A safe form of upper middle class ‘radicalism’?

Reading about Peter Sissons, the former newscaster who died this last week I was struck by the following:

After leaving the [BBC] in 2009, he became one of a number of former prominent newsreaders who took the opportunity to repeatedly criticise his former employer, accusing of it of leftwing bias and excessive political correctness while expressing his exasperation with its bureaucracy.
He became a prominent external critic of the BBC’s decision to accept the growing scientific consensus on the severity of the climate crisis, writing that the “BBC never at any stage gave equal space to the opponents of the consensus”. Sissons suggested that producers spent too long reading the Guardian’s science coverage rather than seeking alternative views.

What is it about some men of a certain age, an age I’m moving towards by the by, turning 54 this very month, who seem to gravitate towards climate denial? Part of me wonders is it a sort of faux-radicalism? Something that demands literally nothing of them whatsoever but about which they can, as it were, ‘virtue signal’ (let’s take that phrase back for ourselves) to their peers?