“There’s Always Winners and Losers”: Traditional Masculinity, Resource Dependence, and Post-Disaster Environmental Complacency

Abstract

The 2013 Southern Alberta flood was a costly and devastating event. The literature suggests that such disasters have the potential to spur greater environmentalism and environmental action, as residents make connections between global environmental change and local events. However, the literature also suggests that residents in communities dependent on fossil fuel extraction might see technological disasters, like oil spills, as threats to their economic well-being, thereby limiting environmental reflexivity. Given that Alberta is home of the tar sands, how might a flood disaster affect men's environmental views, given both traditional notions of masculinity and men's economic dependence on oil production? Using a survey of 407 flood-affected residents of Calgary and in-depth qualitative interviews with 20 men directly impacted by the flood, this article demonstrates men's decreased tendency to change their environmental views after the flood. The qualitative data reveal that men justify this reluctance by shifting blame for climate change to the Global South, by arguing for the economic centrality of the tar sands for Alberta, and by discussing how a warming climate will largely be a positive outcome for Alberta. The article concludes with discussion of relevance for environmental sociology and for public policy.

“We Need to Do Something About This”: Children and Youth’s Post‐Disaster Views on Climate Change and Environmental Crisis

“…This finding is consistent with the work of Milnes and Haney (2017), who found that flood‐affected residents in Calgary expressed an increase in post‐disaster environmental concern, but this newfound concern was largely gendered. Disaster‐affected women were more than twice as likely to say that their environmental views changed as a result of experiencing the flood; disaster‐affected men, however, expressed more denial, reluctance, and complacency and viewed the disaster as a focusing event which drew undesired attention to climate change (Bishop 2014).…”

Out of Sight, Out of Mind? Geographic and Social Predictors of Flood Risk Awareness

“…For a more in‐depth description of data and methods, see also Haney (, ) and Milnes and Haney (). Table includes the descriptive statistics and metrics for all the variables used in the models.…”

“…The literature reveals that several demographic factors are robust predictors of risk perception, including income (Babcicky & Seebauer, ; Cutler, ), gender (Enarson & Scanlon, ; Henwood, Pidgeon, & Parkhill, ; Milnes & Haney, ; Morioka, ), race and ethnicity (Spence, Lachlan, & Griffin, ), occupation (Kouabenan, ), age (Kellens, Zaalberg, Neutens, Vanneuville, & De Maeyer, ; Tuohy & Stephens, ), ability/disability (Alexander, Gaillard, & Wisner, ), educational attainment, and access to information (Park & Vedlitz, ). It is of note that age is a significant factor regarding how people wish to receive warnings and risk‐related information, with younger people preferring newer forms of media (i.e., social media) and older people preferring traditional forms of media (i.e., television) (Feldman et al., ).…”

Management of sustainability transitions through planning in shrinking resource city contexts: an evaluation of Yubari City, Japan

“…Extractive activity leaves physical legacy such as infrastructure or pollution in the built environment which must be managed and/or remediated (Martinez-Fernandez and Wu, 2009). However, resource extraction may also leave cultural, political and psychological legacy such as unwillingness among municipal governments to accept the need to manage decline (Schatz, 2017); reluctance to reflect on environmental implications of extraction due to local economic dependency (Milnes and Haney, 2017); continued and unwarranted focus on developing largescale infrastructure (He et al, 2017); the need for governors to pick up the aftermath of actions and developments undertaken by private-sector operators (Martinez-Fernandez et al, 2012); and inequality and deprivation exacerbated by uneven distribution of high incomes from extraction-related employment (Reeson et al, 2012).…”