Opinion By Megan MacKenzie Sat at 1:00pm
Growing up in Moose Jaw, Canada, it never occurred to me that some people didn’t know what truck nuts were.
For all you city-slickers, truck nuts (or truck nutz, depending on your preferred provider) are crafted testicles designed to hang from the back of your truck. You’re welcome.
What’s the link between Australia’s politicians, truck nuts and big bush fires?
Photo Trucknuts
The answer to this question might be the key to overcoming the global climate crisis, so buckle up.
Trucks and fast cars have long been understood as symbols of wealth and masculinity. Truck nuts just added a ball-shaped exclamation point to this statement.
But driving a big truck has been used to convey more than manhood.
There’s a history of people coal rollin’ or retro-fitting trucks so they burn more diesel and produce heavy plumes of black smoke.
Consuming fuel and producing smoke are a way to both signal hyper-masculinity and an open distain for environmental concerns. A smoky middle finger to environmentalists, if you will.
There are entire Instagram pages dedicated to coal rollin’, with some drivers making a sport out of blasting smoke at bikers, protesters, Asian-made cars (called “rice-burners”), unsuspecting female pedestrians and hybrid cars.
Here’s where truck nuts and coal rollin’ become helpful in understanding why (mostly white male) political leaders like Trump, ScoMo and Albo champion fossil fuel extraction even as the country literally burns and in the face of overwhelming science regarding the climate crisis.
Put simply, fragile masculinity might be the biggest obstacle to real climate action. Masculinity has been associated with fossil fuel consumption, extraction, and burning for decades.
Who are our biggest climate deniers?
Cara Daggett uses the concept of “petro-masculinity” to describe the ways that fossil fuel extraction has historically been used to fuel western development and provide world leaders with power and a sense of manliness.
Leaving fossil fuels in the ground symbolises a loss of power and money. Some male leaders see real climate action as a threat to power and to profit, through extraction and exploitation of the environment.
Male resistance to climate action has bipartisan support. Any hope that the Labor party might offer climate policy alternatives the Liberals went up in smoke in the past few months as Anthony Albanese announced he doesn’t want to phase out coal.
Researchers in Norway also found what they call a “cool dude effect” when it comes to climate change.
Photo ‘I don’t believe in global warming’ art.
They show that white conservative men, especially those that think they understand the science of climate change, are the biggest climate deniers and the least likely to be moved by further research.
There are multiple examples of ‘cool climate dudes’ and petro-masculinity, including “right wingers…going crazy about meat”, by embracing diets called “the carnivore” or “the caveman” at the same time that vegans are belittled as “soyboys” and “beta males”.
Animal agriculture is the second largest contributor to human-made greenhouse gas emissions and researchers says plant-based diets are best for the environment and for our health.
Yet, a recent Twitter poll had 45 per cent men report that their biggest barrier to a vegan diet was social stigma.
In her incredible article, Victoria Galiardo-Silver concludes, “fragile masculinity says meat is manly”.
This researcher is united in the conclusion that white conservative men have been the ones with the most power in western countries and they have the most to lose by efforts to change long standing practices and structures, including those associated with the environment.
We must shift the way we see world leaders responding to the climate crisis. They are not ill-informed or ignorant, they are just fragile and anxious. We can help them recover.
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Geezo Pete, this is getting to be worse than the obnoxious decade of the 1970s. I’m tired of this crap. I really am. This beeyatch wrote an article that is not just a clanker – full of absolute crap – but let everyone know she just doesn’t like men?
Tough bananas, you flabby, bony harridan! How do you think you came into this world? Artificial insemination, maybe? Get your own special island, Tootsie! Make sure you sniff the air just in case any testosterone is present. Teh horror!! Get the air freshener!!!!
Does that cow think she just suddenly sprang into existence out of a mudball, or something?
I have ZERO interest in living in a world without men. I also cook.
Right there with you Sara, men are great! As are most…many…some women? What’s with this extreme feminism BS.
I live in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan and it’s the first time I ever heard of testicles on a truck. Sure, there are recurring jokes about the sizes of ball hitch used to pull farm trailers, but the truck nuts thing seems pretty obscure.
Maybe I’m being just a little rude here, but it just seems as though Australia’s gain of this particular editorialist was also Moose Jaw’s gain by subtraction, if you see what I mean.
You are so lucky David! It’s getting really annoying, their numbers are growing.
Thanks Megan MacKenzie, funny to read, but as you surely know, the less you know about climate change the more you tend to steer away from the science and economics.
With your logic Michael Mann must be female and Judith Curry must be male. Can’t you see there is something wrong here?
Gotta love academics who fall prey to Eurocentric thinking.
It’s all the evil white men eh?
Looking at the top 15 carbon emitting countries, I only count three (USA, Russia, Canada) that are currently led by white men. I guess you could argue that Iran, Brazil, and Mexico are also run by white men, but people from those countries are usually identified by their religion (Islam) or their geographic/linguistic origins (Hispanic) rather than by their skin color. Either way, the majority of major global emitters are NOT run by white men.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e7/Total_CO2_emissions_by_country_in_2017_vs_per_capita_emissions_%28top_40_countries%29.svg
Claiming that white men are the problem when only a fraction of the people running the countries that emit the most of the devil gas CO2 is a serious flaw in her argument. There are plenty of people of color and female leaders that exhibit the same behaviors she attributes exclusively to white men. I can only assume she made that mistake because, when she thinks world leaders, she only thinks of first-world European or European-derived countries and completely forgets the vast majority of the world’s population. In fact, most of those Eurocentric countries led by white men have in fact declined considerably in their CO2 emissions over the last quarter-century. It’s the rest of the world that has seen rising CO2 emissions in the same time frame.
You are right to raise this issue Steve. Men are tired of the ‘privileged white male’ label, and rightly so. Such a stupid label. She does not acknowledge that there are 100’s of powerful women globally. Some of them leading countries. Why haven’t they put up their hands to fix the world?
I’m not sure when ‘labels’ became a form of catagorising people but it doesn’t work. It creates division and resentment. The white male label doesn’t tell the full story, any more than any of the labels on there own.
“They show that white conservative men, ESPECIALLY THOSE THAT THINK THEY UNDERSTAND the science of climate change, are the biggest climate deniers and the least likely to be moved by further research.”
I literally spit out my coffee reading this!
Sun heats Earth – Earth heats atmosphere – water vapor and a few other trace gasses keep it warm at night – planetary movements and axial changes effect ocean temperature creating many oscillations giving us long term climatic cycles – differences in the timing and frequency of said oscillations create shorter term cycles – geomagnetic forces as well as solar magnetic forces also seem to have an effect on thermal distribution.
I’m just a guy interested in the topic who reads this blog and others, no scientific background and I THINK I UNDERSTAND the science of climate change (at least on the surface level)
Neofeminism is a scorge to science. This period of history will most certainly be in textbooks some day in the future.
Starting off her article with a reference to truck nuts showed right off it shouldn’t be taken seriously. Because truck nuts. But that bit you quoted was really the money shot for me. So, so many flawed assumptions and other “bad things” wrapped up in that one sentence, that you just know she’s one of those people there’s literally no point in talking to about…well, anything, really. Fortunately, not everyone from Saskatchewan has their heads so far up their buttockses. Winters are not kind there.
And here was me thinking about doing something about global warmening when I see I’m not wanted and the ladies have it all well in hand. Time to hang out at the bar I suppose.
Everytime I see some knuckle dragging redneck driving down the highway with a set of “trucknutz I want to stop him and give a good swift kick in the trucknutz for being such an overbearing asshole.
It’s not funny, it’s low resolution with a lot of noise…rednecks, it’s either their stomachs or their testicles their thinking about. Not much more than that going on up there in there pointy heads…
It’s not funny, it’s low resolution with a lot of noise…rednecks, it’s either their stomachs or their testicles their thinking
aboutwith.Fixed it f’ya
You’re welcome
“It’s not funny, it’s low resolution with a lot of noise..”
Got your goat didn’t it?
Just watching the reaction of closet supermen,such as yourself, is worth the few dollars adorning a pickup.Anything that drives you back into your “safe space” is definitely funny and worth doing.
In other words;”Who made you the arbitrator of humour”?
In todays climate anything that aggravates the scold and nags is an investment in your children’s future.
We are living the results of tolerating political correctness,which has empowered the useless and clueless to the point where civilization may fall.
The “Can Do” mentality and spirit of our “Knuckle Dragging Rednecks”is what gave us this life of luxury.
And anyone who uses that label :”Knuckle Dragging Redneck” is both a fool and most likely mechanically incompetent.
Most of us have noticed the link between distain for competent people from the useless.
I’m a post-modern vegan.
I still eat meat and dairy, but only with a twist of irony
Hatred and fear of masculinity. Another progressive mantra.
ANd here I thought that men got all into fossil fuels because civilization…. (which we came up with to try to reduce the nagging from women about the cold cave floor)… yet we got SJWs and femi-nazis, instead.
Rule number 5 from Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals: “Ridicule is man’s (sic) most potent weapon.” Use it early and often when you see this kind of tripe.
These days the man is simply returning the ridicule, he’s gone into defensive mode.
That article is so pathetic with tired, toxic, feminine rhetoric that I’m yawning too much to comment further on it. (-_-) … (-_^) … (-_-) … zzz
Let’s see now, she played the sexist card, the race card, the age card, the “consensus” card”, a few newly invented cards (What the hell is “petro-masculinity”?). Maybe I missed it but I didn’t see her play the “Models” card. (Those “petro-males” might have liked that.)
Never saw her present any actual measurements (That would make the Models look bad. (Maybe that’s why the “petro-males” don’t find them appealing?)) or “scientific method” type science.
If you’re going to bluff, sometimes you have to hold the right cards.
Hey, y’all!
After reading that “article” I’m actually starting to feel “cool”! Thanks, Megan! (me blowing her a kiss).
“There are entire Instagram pages dedicated to coal rollin’, with some drivers making a sport out of blasting smoke at bikers, protesters, Asian-made cars (called “rice-burners”), unsuspecting female pedestrians and hybrid cars.”
Bosch contends that a re-engineered diesel ICE is greener, all things considered, than a BEV. BEVs are its competition. If I were in charge there I’d assign a team with the task of building, selling, and sarcastically advertising trailers containing diesel generators as BEV accessories.
They would be called Tesla Tenders and BEV Boosters and, when attached for long trips, would convert BEVs into temporary PHEVs. IOW, they’d extend the range of an owner’s BEV, eliminating range anxiety. They would be easy to tow, being short, shallow, narrow, and lightweight—maybe under 200 pounds (??). (A trailer containing supplemental batteries would be too heavy to be practical.)
Perhaps they could be profitably sold for under $5000, and maybe even as low $2500 (for a gasoline-powered version) by a company like Honda. It would be a hoot if over 10,000 were sold—which I suspect might be do-able.
Maybe Big Oil or the Kochs could be persuaded to fund the development of such an item, for fun and profit. For additional deviltry, and for an implicit “dig” at BEVs reliance on fossil fueled electricity, a coal-powered trailer should be offered, using a Stirling engine to drive the generator, and fine-grained, fluid-bedded coal to reduce the smoke to a somewhat tolerable level.
This tender would have four wheels, be half or more the size of the car, have room for storage or sleeping, and be designed to look like the tender of an old-fashioned steam locomotive. It would have the lonesome, moaning, whoo-whoo whistle of those locomotives, and their clanging bell. It would have their chuff-chuff sound effects too.
The cost could hopefully be under $10,000—but it would be worth it a hundred times over, for lulz. The owner of a Bolt + Booster (coal-tendered) could challenge a Roadster to a cross-country race, and win, for instance. Other opportunities for social leg-pulling will no doubt occur to me after I post this—and, hopefully, to you too. YouTube videos of the thing in operation, and the outraged sputterings of our green clerisy, would be a barrel of laughs. Just do it, please, someone!