The Populationist Climate Futures Industry: NGO SF Capital, Eco-emotions and Speculative Ecofascism

This article examines the speculative climate futures fabricated by population-focused environmental charities and non-profit organizations, to explore how they draw on NGO Science Fiction (SF) capital and eco-emotions to promote neo-Malthusian ideas and interventions. Using a demopopulationist lens, the article focuses on scenarios, interactive media tools, audiovisual media and texts, and the contemporary discursive and affective tools used to propose family planning as a low-cost climate mitigation strategy. It contributes toward scholarship on demopopulationism by turning attention to SF capital and eco-emotions. The significance of this study is that it builds on critical feminist scholarship which documents the violence of population alarmist “solutions” to climate crisis to consider the role of the speculative and eco-emotions in what I term the “populationist climate futures industry”. With populationist arguments once again on the rise alongside pronatalism, it is vital to be attentive to how the populationist climate futures industry promotes neo-Malthusian ideas and interventions, co-opts the language of reproductive and environmental justice, and mobilizes eco-emotions. It is critical for the field of climate communication to attend to these ecofascist visions, the role played by the speculative in the circulation of populationist ideas across media and discourses, and vital to begin to understand how eco-emotions – a central concern in contemporary climate activism – can be weaponized for reactionary ends.