Column frames fossil fuel push as cultural, not just financial
The EPA announced over the weekend it will lift carbon emission limits on coal- and gas-fired power plants, reversing Obama- and Biden-era climate policies, according to a Guardian opinion column published Thursday. In the column, which appeared in the Guardian’s “Comment is Free” section, Guardian US columnist Moira Donegan argues the Trump administration’s commitment to fossil fuels extends beyond donor relationships to what she characterizes as a cultural attachment to industries she describes as “manly.”
Donegan attributes the central argument to a 2018 paper by Virginia Tech professor Cara Daggett titled “Petro-Masculinity: Fossil Fuels and Authoritarian Desire.” According to the column, Daggett’s theory holds that the American right’s energy policy posture cannot be explained by recourse to “strictly material measures” and requires a “psychological explanation.” The column reports Daggett’s paper has circulated among political observers seeking to understand the Trump administration’s commitment to fossil fuels even as China has surpassed the United States in solar panel production.
The column documents substantial fossil fuel industry financial support for Trump. Energy companies donated at least $75 million to his 2024 campaign, and oil and gas firms contributed nearly $12 million to his 2025 inauguration fund, according to Donegan. She reports that at least $25 million came from Energy Transfer Partners and its CEO. Trump characterized the industry donations as part of a “deal” during his 2024 campaign solicitation, the column states.
The EPA action follows a 2022 Supreme Court ruling along party lines that, as the column characterizes it, came from the “Republican-dominated” court and held the EPA lacks independent authority to regulate carbon. The Trump administration has separately loosened carbon emission limits on vehicles and household appliances, according to the column.
Donegan’s central argument draws on Daggett’s framing that fossil fuels carry symbolic meaning beyond their economic role. According to the column, Daggett argues that oil and gas — and “the lifestyle markers and forms of consumption that they enable — think cowboy hats, broad asphalt highways, and big trucks parked before a field of swinging pumpjacks — represent an ideal of American manliness and dominance whose symbolic power has become a meaningful obstacle to a U.S. energy transition.” Green energy, by contrast, is characterized in the column as perceived as “effeminate.”
Donegan characterizes Trump’s policy decisions as “based on gut feelings and often motivated by obscure resentments” rather than ideological coherence, an assessment she presents as her own characterization of the administration’s motivations. The column argues Trump’s reverence for “the most brutish and regressive form of masculinity” constitutes a throughline across his actions, citing his “admiration for those who dominate and humiliate their rivals” and “his contempt for responsibility.” Donegan points to Trump’s appearance in the cab of a semitruck on the White House lawn — where, the column reports, he “blew the horn like a sugared-up kindergartener” — as emblematic of the administration’s broader posture and his “ostentatious recklessness towards the wellbeing of others or the prospects for the future.”
To illustrate what she characterizes as a cultural asymmetry, Donegan cites Bureau of Labor Statistics figures showing about 38,000 people work in U.S. coal mining, compared with about 100,000 yoga instructors registered with the Yoga Alliance. She argues politicians praise coal mining in ways they would not for yoga teaching because coal mining is “imagined as hardscrabble, honorable and masculine,” while yoga is “thought of as decadent, cosmopolitan and feminine.”
The column situates Donegan’s broader argument that the Trump administration’s energy posture cannot be explained by financial relationships alone. While acknowledging “staggering” fossil fuel industry donations to Trump, the column argues those relationships “may be less transactional than libidinal” in accounting for the administration’s commitment to polluting energy.