Funnily enough, you don’t come across too many pieces in the Guardian blaming black people for crime or women for bad driving. The newspaper would perhaps consider itself a pioneer in trying to drive out racial and gender stereotypes from daily life. It seems a different matter, though, when it comes to the inadequacies of white men, or, more specifically, elderly white men, to throw in a bit of ageism as well. An extraordinary piece in today’s Guardian tries to link what it calls ‘climate denial’ to race, gender and age.
Let’s leave aside this rather oddly-expressed phenomenon — I have yet to meet, or even hear of, anyone who denies that the Earth has a climate – and assume that what the author means is that an overwhelming number of people who are sceptical about climate change are elderly, white and male. It isn’t just the Guardian which has reached this conclusion, either – the piece links to a couple of papers of pseudo-scientific guff purporting to show that you are proportionally more likely to be sceptical of climate change if you are of Caucasian appearance and in possession of a willy.
It has never occurred to me to undertake a racial and gender analysis of people expressing views on climate change but I guess it is true that most are white and male, and a few of them are getting on a bit, too.
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