—often not clearly identified—are responsible–not us.

So, perhaps I am inciting fear. Fear in those who have become or choose to remain too complacent. Good; we are in a planetary and existential crisis. And perhaps I am rather an anarchist; disrupting a system and self-belief that is entrenched and not sustainable.

But that comes at a price.

I’m thinking of young climate activist Greta Thunberg, who recently captured the attention of the world in her brave sail across the Atlantic to attend the UN’s Climate Summit and other meetings in the US in addition to her climate strike and rally march in Montreal, Canada, which drew close to half a million people (old and young).

Earlier, at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland, Greta delivered her now iconic speech:

“Adults keep saying we owe it to the young people, to give them hope,” Thunberg said, “But I don’t want your hope. I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. I want you to act. I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if the house is on fire, because it is.”

In a recent poll, one out of three Germans said that Thunberg has changed their views on climate change. But that, too, has come at a price.

A tsunami of rage and shameless vitriol was unleashed by conservative men (many with close ties to the fossil fuel profit machine) at this young and brave girl during her 15-day trip across the Atlantic. Their attacks have grown increasingly more personal and vulgar as she has gained world attention. For example, political scientist, economist and climate “skeptic” Bjorn Lomborg (associated with the Heartland Institute and Competitive Enterprise Institute) repeatedly mocked and criticized the 16-year old activist. Using highly inappropriate and unprofessional language (the worst I won’t repeat here), he and others have accused her of being a “puppet”, “naïve”, “unrealistic”, and a “fanatic.” Others like Australian columnist Andrew Bolt have personally attacked Thunberg with reprehensible and boorish remarks about her age and mental health.

Andrew Mitrovica’s Opinion piece entitled “Who Is Afraid of Greta Thunberg?” provides eloquent summary: “Of course, the marauding swarm of vitriolic right-wing climate-change deniers see Thunberg—not how the prophetic Zinn envisioned her—but as a tiny, pretentious zealot who threatens the existing order. Their order. Their comforts. Their traditional ‘way of life’.”

Greta—who wears a windbreaker that reads “Unite Behind the Science”— responded in a brave and wonderful tweet:

Her tweet was followed immediately by one by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez:

 

This follows a recent finding by researchers that 99% of Republicans are science illiterate and 44% believe that the scientific method can be used to produce any conclusion the researcher wants. Of course the whole point of the scientific method is to prevent this.

Soon after, Martin Gelin wrote an article entitled, “The Misogyny of Climate Deniers” in the August 2019 issue of The New Republic. The subtitle reads: “Why do right-wing men hate Greta Thunberg and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez so much? Researchers have some troubling answers to that question.”

Gelin writes, “On [Thunberg’s] first day of sailing, a multi-millionaire Brexit activist (Arron Banks) tweeted that he wished a freak accident would destroy her boat. A conservative Australian columnist (Andrew Bolt) called her a ‘deeply disturbed messiah of the global warming movement,’ while the British far-right activist David Vance attacked the ‘sheer petulance of this arrogant child.’ … Former Trump staffer Steve Milloy recently called Thunberg a ‘teenage puppet,’ and claimed that ‘the world laughs at this Greta charade,’ while a widely shared far-right meme showed Trump tipping The Statue of Liberty to crush her boat.”

Fierce and undeterred by cohorts of grown human males unable to deal with her, Greta Thunberg gave a scorching speech at the United Nations during her visit to America: “We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth,” she admonished a crowd of world leaders. “How dare you.” Her equally scorching look of Donald Trump who rudely ignored her to mumble some nonsense to the press, has become a popular meme. The mashup by Fatboy Slim of Greta Thunberg’s UN speech “Right here, right now” went viral on YouTube.

Of course, this was followed by utterly shameless and cruel vulgarisms by adult bullies that included suggestions to punish her and give her a spanking.

Disinterested in whether she’s liked and undeterred by childish name calling, the activist teenager remained resolute with her weapon: shame.  At every opportunity, Greta Thunberg steadfastly called out adults over twenty years her senior on what they have failed to do; she did it in words that are simple, precise and direct.

After Senator Tom Carper tried to placate her by telling her that young people would soon have the chance to run for office themselves, she returned: “We don’t want to become politicians; we don’t want to run for office. We want you to unite behind the science.”

Carrying herself with admirable focus and buoyed by her dedication to her cause, Greta Thunberg delivered a scintillating speech to close to half a million climate marchers in Montreal:

“Some would say we are wasting lesson time; we say we are changing the world… The people have spoken. And we will continue to speak until our leaders listen and act. We are the change and change is coming.”

In a recent article in the Washington Post, entitled “Greta Thunberg Weaponized Shame in an Era of Shamelessness”, Monica Hesse writes: “We live in an era that has become impervious to shame. An era defined by a president who views it as a weakness. Shame has become an antiquated emotion and a useless one. It’s advantageous, we’ve learned, to respond to charges of indecency with more indecency: attacks, misdirection, faux-victimhood.”

But real shaming—the kind that mothers do with their errant boy-bullies—is precisely what Greta is doing. This kind of shaming cuts deep, because it is the deep and recognizable truth. And it is done through the “mother archetype”—the most powerful energy on this planet.

Gelin tells us that the prominently older white men who are leading these attacks on Greta Thunberg (and by association, other prominent female climate activists such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) “is consistent with a growing body of research linking gender reactionaries to climate-denialism.”

Scientists Jonas Anshelm and Martin Hultman in the journal NORMA  analyzed the language of a focus group of climate skeptics, to discover a major theme:

“for climate skeptics … it was not the environment that was threatened, it was a certain kind of modern industrial society built and dominated by their form of masculinity.”

On the heels of the #MeToo movement, climate activism—largely led by strong females—appears to threaten gender identity of conservative males. Right-wing nationalism, anti-feminism, and climate denialism appear inextricably linked. I would add that their lack of respect for and acknowledgement of indigenous peoples is by default part of the package, given that indigenous peoples are so tied to the land and the ecosystem (being destroyed). One need only look to what is currently happening in Brazil for an atrocious example of this kind of male-bully behaviour.

Climate science for skeptics becomes feminized and viewed as “oppositional to assumed entitlements of masculine primacy,” write Hultman and Paul Pule in the 2019 book “Climate Hazards, Disasters, and Gender Ramifications.” Hultman identifies a set of values and behaviours connected to a form of masculinity identified with industrial patriarchy. These males “see the world as separated between humans and nature. They believe humans are obliged to use nature and its resources to make products out of them. And they have a risk perception that nature will tolerate all types of waste. It’s a risk perception that doesn’t think of nature as vulnerable and as something that is possible to be destroyed. For them, economic growth is more important than the environment,” which they choose not to understand—just like women.

The gender gap in the United States is characterized by men who perceive climate activism as inherently feminine. This was demonstrated in a 2017 article in Scientific American entitled, “Men Resist Green Behavior as Unmanly.”  Researchers Aaron R. Brough and James E.B. Wilkie argue that “women have long surpassed men in the arena of environmental action; across age groups and countries, females tend to live a more eco-friendly lifestyle. Compared to men, women litter less, recycle more, and leave a smaller carbon footprint.” While some researchers have demonstrated that women’s prioritization of altruism may help explain this gender gap in green behaviour, the research done by Brough and Wilkie’s—involving more than 2,000 American and Chinese participants— showed that men linked eco-friendliness with femininity and a risk to their masculinity. These findings, coupled with a natural inclination for anti-feminism by older white conservative males, places them at the centre of a major reactionary backlash against climate action.

Gelin ends on a sober note: “As conservative parties become increasingly tied to nationalism, and misogynist rhetoric dominates the far-right, Hultman and his fellow researchers at Chalmers University worry that the ties between climate skeptics and misogyny will strengthen. What was once a practical problem, with general agreement on the facts, has become a matter of identity. And fear of change is powerful motivation.”

Nina Munteanu hiking with her son

When fear powers motivation, we must counter with something stronger: hope through action, compassion, and community. And, again, women are in great abundance of these.

“Keep inspiring and organizing,” says Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to young Greta. “We’re going to save the planet. All of us, together.”

We are all, after all, “the mother.” So, while the old guard of conservative immature men obsess in saving their egos and identities in this crisis, and put up walls of vitriol, name-calling, “flaming”, and “trolling,” it’s up to us, mature women, to really save the planet, the mother of us all.

So, why will women save the planet? Because “Mother Knows Best,” after all…

Time for a paradigm shift. We’re not in the fifties anymore…

 

Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” will be released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in 2020.