Men, Masculinities, and Earth: Contending with the (m)Anthropocene

Part IPreamble

© The Author(s) 2021

P. M. Pulé, M. Hultman (eds.)Men, Masculinities, and EarthPalgrave Studies in the History of Science and Technologyhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54486-7_1

1. Burning (and Drowning) in a Hell of Our Own Making

Paul M. Pulé¹  

(1)

The Division for Science, Technology, and Society / Department of Technology, Management, and Economics, Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg, Sweden

Paul M. Pulé

Email: paul@menaliveaustralia.com.au

Keywords

SwedenAustralian wildfiresThe Black SummerSARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19)California wildfiresClimate changeGlobal warming(m)AnthropoceneDisaster capitalism

Fire is power, and people do not surrender it willingly. In the near future combustion will continue to power the Pyrocene.

(Pyne, 2019, p. 195)

The pandemic is a spotlight that illuminates underlying problems – economic inequality, racism, patriarchy. Taking care of each other begins with understanding the differences. And when the virus has slowed or stopped, all these problems will still need to be addressed. They are the chronic illnesses that weaken us as a society, morally, imaginatively, and otherwise.

(Solnit, 2020, para. 13)

Humanity has arrived at a moment in history where the destructive forces of our societies on Earth’s living systems, including ourselves, are irrefutable. Those forces have manifested even more severely than pressing predictions about the (m)Anthropocene have indicated (Di Chiro, 2017; Hultman & Pulé, 2020; Raworth, 2014). As a species, we have been contending with these destructive forces through what Macy and Johnstone (2012, pp. 59–64) considered blocked responses—the places that dwell in us all that can pull us towards denial, refusal, sheepishness, self-interests, avoidance, paralyses, and resignation. Through centuries of wanton use and abuse of life’s riches, we have successfully set ourselves apart from Earth’s living systems (at least perceptively so). We have also become experts at separating ourselves from each other as well. Accompanying this, we have created ripe conditions for oligarchs to forge forth, drunk on their own primacy and hell-bent on preserving it at any cost (Mazzucato, 2018). This, despite recent glocal (global through to local) social and ecological events that have been calamitous for planet and people alike; recent regional fires in Australia, California, and the Amazon, which followed the same aberration in Sweden in the summer of 2018, have been accompanied by an incapacitating global pandemic. Together, these events have affronted life as we knew it, raising the question: how did we get here? (Mostyn & McLeod, 2020; Taylor, 2020; United Nations Environment Programme, 2020).

Global warming is one of the most consequential of human impacts on the planet, being directly linked to these unprecedented regional fires. What was once an intellectual exercise, a concern, a fear, a prediction, an ominous warning, a cautionary tale, is now our global reality. Martin is Swedish. I am Australian. In the European summer of 2018, his country burned at unprecedented rates. In the 2019–2020 southern fire season, Australia incinerated its way through what is now known as the Black Summer. Having closely tracked the climate data for almost twenty years, and living as well as working on gender and environment issues in Sweden, I was horrified and, sadly, unsurprised, by the damage unfolding before my eyes. The lives of loved ones, trusted friends, wildlife, and Country were roasted to oblivion as firenadoes raced through vast swaths of my homeland. As the crisis unfolded, it was blaringly evident to me that the ferocity of the Australian wildfires was of our making. Consider these sobering facts:

Box 1.1 Australia’s black summer (2019–2020)—impacts and response

Australia’s average national surface temperature has increased by approximately 1°C since 1910, the majority of that warming happening since 1950. Notably, the summer of 2019–2020 was the hottest and driest year on record in Australia, registering a 1.52 °C net national surface temperature increase, with 2020 proving to be the joint hottest year for the planet on record, despite a 7% fall in fossil fuel consumption in 2020 due to the global economic and lifestyle impacts of COVID-19 (Commonwealth of Australia, 2020a; Carrington, 2021). Rainfall averages in southern regions of the continent have notably declined since the 1970s, plunging the nation’s most intensive regional land use areas into unprecedented drought; that same year, precipitation was 40% below the national average (Commonwealth of Australia, 2020b; Doyle, 2020; Evershed, Ball, Chan, & Bowers, 2018; Freund, Henley, Karoly, Allen, & Baker, 2017).

In the Australian fire season between July 2019 and March 2020, 194,000 km² burned—equivalent to approximately 80% of the total area of the United Kingdom, and included conservative estimates of the incineration of 21% of that nation’s total forested lands (Evershed, Ball, & Zhou, 2020; Fanner & Leaver, 2020). In some southern and eastern fires, the burns were so hot on the back end of this long period of reduced rainfall that some forests were reduced to dust, leaving those areas increasingly vulnerable to erosion from wind and rain, and severely reducing the bioproductivity of affected native and arable lands. More than 100,000 domestic livestock died or needed to be euthanised, with 12% of the national sheep flock and 9% of the national cattle herd (approx. 11million head in total) destroyed, injured or displaced (Bell, 2020). More than 1.25 billion native animals perished; 119 species requiring urgent management having lost 10% of their natural ranges, with 30% habitat loss of 471 plant species and 191 invertebrates unique to Australian biomes, with these numbers likely representing conservative estimates (Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment, 2020). This, on a continent that already holds the harrowing reputation of the highest mammalian extinction rate on the planet. Immediate economic productivity losses were tipped at AUD$3.5 billion, with projections of up to AUD$20 billion in lost national revenue in affected areas far into the future (equivalent of up to 1% of Australia’s GDP), with many communities and ecosystems likely to struggle to fully recover, if at all (Khadem, 2020). More than 10,000 buildings were destroyed, approximately 3000 of which were people’s homes (Kontominas, 2020). Tragically, twenty-five people lost their lives, most selflessly fighting fires to protect their own properties and communities, or those of others. That number could have been much worse, had many not responded with swift action to regional evacuation instructions from the Department of Fire and Emergency Services (DFES). Fire commissioners came out as current and retired senior public servants to stress the link between these catastrophic events and climate change (7News Australia, 2019; Dunne, Gabbatiss, & McSweeney, 2020).

The response to this national tragedy by the Federal government was checkered at best, and confoundingly masculinist. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison was lambasted for his contemptuous Hawaiian family holiday while the December 2019 fires gathered momentum. Upon his return, he placed his attention on public relations spin to prop up his image ahead of tangible actions that should have included swift Federal emergency response, military deployment, and decisive political will at the national level to execute rapid policy reform to assure Australians that the risk of such a tragedy repeating would be signficantly reduced. Such steps only emerged after localised emergencies regionalised, and growing numbers of property and lives were lost. These outcomes pressured Morrison to offer begrudged acknowledgment of links between the fires and climate change in ways that formed a thin veneer over his long-held climate denial sentiments. He proceeded to make promises of more asset investments to assist future efforts, accompanied by some latent humanistic sympathies (including multiple occasions of forced and failed handshakes and hugs) that were met with broad public rebuke. His public approval ratings plummeted with the electorate lambasting him for an apparent arrogance and for having done too little too late, while pandering to his own bruised ego and special interest lobbies that called his attention away from climate change as the root cause (News.com.au, 2020). This was met with a national sense that climate scepticism and policy lethargy was largely to blame for the unfolding disaster (BBC News, 2019). The Morrison government’s national climate policy remained protected by ingrained masculinist sentiments and as a consequence hardly flinched. All in one fire season, in one nation, at one moment in time.

This scenario was heart-wrenching as much as it was foreboding. The numbers were not simply difficult to fathom, but revealed the indiscriminately devastating impacts of anthropogenic climate change on all of life, which ignored transitions from wild to farmed lands, state boundaries, gendered divisions, socio-economic divides, segregated neighbourhoods, etc. (In the line of fire, 2020). Australia’s Black Summer might well have been the great leveller. It might also have served as vindication by the many experts and everyday citizens who have been organising for action to prevent a heating climate; action that could have reduced the severity of these outcomes were policy changes implemented in advance and in alignment with the best part of a generation’s worth of scientific warnings. Instead, these calls  have been intentionally stymied by climate deniers and fossil-fuel lobbyists spreading economic woe and conspiracy theories (Badham, 2020). The Morrison government took the same tack as they had been taking with the student climate strikes in the months prior; a numbing, antipodean stay calm, and carry-on (with business-as-usual) was unofficially woven throughout the initial Australian federal government response. The window of prevention and early intervention was lost. The result was sheer devastation.

From the frigid climes of a (warmer than usual) Swedish winter, I watched footage and read testimonials with tears rolling down my cheeks. Tracking one dear friend’s personal account from South Coast New South Wales on social media, my head shook at the stupidity and inaction of Australia’s leaders at that time. Having spent many years exploring the fragile biomes of my homeland, I was well aware that so much loss would be painfully slow to recover, if it recovered at all. With this realisation, my patience—that part of me that strives to be considerate, listen to others’ views, give space for dissent, acknowledge that there is a place at the table for controversy; the vestiges of my reasonable-ness burned to crisp. It was as if the Australian inferno reduced my final niceties, which were warming my cockles in the Nordics, to dust. In response, I levelled up to even more incisive courses of action than I was already engaged in; instigating discussions among friends and colleagues online, both in Sweden and back home, about our collective thinking on where to from here. I gave public speeches, and through my posts, emphasised the links between climate science and the Australian fires (cf. Matthews et al., 2015; Badham, 2020). As the Black Summer raged, I offered the following to an old friend in Australia who sought my counsel by publicly posting a response to their understandable despair and overwhelm on Facebook:

1.

Witness and feel this

2.

Vote

3.

Connect deeply with loved ones and Earth places that are soul food for you … in other words play and celebrate the majesty of life

4.

Demand climate action—including support for local groups and their activities ...for climate justice, and be completely unapologetic about it

5.

Educate yourself about the facts

6.

Reduce flying

7.

Seek out a more plant-based diet

8.

Invest in sustainable technologies. Divest in fossil-fuel, weapons, colonisation, and corporate greed—entirely

9.

Learn about and find your place in a degrowth revolution

10.

Localise. Localise. Localise.

… These ten action steps are powerful gestures of responsibility, accountability and care for the common good, of which we are all an integral part. Start here … there are plenty more to discover that will present themselves as your great callings … I am cheering you on. (Paul Mark Pulé, 2020)

This was my rebuttal to agenda-laden distractions proffered by culture war evangelists on that same and other threads. Conspiracy theorists from both ends of politics attempted to convince us that the Australian wildfires were localised scenarios or freak events; the products of poor land and water management strategies, and overly controlling big government. These are arguments I won’t bother to cite here. Needless to say, I took exception to them. Focusing on such claims would have given them oxygen. I was not, and am not, willing to offer these drongos¹ that. As the embers cooled and the intensity of the Black Summer eased, the socio-political implications of the wildfires demonstrated just how tightly bolted to their privileges some power-brokers are. It was blaringly obvious that industrial owners, propped up by climate denial agendas, would rather pay the price of preserving their primacy than prevent the losses that Australia incurred, and the world witnessed. I found this jaw-dropping.

Further to wreaking havoc on people and place, the Black Summer should have been a watershed moment. The torching of vast tracts of the Australian landscape was not only exacerbated by an accelerating global climate emergency. These fires (as with events like them all over the world that are straining ecosystems, communities and individuals to breaking points) were also the consequence of a gendered problem; a swaggering masculine hegemony that has placed care for the common good last while pursuing primacy for some. With this, the Australian government fiddled. Under Morrison’s leadership, the nation continued to court similar climate scepticism to that which characterised the Trump Administration.² In unison with fellow Australian Raewyn Connell (this volume, Chapter 3), I found this to be yet another example of men in positions of authority refusing to bite the hand that feeds them—and to hell with the cost! In Chapter 3, Connell identifies four social groups as the major players in global power relations, those being: oligarchs, corporate managers, dictators and state managers. She rightly holds these elites accountable for the Black Summer (and more), forewarning us that their collective grip on this planet is chokingly white knuckled; she contests their patriarchal dividend by calling forth manifestations of a peaceable, convivial and supportive masculinities … [through] a major social movement that is still in the making. Alarmingly, some six months after the Australian wildfires smouldered, California suffered the largest wildfire season in its recorded history, with almost 4% of the state erupting into flames (Yan, 2020). The Amazon suffered a 28% increase in wildfires during that same period, burning 1.5 million hectares of land, most of which being forest euphemistically referred to as the lungs of the Earth. The impacts of the (m)Anthropocene on global life are mighty. Welcome to the Pyrocene (Pyne, 2019).

In case any vestige of doubt remains about what we are actually dealing with, consider the consequences of another emergency, also of global proportions. The SARS-CoV-2 (henceforth COVID-19) pandemic has been the most severe to grip the world since the Spanish Flu (1918–1920). By March of 2020, it brought life as we knew it to a standstill (Levitz, 2020; Tooze, 2020; Wilson, 2020). The great dream of working from home became a great incarceration, providing 20% of all human beings on the planet the involuntary opportunity to contemplate our social and ecological crises with existential focus. Contemplate this petition by acclaimed Indian novelist Arundhati Roy,

this virus seeks proliferation, not profit, and has, therefore, inadvertently, to some extent, reversed the direction of the flow. It has mocked immigration controls, biometrics, digital surveillance and every other kind of data analytics, and struck hardest—thus far—in the richest, most powerful nations of the world, bringing the engine of capitalism to a juddering halt. Temporarily perhaps, but at least long enough for us to examine its parts, make an assessment and decide whether we want to help fix it, or look for a better engine. … We can choose to walk through [this portal], dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it. (Roy, 2020, para. 5, 19)

Some seized the moment more so than did others. The economic, social and environmental outcomes of the pandemic recovery process remained to be seen. Governmental responses to COVID-19 exposed stark distinctions to the Black Summer. Where Australian federal and state investments in wildfire response and recovery remained parochial, global pandemic responses were broad and brazened. In the U.S., dollars in the trillions were promised to corporations and citizens, and as expected, the former, initially at least, got the lion’s share. Parallels to a war footing became evident in political rhetoric, through finding and freeing such dizzying amounts of money, in redirecting production and supply of needed resources, by rapidly passing bipartisan legislation, etc. (Allen, 2020). All of this unfolded in matters of weeks, but only when the very foundations of global economics that prop up the wealthy and powerful were directly threatened. These were the very same imperatives that climate leaders have been demanding for decades. And as the enormous difficulty of defeating COVID-19 set in, attention cycled back again and again to the hallowed (and hollowed out) global economy. Ironically, stockmarkets in some Global Northern nations soared to the great benefit of the wealthy (Collins, 2020). This proved that economies will not go to hell in a hay basket if radical economic measures are taken at times of extreme need. Such measures demonstrated what can be accomplished when it must, and how unjust these measures habitually are. Meanwhile, the rates of anthropogenic carbon pollution were slashed as billions were ordered to stay at home.

The combination of these disasters back-to-back exposed the paltry and self-serving nature of masculinist constructs. This, despite the fact that the consequences of industrial modernisation—like the fires and the pandemic—have raced indiscriminately (literally and figuratively speaking) across the globe; leaving no constituencies, no age group, no race, no species unscathed; its masculinist affections laying waste to forest and field as much as communities of the most vulnerable. We were reminded by fire and microscopic foe that the borders separating us from each other and the biosphere are fabrications. We have been receiving foreboding warnings about the whims of disaster capitalism for some time, which have now come home to roost (Klein, 2007).³

We are all in this mess together. But the distributions of accountability and impact are far from equal. Peters (2020) called attention to the links between a climate emergency and the COVID-19 pandemic as twin economic and public health concerns. She reminded us that mitigation strategies for such scenarios have long been at our disposal. However, they have been ignored or minimised, assuring crises on both counts:

Climate change is already killing people in extreme heat waves and other disasters; it’s also worsening food and water shortages and it will displace hundreds of millions of people. The same pollutants that contribute heavily to climate change also cause air pollution that kills millions of people each year. Diseases like malaria and dengue fever are likely to spread as mosquitoes move into new regions. And as with coronavirus, people living in areas with the fewest resources are being impacted most by climate change. (Peters, 2020, para. 4)

Single parents, typically women as primary carers, were most acutely affected by COVID-induced economic collapse (even though men succumbed to its lethality in greater number) (Hinsliff, 2020). Collins (2020) noted that as the pandemic’s bell curve began to steeply climb between 18 March and 10 April, more than 22 million Americans registered for unemployment benefits while that nation’s top billionaires grew their wealth by USD$282 billion (notably, by the end of April, 2020, the U.S. unemployment figure cracked 30.3 million). Of course, the wealthy were able to afford social distancing through their more spacious and secluded homes, placing them at much less risk of infection. Clearly, wealth propped up by masculinist systems salves pandemics for some. Similarly, corporate interests obscure climate mitigation legislation that would minimise the risk of unprecedented wildfires. Responses to pandemics and wildfires operate at the behest (and the impossibility) of infinite and very gendered pursuits of growth.

We have thrown ourselves into a cauldron. To say that life on Earth is heating up is literal. Such a statement is also an aphorism. The connections between Australia’s Black Summer and the COVID-19 pandemic are acute, even if responses and recoveries remain obtuse. The root causes of our global challenges can be boiled down to the same set of fragile structures that have, for generations, attempted to defy the ecological reality of humanity being in and of this Earth. Those structures are global, extractivist, individualist and profoundly narcissistic. They are hyper-masculinist and built upon a reflex of sacrificing life for the sake of self-interest. They are cracked systems whose fractures are rapidly widening. As they do, the contents of the cauldron, the elixir we call life, is spilling all over the floor. And here we are.

The conversation that follows is not intended as a panacea. It helps us make new meaning and find fresh direction at a time of great upheaval. It speaks to what this collection of writers consider to be some of the most fundamental pieces in the complex puzzle of life on Earth. Here, and building on our monograph (Hultman & Pulé, 2018), this international community of practice takes the next steps in unpacking the conundrums of men, masculinities and Earth. I am even more convinced that constructions of gender (and more specifically socially sanctioned expressions of masculinities) lay at the very heart of the global social and ecological problems we face. The discussions gathered together here give this contention consideration from a wide range of views.

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United Nations Environment Programme. (2020). Ten impacts of the Australian bushfires [Story]. U.N. Environment Programme—Climate Change. Retrieved from https://​www.​unenvironment.​org/​news-and-stories/​story/​ten-impacts-australian-bushfires.

Urban Dictionary. (2020). Drongo [Term Search]. Urban Dictionary. Retrieved from https://​www.​urbandictionary.​com/​define.​php?​term=​Drongo.

Wilson, J. (2020, April 7). How the right is responding to the coronavirus: Denial, realism or dangerous contrarianism [Article]. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://​www.​theguardian.​com/​commentisfree/​2020/​apr/​07/​how-the-right-is-responding-to-the-coronavirus-denial-realism-or-dangerous-contrarianism.

Yan, H., Mossburg, C., Moshtaghlan, A., & Vercammen, P. (2020, September 6). California sets new record for land torched by wildfires as 224 people escape by air from a hellish inferno [Article]. CNN. Retrieved from https://​edition.​cnn.​com/​2020/​09/​05/​us/​california-mammoth-pool-reservoir-camp-fire/​index.​html.

Footnotes

1

In Australian slang, a drongo is a no-hoper, someone inept, dim-witted, or slow-witted, who is in one form or another, stupid (Urban Dictionary, 2020). I realise that using this idiom is very unacademic of me; judgemental even. I make no apology. After all, this is a Preamble to the conversation that follows, so I take some liberties here. I hope you, dear reader, are able to generate some forbearance for me as an Australian gender and environment activist and scholar, who was deeply affected by the Black Summer and its ecological and socio-political fall-out.

2

Case in point; some six months later, as set-in from the COVID-19 pandemic had deadened our senses from months of lockdown, the Australian government announced a 21-point plan to prioritise carbon capture and storage that had been drafted by an expert panel headed by a fossil-fuel executive. The plan’s remit included approved recommendations to direct significant slices of the $2.5 billion AUD emissions reduction funding towards non-renewable technologies. The announcement was heralded as a coup for Australia’s fossil-fuel industry and stood in stark contrast to the stepwise IPCC recommendation of cutting global emissions by 45% below 2010 levels by 2030, towards an international target of zero emissions by 2050 (Morton, 2020). The policy announcement placed Australia far behind that recommendation despite the Black Summer. It positioned fossil gas as the nirvanic redeemer of that nation’s COVID-19 economic recovery plan, bolting carbon production and consumption to the Australian energy market (by positioning fossil gas as a permanent coal substitute rather than the transitional technology it had been touted to be). Such policy announcements are indicative of the long-held conservative trend to care more about having a job today than saving the planet tomorrow, which of course is code for prioritising present-time big business profits ahead of future economic and environmental sustainability (Murphy, 2020). This supposed national government virtuosity was to be conveniently funded by none other than the Australian taxpayer.

3

cf. Kreps (this volume, Chapter 23).

Part IIIntroduction

© The Author(s) 2021

P. M. Pulé, M. Hultman (eds.)Men, Masculinities, and EarthPalgrave Studies in the History of Science and Technologyhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54486-7_2

2. Discussions at the Table

Paul M. Pulé¹  , Martin Hultman¹   and Angelica Wågström¹  

(1)

The Division for Science, Technology, and Society / Department of Technology, Management, and Economics, Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg, Sweden

Paul M. Pulé (Corresponding author)

Email: paul@menaliveaustralia.com.au

Martin Hultman

Email: martin.hultman@chalmers.se

Angelica Wågström

Email: angelica.wagstrom@chalmers.se

Keywords

MenMasculinitiesEcological masculinitiesMasculine hegemonisationMasculine ecologisationDinner partyEcofeminismEnvironmental historyEcocriticismQueer ecologiesProfeminismRural sociologyCautionary tale

But the stream of time moves forward and mankind [sic] moves with it. Your generation must come to terms with the environment. Your generation must face realities instead of taking refuge in ignorance and evasion of truth. Yours is a grave and a sobering responsibility, but it is also a shining opportunity. You go out into a world where mankind [sic] is challenged, as it has never been challenged before, to prove its maturity and its mastery—not of nature, but of itself. Therein lies our hope and our destiny. In today already walks tomorrow. Scripps College Bulletin, July.

(Carson, 1962a, pp. 426–427)

This Earth—our home for eons—is reeling. And the problems we face are largely human made. Societies the world over have settled on extreme inequalities as normal. With this, humanity’s insatiable appetite for energy fuelled by fossils has caused an insidious and persistent rise in global temperature that is—despite the protests of a very well-funded and vocal minority—indisputable (Lenton et al., 2019; Lindvall, Vowles, & Hultman, 2020). As our world heats up, planetary biota are showing tell-tale signs of profound knock-on effects (Allen et al., 2018/in press). An accelerating climate emergency has compounded the socio-economic and political ramifications of pernicious industrialisation and corporatisation, unfettered consumption, and the erosion of civil liberties in faltering democracies around the planet (Burnell, 2012; Charlier et al., 2020; Piketty, 2020). Some of these social and ecological problems have been obvious to us for longer than the more recent climate emergency (first declared by Australian Greens local councillor Trent McCarthy in 2016). But even in the wake of runaway effects, comprehensive transformations in climate policy remain allusive. This is evident not simply from lethargic policy responses to climate science (Willis, 2019) or for that matter World Health Organisation (WHO) poverty and public health projections (Jessel, Sawyer, & Hernández, 2019). Reefs are bleaching, fisheries are collapsing, vast tracts of wildlands and billions of wildlife have been incinerated, biodiversity is on the decline the world over, the polar ice caps and ancient glaciers are retreating, and flooding is becoming routine. Meanwhile, the gap between rich and poor has widened and workers at the coal-face (pun intended) have watched what little privileges they might have earned from the sweat of their brows slip away (Kimmel, 2013). These vulnerabilities have been used by nationalists to impose restrictions on asylum seekers; spout Islamophobia; renew waves of anti-Semitism; rouse neo-Nazi/white supremacist resurgences; and indoing so, stoke the risks of international and domestic terrorism. Awash with hate, extremist groups give us a view into the world of internalised superiorisation run amok.¹ They are characterised by a pervasive presence of unfettered entitlement and veiled or enacted violence, specifically men’s violence, and in many instances, these tense tones are correlated with weaponised words, and more. Individuals and groups such as this have been fortified by right-wing ideologies preaching freedom while vilifying refugees and migrants, the liberals, the feminists, women writ-large, queers, and are commonly accompanied by a feverish love for uncontrollable and feminised country as necessary complements to masculinist nationhood. Alarmingly, such groups have become more overt in recent years, emboldened by the elevation of a number of populist political players, many of whom became heads of state (Meyer, 2020).

Gender and environment studies have offered compelling responses to these monumental times (Buckingham, 2020). As an emerging discourse (henceforth considered a conversation²) on men, masculinities, and Earth, ecological masculinities is located within that metanarrative. In a laconic policy brief for diplomats, national leaders and U.N. representatives in the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, Hultman (2020, paras 2, 6, 7, 8) stated the following:

If we are to … [create] a sustainable future—we need to recognize the historical patterns that have led us to this point. … to leave anthropocentric extractive logic behind, laws and norms need to be changed … our global climate emergency needs [to shift] … towards glocal care for our planet. Two suggestions to that end are … First … laws that protect the planet. … arguing that ‘nature’ in and of itself should be part of political decision making. Second is the need to change the gender norms that shape men into ‘industrial/breadwinner masculinities’. This way of framing maleness is today present mostly in the … cohort of climate change deniers and is failing both men themselves and the broader societies they live in … . A shift is needed toward masculinities with greater care for men themselves, as well as for women, [genderqueers], youths, societies, and the Earth.

As was argued in Ecological Masculinities (2018), attempts to regulate industrialisation through ecomodernist reform have proved to be far from adequate. Hultman elaborates on this point through his contribution to this conversation. In Chapter 7, he offers a retrospective look at his 2013 critical view of ecomodernism, giving consideration to the pariahic and problematic Arnold Schwarzenegger. Schwarzenegger’s superhero and Governator personas can be considered (re)brandings of ecomodernism. He has recently reincarnated as a climate justice warrior, litigating the worst carbon polluters (Oil Change International, 2018). With that, he is now also championing the causes of young climate justice leaders such as Greta Thunberg (Pyper, 2020). These gestures reveal that he is somewhat moving along a pathway towards masculine ecologisation. As a vocal and unapologetic Republican, Schwarzenegger remains a useful character to follow given his visible embodiments of asymmetries between economic growth and environmental care. He has done so by assuming a grandfatherly persona in support of the planet. Are these signs of progress; are we witnessing examples of Connell’s (1995, pp. 220–224) exit politics? If Schwarzenegger can articulate these kinds of changes, then surely anyone can—right? These conundrums raise more contestable questions. Does Schwarzenegger’s example let men off the hook, shifting our attention to a polluting molecule and industrialists in general as the ultimate bad-guys [sic]? In broader terms, the creators, drivers, and benefactors of the very fabric of modernisation, whether industrialised or ecomodern, are us, and a small number of us in particular, and an even smaller number of those, whom are almost entirely men. Unfortunately, tough guy [sic] litigation (Dovere, 2018) and the industrialised scaling up of renewables are not likely to prevent (even though they are successfully slowing) the global runaway effects that are now unfolding (Monbiot, 2020; Moore & Gibbs, 2020). At the heart of wanton mechanisms of power, wealth, influence, and control of industrialisation is growth. Beneath that is selfishness and greed. We live on a finite planet. We are part of it. And we are also immersed in it. This is the message of ecology, along with material-feminisms, feminist technosciences, Indigenous wisdoms the world-over, those demanding the Rights of Nature, and more. In his article, Hultman proceeded to summarise the core tents of ecological masculinities as one response to our inescapable reality:

In scholarship and education, younger and more aware men are turning toward what has been termed ‘ecological masculinities’ as a way to be just and careful with all humans and non-humans alike. Inspired by academic rigor from the traditions of ecological feminism and feminist care theory, ‘ecological masculinities’ enacting caring encounters with self and others, recognises our material interconnectedness with humans and nonhumans alike, identifying the costs of male domination as well in pro-feminist solidarity creating a just society for all bringing us back to Earth. (Hultman, 2020, para 8)

The contributions that follow are vital for planet and people, focusing on advancing ecological masculinities, which Hultman and Pulé introduced in their monograph (Hultman & Pulé, 2018). As discursive contributions, they guide reconfigurations of masculinities through ecologisation, not simply as an idea, but as pluralised praxes as well. The masculinities focus of such an Earth–others–self conversation to which the following discussions contribute was originally introduced to encourage boys and men (of the Global North) in particular—as constituents of the most dominating of human groups and the prime beneficiaries of traditional notions of masculinities—to join all the more in finding solutions to our global problems. Hultman and Pulé’s (2018) core argument noted that humanity is contending with a set of socialisations that make it difficult for configurations of Global Northern masculinities to expand to include care for Earth, others, and self—simultaneously. This anthology looks beyond that original focus. As the world we have constructed fractures, the socio-material enactments associated with masculinist dominator patterns in us all must change. It is correct to hold the wealthiest of cis-male human beings³ accountable for these problems. However, it is our contention that only doing so is an oversimplification of the problems we face. These few men are indeed responsible for the destructions they create; their influence is upheld by laws, values, norms, military, police, etc. In other words, unmarked/upheld constructions of masculinities prioritise the privileging of wealthy, white, Global Northern, cis-males, and in this sense, these problems are, at their root, structurally and personally gendered. They are socio-material configurations (Hultman, 2017) that fabricate enactments about how to be and not be in the world; these prescribed gendered social practices are not restricted to select cis-males alone. These socialisations are nuanced and impact different men, women and genderqueer people in different ways. Notably, the benefits of this gendered primacy reach beyond individuals to include their families and associates, as well as those who directly benefit from and/or aspire to their levels of privilege—hence the industrial/breadwinner categorisation that Hultman and Pulé developed—whose pervasive capacities to shape life on the planet affect us all (cf. Connell, 1995). As socio-material constructions, they define the ways that individuals and groups interact with our environment. None of us gets a free-pass here. The corporeal world permeates our lives, as we do it. Our gender identities determine (at least to some degree) the parameters of those exchanges, with normative masculinities governing their geometry. Gender performances are then societally prescribed, having considerable bearing on who is and how they are rewarded, or not. The consequential socio-economic and political privileging associated with these gendered social practices ensure that power and resources flow upwards towards the pointy end of hegemonised masculinist enactments. That said, all of us possess varying shades of masculinities that are imposed upon us and impact our lives. This has been thoroughly demonstrated elsewhere (Butler, 1990/2007; Connell, 1995; Foucault, 1982; Halberstam, 1998). The socio-material configuration of hegemonised masculinities impact genderqueers, women, and marginalised men, as they do cis-males, but not in the same way nor to the same extent. Wealthy, white, Global Northern cis-males, who are the prime beneficiaries of traditional masculinist constructs are also the most pressured to live within strict masculinist constructs. They are isolated and sensually cauterised at terrible cost to their emotional literacy and relational proximity to Earth, others, and self, even as they are socio-economically and politically advantaged (Kimmel, 2013). These masculinities are enmeshed with the instruments of their own oppression. MacGregor and Paterson (this volume, Chapter 6) concur:

Amid debates about who is the anthropos in the Anthropocene and calls for greater blame to be laid at the feet of the super-rich, there is curious silence about the positionality of those whose power and privilege are mobilised to protect them from existential threats. Much is made of the audacity of ultra-high-net-worth individuals who assume that they can survive impending collapse by living in gated compounds and underground bunkers, by offshoring their business, stockpiling (and hiding) cash and developing all manner of technological fixes. Yet it is often as if their status as the 0.1% also protects them from having their maleness put under a microscope; the fact that they are white, wealthy, aging, cis-gendered men is usually ignored, even by the most critical of climate politics scholars.

Notably, the privileges that accompany enactments of industrial/breadwinner masculinities centre on myopic care (Hultman & Pulé, 2018, pp. 10–12), which predominate but are not limited to dominating males. The most socio-politically and economically rewarded masculinities can lead to existentially empty lives, producing wealthy hungry ghosts whose appetites are never sated—Elon Musk could be considered one example of this (Pulé & Hultman, 2019b). Having exposed these complexities, we seek answers to the problems of society and environment that build on Ecological Masculinities (2018). As an evolving conversation, ecological masculinities provide opportunities for the continued discovery of grounded responses to the complexities of our times as they are particularly relevant but are not limited to men and masculinities. The discussions that follow build on these foundations.

This raises three important questions: are the socially and ecologically destructive impacts of men and masculinities being adequately held accountable in our times? What forms do those accountabilities take? And what responses can we expect? This conversation tends to such questions in order to unpack the masculinities of the gender/Nature⁴ relationship. Scholars and activists have been seeking answers to these questions for some time (Gaard, 2017, pp. 163–169). Some proponents for change have been acutely (and at times violently) targeted by those who benefit the most from global systems of oppression. Consider that in the year right up to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, youth climate leaders (most of whom are young women) were demanding that global leaders take effective action to mitigate the climate emergency. Their demands have been wisely patronised or ignored (Wearden, 2020), and some have received vitriolic attacks of misogynist and adultist denialism (Gelin, 2019; McCall, 2019). Granted, humanity as a species is complicit in creating and exacerbating our social and environmental crises. But as was introduced above, some human beings are more greatly affected by our social and ecological problems. Others are able to offset, buffer, dodge, manage, and buy themselves some semblance of reprieve through the advantages accorded them by economic self-interest. The recent Australian megafires (and those in California and the Amazon—Milman and Ho, 2020) along with the COVID-19 pandemic have placed the habitual distractions from the interpenetrating realities of a corporeal life by industrial/breadwinner masculinities into acute focus. Clearly, fossil fuelled industrial modernisation is not working; certainly not for most of us, even if for some. Understanding the gendered aspects of monumentally significant events such as these calls us to the intersecting terrain between ecological masculinities and Disaster Studies. Chapter 10 by Miller and Corprew provides precisely such a treatise. They note that disaster management is traditionally dominated by men, and tugs on the protector-provider ethos that accompanies them when urgent events arise. This was certainly the case for the fires discussed in the Preface and this chapter. Not only did Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, try to break free from his daggy dad persona to feign empathy in ways that significantly failed him during the Black Summer (Maley, 2020). Donald Trump defaulted to  the economy, stupid and pounded the pulpit for votes to retain the presidency, while struggling with an evaporating U.S. economy as COVID-19 gripped that nation, and hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens died. Both of their efforts resulted in leadership disasters, followed by elaborate spins to recover lost political capital, which ultimately failed as the livelihoods of many in both nations faltered.

As the health of society and environment struggle, the consequences of strongman politics have placed discussions on masculine ecologisation at the heart of our consideration for people and planet (Hultman & Pulé, 2018, pp. 1–2). Individuals enacting industrial/breadwinner masculinities through masculinist or malestream norms, are the most accountable for global social and ecological decay, not simply prior to disasters, but during and after them as well (Hultman & Pulé, 2018, pp. 3, 8–9). These insights expose the shortcomings of patriarchal and male domination.⁵ Creating and maintaining inequalities among people, fuelled by rapid extractivism, was described in Ecological Masculinities (Hultman & Pulé, 2018, p. 10) to be the result of masculine hegemonisation. This is a concept that built on Raewyn Connell’s tour de force on the pluralised hegemonisation of masculinities (Connell, 1995, 2001). While hegemonic forms of masculinities lay at the heart of our social and ecological problems, we must also recognise that alternative forms of masculinities are integral to collective solutions that are needed as well. Connell has given consideration to the links between masculinities and environmentalism for some time. Consider that:

Our understanding of men and masculinities has come a long way in the last 30 years, … [mapping] relations between different forms of masculinity: hegemony, marginalization, violence, and fearful avoidance. We understand better that destructive actions—including environmental crime—are not mechanically ‘caused’ by masculinity but are purposive means of achieving valued masculinity. … Understanding masculinities also helps our thinking about environmental movements. … Environmental movements are sites of encounter; … [that] may also reproduce gender hierarchies. … Contemporary authoritarian populism, drawing on environmental denialism, tries hard to mobilize these [hierarchical] forces and has had some success. Yet men have a great deal to contribute to environmental movements, to stabilizing the Sociocene and finding sustainable futures. … Knowledge about masculinities has been put to good use by antiviolence activism, and in health and educational work. It will be valuable for environmental activism, too. (Connell, 2017, pp. 5–7)

Connell’s introductory statements from the Proceedings of the Rachel Carson Center’s workshop on Men and Nature: Gender, Power, and Environmental Change emphasise the broad front across which ecological masculinities must operate. The notion of pursuing a theoretical framework for ecological masculinities has resulted not only in the publication of the Ecological Masculinities (Hultman & Pulé, 2018), but the emergence of a new international field of study and activism. Ecological masculinities expands on earlier musings and academic texts on masculine ecologisation  (Bliss, 1987; Connell, 1990; Twine, 1997), as well as the discovery of the first use of the term ecological masculinities (Woodward, 2008). The Gender and Environment metanarrative has been critically considered by eminent scholars and activists for some time (cf. Buckingham, 2020; Butler, 1997; Connell, 1995; Gaard, 2017, Halberstam, 1998; Hearn, 2015; MacGregor, 2017; Mathews, 1991; Mortimer-Sandilands & Erikson, 2010; Næss, 1999; Pease, 2019a; Plumwood, 1993; Salleh, 1997; Warren, 1987). In response to an international request for more research into the field of study and action, the conversation presented in this anthology provides a widening circle of authors with an opportunity to join in shaping ecological masculinities into the future. Here, we have gathered together scholars who have analysed issues of social and ecological significance through a masculinities lens. Their combined efforts capture the most recent innovations in discussions on ecological masculinities. They share a pursuit of the common good. This growing community of practice and their multiplicity of views are instrumental in supporting this conversation to become an established, international, and pluralised conversation.

Honourings

While their collective efforts are cutting edge, the discussions that follow build on a number of key foundational contributions that are worthy of acknowledgement. There is a long and somewhat hidden history regarding masculinities and environment. Notably, there are some women scholars and activists who have long recognised the antagonistic relationship between men, masculinities, and Earth.⁶ Further, the rigour of ecological feminism, championed largely but not exclusively by women, is a great source of inspiration for the development of ecological masculinities. In Sweden during the first half of the 20th century, feminists were already writing about issues of masculinities and environment (Laula, 1904/2003; Wägner, 1941). Rachel Carson deserves special mention as well, followed by several other important contributors from the second half of the 20th century (Carson, 1962b; cf. d’Eaubonne, 1974; Merchant, 1980; Plumwood, 1993). Through the turn of the 21st century, others have contributed to this topic but in relative isolation (overviewed in Hultman & Pulé, 2018, pp. 189–222). There have also been emerging climate considerations, ecocritical discussions, and critiques of men’s combined violence towards women and Earth (cf. Allister, 2004; Anshelm & Hultman, 2014a, 2014b; Cenamor & Brandt, 2019; Kato-Wallace et al., n.d.; Pease, 2019a). However, it is important to note that a formal and theoretical framework specifically dedicated to interrogating the intersecting terrain of men, masculinities, and Earth has only recently been developed (Gaard, 2015; Hultman, 2013; Hultman & Pulé, 2018; MacGregor & Seymour, 2017; Pulé, 2013; cf. Paulson & Boose, 2019). Prior to the emergence of ecological masculinities as an international conversation (Hultman & Pulé, 2018), we acknowledge the following contributions that represent a series of preliminary explorations of the topic.

Environmental historians have provided us with deconstructive discussions on men, masculinities, and Earth in reference to sports, notions of wilderness, and connections to colonisation (Bouchier & Cruikshank, 1997; Loo, 2001; Smalley, 2005; Sramek, 2006). Also consider direct and indirect literary reverences to masculinities and hunting (Abbey, 1988; Hemingway, 1936; Snyder, 1960). Abberley (2017) provided an interesting analysis of the interspecies encounters captured in Darwin’s and Wallace’s travel memoirs, reflective of New World discoveries viewed through the lens of Victorian masculinities. Other historical research provided useful insights into the values and practices of Earthcare as they are impacted by gender identities. Merchant (1980) revealed the ways that Western European colonisers assaulted First Nations peoples and the lands that sustained them for millennia. Drawing her analysis from the pictorial representations of North American westward expansion, she noted that generations of pioneers confronted wilderness determined to convert,

dark, virgin, undeveloped nature (natura naturans) to final platonic, civilized, ideal form (natura naturata) … the transformation from the undeveloped disorder of the wilderness to the ordered, idealized landscape … an enlightened world made safe for educated Euramerican men and women. (Merchant, 2003, p. 129)

This was of course nothing short of a land grab, driven by Manifest Destiny, repeated in other colonised lands, such as Australia through terra nullius. Merchant’s groundbreaking work exposed the standard racist and masculinist fare of Western European imperialism as it expanded across the globe. Also consider the Green Belt Movement initiated in 1977 as a feminist anti-colonialism environmentalism (Maathai, 2004), and the anti-nuclear movements throughout the Global North (Caldicott, 2006; Kall & Hultman, 2018; Wågström, 2017), as well as the struggles for professional recognition by women in the Natural Sciences (Reed, 1978; Warren, 2000, p. 21).

The field of ecocriticism has offered literary scholars opportunities to disentangle masculinities and the environment by cross-examining fictitious environmental heroes as exemplars of idealised ecomasculinities (juxtaposed against masculinist threats to planet and people). These fictions hold social currency and offer alternative paths forward for men and masculinities in a deeper relationship with Earth (Allister, 2004; Buell, 2005; Oppermann, 2011; Woodward, 2008). Some ecocritical contributions to the ecological masculinities conversation are considered below and again at book’s end (also see Discussion 5). Other scholars have explicitly studied extreme sports, film, and American literature while also exploring transformative impacts of these activities on shifting men’s attitudes towards more ecologically considerate paradigms (Cenamor & Brandt, 2019; Cornelius, 2011; Salovaara, 2015). One notable text has been Requena-Pelegrí’s important article on caring masculinities and the environmental crisis (Requena-Pelegrí, 2017). There, she argued that masculinities are unavoidably entangled with care for others (both human and more-than-human), positing that although care has featured prominently in the studies on men and masculinities of the preceding decades and has been essentialised and [t]raditionally encoded as feminine and thus relegated to the undervalued realm of emotions, it is important to also recognise that care has historically been antagonised from normative definitions of masculinity (Requena-Pelegrí, 2017, pp. 143–144). Indeed, care is not absent, but is problematised and individualised by traditional notions of masculinities.

Ecological masculinities has also been shaped by the queering of environmentalism (Gaard, 1997, 2014; Mortimer-Sandilands & Erikson, 2010; Seymour, 2013). Of particular interest to the masculinities patina of queer ecologies is an article by ecofeminist scholar, Gaard titled Toward New EcoMasculinities, EcoGenders, and EcoSexualities published in Adams and Gruen’s (2014) anthology Ecofeminism: Feminist Intersections with Other Animals and Earth. Gaard made a strong case for the rise of what she referred to as radical democratic social movements of eco-activists and scholars through an intentional deconstruction of the role of the dominant Master Self … in order to recognise and enact eco-political sustainability and ecological genders … to start thinking about eco-masculinity (Gaard, 2014, pp. 225–226). She later noted that:

In advancing a truly ecological and feminist masculinity, the heterosexism implicit in hegemonic constructions of masculinity would need to be resisted (cf. Hultman 2013; Anshelm and [sic] Hultman 2014a, 2014b) drawing on insights and questions from the new queer ecologies (Gaard 1997; Mortimer-Sandilands & Erikson 2010). What would an eco-trans-masculinity look like? … Could we imagine ecofags, radical faeries who dance and flirt and organize for ecosexual justice? (Gaard, 2017, p. 169)

The questions raised here are some of the most important contributions to reach beyond the tricky ground of essentialism when engaging with gendered language and analyses, which was also recognised and discussed in Ecological masculinities (Hultman & Pulé, 2018). Ultimately, we consider ecological masculinities to be an assortment of discussions that are moving considerations of men, masculinities, and Earth towards a post-gendered analysis. Queer studies are particularly relevant to this intent. Developments are underway. Gaard’s climb down into the complex depths of queered ecomasculinities analyses (this volume, Chapter 25), along with Twine’s queer referential retrospective (this volume, Chapter 3), and Hauk’s expansion beyond the constraints of binary worldviews (this volume, Chapter 27) are not only inspiring but guiding as well (cf. Heiliger, this volume, Chapter 9; Wågström, this volume, Chapter 11). With this progress in mind, we clarify that this conversation captures a step in the process of moving us towards a post-gendered destination within the broader Gender and Environment metanarrative. This is of course a moveable feast; the discussions that follow reflect the conceptual and practical standing of ecological masculinities at this moment in time, which includes both gender binary and post-gender binary conceptualisations and praxes.

Social Science scholar and activist Pease (2019b) has also recently tackled issues of climate justice through the lens of a feminist environmentalism (Pease, this volume, Chapter 26). Pease posits the following view:

Materialist ecofeminists and feminist environmentalists have long recognised that men’s dominating and controlling relationship with nature is connected to hegemonic forms of masculinity. However, understandably, most research on gender and the environment is focused upon the impact of environmental crises on women and what they can do about it. When men and masculinities are discussed, the focus tends to be on the role they have played in environmental degradation. It is now time to understand why men behave as they do and to develop strategies to change them. (Pease, 2019a, Chapter 10, Section 7, para. 2)

Pease (2014, p. 65; 2019, p. 403) thus remains suspicious of attempts to encourage men’s deeper communion with Nature, noting the limitations of some men seeking to find redeeming features in traditional masculinity in response to eco-feminist critiques, which can embolden essentialist notions of masculinities and risks letting sexist, and at-times violent and misogynist, reactions against (ecological) feminism off the hook. He defers instead to the importance of feeling the pain that comes from recognising the costs of men’s socially and environmentally destructive actions (Pease, this volume, Chapter 26; cf. Enarson & Pease, 2016). The conversation captured in this anthology is one response to Pease’s call.

Also consider a study on environmental justice and rural concerns. Pellow (2016) claimed that an adequate gendered dimension was still missing from rural studies. He argued that scholars must give greater attention to the ways in which gender and sexuality might work in rural environmental (in)justice contexts since rural natural spaces in the U.S. have historically been socially constructed not only through discourses that are racialized, but also in ways that are deeply masculinist, patriarchal, and heteronormative (Pellow, 2016, p. 5). In a similar vein, also note empirical research on student environmental movements by Chan and Curnow (2017). Based on an extensive participatory study of a student environmental group, these researchers discovered that men (particularly white men) tend to occupy airtime in discussions and more readily hold themselves as experts, conveying rational arguments, seeking practical solutions, and drawing up lists of tasks to get there (Chan & Curnow, 2017, p. 83; cf. Jackson, 2017, p. 310; MacGregor, 2010). The pull for these men to forge forth and fix, rather than fold into the collective wisdom of the group was exposed; subject to socialisations of entitlement ahead of inclusion. Such patterns pervade both urban and rural groups engaged in environmental activism.

Rural sociology broadly examines the sociological implications of non-urban life. Globally, contracts on farms are changing away from small holdings and towards corporitsation and industrialisation; rendering farming a masculinist practice all the more (Graeub et al. 2016; Hultman, 2015; Stenbacka, 2007). Some research pays particular attention to the intersection of gender identities and the environment and their geographically specific practices in rural regions (Campbell & Mayerfeld Bell, 2000; Campbell, Mayerfeld Bell, & Finney, 2006; Emel & Laoire, 2001; Mayerfeld Bell, 2000). Scholarly attention has also been placed on outdoor activities such as fishing, hunting, and industrial labour, specifically in the context of natural resource extraction in rural regions (Brandth & Haugen, 2005; Keller & Jones, 2008; Saugeres, 2002; Venkatesh, 2017; Loomis, this volume, Chapter 12) as well as studies on changing gender identities in the countryside as they are shaped by the rural economic drain that accompanies urbanisation (Brandth & Haugen, 2005). Rural sociology also explores counter-cultural and ecologically friendly practices as sources of deeper understanding of men, masculinities, and Earth through small holdings, sustainable food productions, back-to-the-land, and ecovillage initiatives (Connell, 1990; Laoire, 2002; Peter, Bell, Jarnagin, & Bauer, 2000). Connell (1995, p. 120) proposed that these environmentally sensitive settings enable men to launch direct challenges to hegemonic masculinity through: ideologies of equity; an emphasis on collectivism and solidarity; active engagements in personal growth; and celebrations of the organic wholeness of all of life facilitated by more equitable engagements with community through growing food and animal husbandry. The structural issues examined by such studies must be factored into any effective ecologised masculinities conversation precisely because many rural regions are awash with farmers, many of whom are men, some of whom are attempting to politicise their actions, and have done so in hegemonic throughout to equitable ways. After all, localised farmers have been working intimately with the land in ways that scholars have not for millennia; though the research that scholars generate can provide important contemporary connections between regenerative, land-based immersions of farming (e.g. permaculture, biodynamics, slow-food, and low-food-mile movements) and pressing social and ecological concerns (such as sexism and climate change) (Alston, 2015). Consequently, these studies can be instrumental in assisting us to understand the interplay between masculinities and the intimate encounters with Earth that pervade rural spaces.

These various explorations of masculine ecologisation problematise the conditional care that characterises malestream masculinities. They collectively demonstrate the gendered flaws of industrial/breadwinner and ecomodern masculinities (Hultman & Pulé, 2018; cf. Milnes & Haney, 2017). Studies that overlook the intimate aspects of care for Earth, others, and self, such as research on the oil and tar sands industries, accentuate extractivism at great cost to Earth, marginalised others, and even the existential aspects of the most privileged of selves (Miller, 2004). In this sense, simultaneous care for planet and people is pushed aside by special interests that reify hegemonisation. These faltering threads of malestream research expose the troublesome aspects of the intersecting terrain of men, masculinities, and Earth all the more. Constructive and critical analyses of this nexus are needed while also seeking alternatives that must be rigorously conceptualised and practically tested. We suggest this precisely because socialisations of masculinities have been dominated by the rousing rhetoric of capitalists, libertarians, incels, nationalists, and white supremacists, and truly needs – in our view – the voice of broader, deeper, and wider care to be centralised as an ecologised counterbalance that provides something new, different, and life sustaining that distinguishes a viable future from the old, tired, and harmful traditions of masculine hegemonisation (cf. Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005; Hultman & Pulé, 2018, pp. 2, 76–79). This is not only a socio-political exercise levelled at the metanarrative of Global Northern patterns of social practice. A circumspect example can be seen in Requena-Pelegrí’s (this volume, Chapter 5) intersectional analyses of North American literary classics as well.