ABSTRACT
Many chapters in this volume have explored the multifarious ways in which gender intersects with the impacts of climate change, and our mitigation and adaptation. This chapter turns attention toward the many ways gender also intersects with the fossil fuel industry—the primary source of greenhouse gas emissions and hence the focal point of societal responses to climate change. Those intersections, while often hidden from view, are the key to understanding the resistance of this industry to change, and to transformation. The authors explore the relationships between gender and the fossil fuel industry by examining hegemonic masculinity and fossil fuel’s cultural dominance in Alberta politics. They argue that fossil fuel–based economic sectors are deeply intertwined with masculinity. Through the example of Alberta, this chapter demonstrates how the entanglement of specific masculine identities with fossil fuel extraction facilitates deeply held loyalties to the industry that are difficult to overcome and have significant repercussions for a low carbon future.
