The Petro-Masculinity of Donald Trump and Elon Musk
Since the inauguration of his second term in the White House, President Donald Trump has dedicated himself to undoing actions of the Biden-Harris administration and enacting new orders that diminish any hope to alleviate the climate crisis. Trump also continues to perpetuate discrimination against marginalised groups. In January, he signed an executive order mandating the government to only recognise two sexes – male and female – and remove gender identity considerations in federal policies. While Trump’s convictions of climate inaction and misogyny are often treated as separate dimensions of his presidency and his self, the concept of petro-masculinity reveals how they can be mutually constituted.
The term ‘Petro-masculinity’ was coined by Cara Daggett in 2018 to explain how the rise of authoritarian movements in the West can be seen as molded by climate change denialism and misogyny to appeal to a certain type of men who felt left behind. This logic is obvious within Trump’s motto ‘Make America Great Again’ which can be seen as ‘petro-nostalgic’, a desire to return to an America centred around a white, hegemonic masculinity and fossil fuels. The American way of life revolved around a version of white, patriarchal rule in which masculinity required intensive fossil fuel consumption and, for the working- or middle-class, jobs within or reliant upon fossil fuel systems. Trump boasted in his 2025 inaugural address that ‘We will be a rich nation again, and it is that liquid gold under our feet that will help to do it.’ This liquid gold not only fuels the capitalist lifestyle that Trump seeks to ‘make America great again’ but also contributes to the identities of the white, middle-class men who he seeks to empower. These men, idealised as the backbone of traditional American values, are tied to an image of masculinity built on fossil fuel-driven industries like mining, where their sense of worth is inseparable from the energy that fuels the economy. The affront of global warming or environmental regulations appear as insurgents on par with the dangers posed by feminists and queer movements seeking to leach energy and power from the state/traditional family. Thus, Trump’s promise of energy dominance serves not only as a political agenda but also reaffirms a gendered social order where women, queer people, low-income families and people of colour are excluded and marginalised.
Trump understands that a sustainable future will mean more than just substituting out one type of energy for another. It requires challenging a modern Western culture and a way of life that is premised on unending growth, expansion of cheap energy, and mass consumerism. Right-wing climate denialists understand that there is significant change required and their response is defiance. The MAGA movement is a reactionary defence of the social hierarchies they seek to uphold – those of gender, race and capitalism.
It is interesting to consider Elon Musk’s role within Trump’s campaign considering that Tesla’s electric vehicles are front and center to his success. Where we can see Musk aligning with Trump is in the toxic masculinity that guides his eco-modernism. For example, the Cybertruck, one of Tesla’s signature vehicles, was designed to look like a military vehicle and its testing was carried out by throwing a baseball at its window. More recently, Musk tweeted the names and titles of federal employees who he claimed had ‘fake’ jobs; all employees targeted were women with jobs which relate to the protection of the climate. In doing this, Musk has put these women’s lives in danger as his legions of followers target them with online and in-person attacks. Moreover, Musk serves to legitimise and amplify narratives that frame climate action as a threat to personal freedom and economic growth. In this way, Musk’s version of eco-modernism does not oppose Trump’s fossil-fuelled vision but rather reshapes it into a more technologically advanced, yet equally extractive and exploitative future.
The climate denialism and toxic masculinity within Trump’s presidency and Musk’s eco-modernism illustrate how deeply entrenched fossil fuel dependency is within broader social and political structures in the U.S. Petro-masculinity is not just about preserving fossil fuels—it is about preserving a specific identity that is threatened by a sustainable future and the changes that it requires. Trump and Musk, in their actions since joining forces in office, both serve to reinforce the idea that real men dominate nature rather than learn from it. As the climate crisis intensifies, so too will these reactionary defences of fossil-fuelled patriarchy.
Image courtesy of the White House via Wikimedia Commons, ©2025. Some rights reserved.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the wider St. Andrews Foreign Affairs Review team.
