Climate Change Skeptics and the Gender Gap

In his second week in Copenhagen covering the climate change talks, the BBC's Richard Black posed a question on his blog: "Why are virtually all climate 'sceptics' men?"

Well, not all of them, he goes on to say, but the most prominent ones (minus a few notable exceptions). "You might think it's a trite question," Black said.

Not really, but go on.

"It's a marked contrast to the world of mainstream climate science, which boasts a number of eminent female practitioners, including IPCC lead authors Susan Solomon and Cynthia Rosenzweig; and to the world of UN climate talks, where many delegations include, and are led by, women," he wrote.

In pondering Black's query, it's worth noting that men in general tend to be cited in the media more often than women. In fact, 86 percent of the guests on American Sunday morning political talk shows are men.

But there's another point to consider: the harms of global climate change don't fall equally on men and women. In fact, that's been one of the common complaints emerging at Copenhagen. Countries that industrialized later, people living in poverty, and women are all likely to be among the first impacted by climate change, and there's a fear that the effects will only widen existing inequality gaps.

According to a recent report from the U.N., women are more likely to die than men in the course of a natural disaster; women are more likely to live in the regions hit early by changing climate patterns; girls are more likely to leave school early because of these changes; and women often have less mobility or resources to move away from areas that have become less inhabitable. Oxfam also recently noted that women not only produce the majority of the world's food, they also make up the majority of the world's small farmers -- which leaves their livelihoods particularly vulnerable to global warming.

If women are less skeptical about the harms of climate change and more inclined to mitigate those harms, with so much at stake, it really doesn't come as much of a surprise.