Should we blame Men for the mess the world’s in? War, greed, pollution, devastation, cruelty – the climate crisis???

Posted on by Opher

We should blame men for the climate crisis

Lucy Ellmann on 5,000 years of male-led environmental destruction

The Cyclops Steel Works in Sheffield in the mid-19th century.
Men ‘are they the instigators of the ruinous Industrial Revolution, which led to the vast contamination of air, water and land’. The Cyclops Steel Works in Sheffield in the mid-19th century. Photograph: Science & Society Picture Librar/SSPL via Getty Images

LettersThu 29 Jul 2021 18.10 BST

Arwa Mahdawi claims that men are not responsible for climate change (Don’t blame men for the climate crisis – we should point the finger at corporations, 27 July). This lets men off the hook a little too lightly. Not only are they the instigators of the ruinous Industrial Revolution, which led to the vast contamination of air, water and land, but men have also spent the last 5,000 years fighting, killing, colonising, enslaving, marauding, and yelling about football.

Who invented the capitalist system that Mahdawi agrees is so destructive? And who owns the corporations she so rightly condemns? Men.

So, no need then to quibble with the cited Swedish study. Of course we shouldn’t blame individuals. We should blame all men.
Lucy Ellmann
Edinburgh

As a man I am tempted to agree with her. Men through their greed and belligerence have created this mess.

The question is whether women would have done it any better. Looking at examples like Thatcher and Priti Patel. I reckon they’d have made as much of a mess.

But then there is Jacinda Ardern.

And most of us men are not uncaring, thoughtless, vicious, greedy bastards. We just keep voting the bad ones into power – and women are just as guilty of that!!