Why are white men being shamed as transport polluters?

Black women are the worst for carbon-intensive travelling habits, according to the Guardian, citing research by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR). Oh, sorry, I must have misread that. What the Guardian headline actually says is: ‘Wealthy white men are Britain’s largest transport polluters.’

But it is worth quoting the other way around because the former is, of course, a headline you will never, ever read – either in the Guardian, an academic paper or anywhere. There are very simple rules for this kind of pseudo-scientific stuff: if you are going to bring race or gender into a study it must always present white men in a bad light, and no other group. White men, on the other hand, must never be presented as victims – that is the preserve of other groups. The only surprise is that the IPPR hasn’t also tried to dig down into the travelling habits of gay and straight people so that it can add ‘heterosexual’ to the list of attributes shown by the people who are condemning us to what the Guardian likes to call ‘climate breakdown’.