Conservation Concept: Too Manly To Care
Has manhood lost its connection to environmental issues?
January 2026
I can't imagine that Edward Abbey, author of "The Monkey Wrench Gang", famed environmentalist (...and radicalist) was worried about being manly enough to his peers. His crew was too busy sabotaging construction equipment, power lines, and any other infrastructural linchpin needed for polluting, destroying, or degrading his cherished American Western wilderness.
Yet today, concerns span beyond any single canyon or desert. Climate change threatens the status quo across the globe, and the modern man doesn't care.
Several new robust studies spanning tens of thousands of respondents from the US and Europe now offer a clearer picture about the psychological minefield surrounding caring for environment issues, and climate change. The resounding result: a disconnect between masculine concerns and climate engagement. They're less worried about the issues, and they're less likely to feel a personal responsibility to do something about it.
Juxtapose this laissez faire attitude against Abbey who deeply felt the drive to clear his conscious in the name of doing what's right. For him, when legal, political, and cultural systems systematically failed to protect the natural world: he had a moral obligation to act outside the law.
What's especially damning is that the modern masculinity problems surrounding environmental concerns operate outside of political orientation. The trigger that researchers identified wasn't ideology, but emotional warmth. When environmentalism is framed as an act of caring or compassion, most men experience anxiousness about engaging, as it challenges their gender status. Caring is the problem.
Modern manhood is itself polluted, with antiquated hollow ideas about alphas, red pills; regurgitated by insecure WWE caricatures incapable of thinking past their own tiny... noses.
What Abbey felt was a responsibility grounded by high morals (something also lost at sea in the modern manosphere bullshit). Caring for land, water and future generations requires an acceptance of discomfort, loss, and drawing a line in the sand. Not to mention the heavy lift of compassion. And if that’s still too much, feel free to sink some teeth into the chemical, physical, and biological evidence. The physical sciences are more manly right? Either way, all roads lead to Rome, and the excuses will eventually run out.
Maybe pick up The Monkey Wrench Gang, it just reissued, celebrating 50 years.
Sources:
- Haselhuhn, M.P. 2025. Man enough to save the planet? Masculinity concerns predict attitudes toward climate change. Journal of Environmental Psychology. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272494425002555?via%3Dihub
- Dolan, E. W. 2025. Some Men May Downplay Climate Change Risks to Avoid Appearing Feminine. https://www.psypost.org/some-men-may-downplay-climate-change-risks-to-avoid-appearing-feminine/
- Abbey, E. 1975. The Monkey Wrench Gang. Harper Collins.