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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Miranda IossifidisORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND).
This article examines the speculative climate futures fabricated bypopulation-focused environmental charities and non-profitorganizations, to explore how they draw on NGO Science Fiction (SF)capital and eco-emotions to promote neo-Malthusian ideas andinterventions. Using a demopopulationist lens, the article focuses onscenarios, interactive media tools, audiovisual media and texts, and thecontemporary discursive and affective tools used to propose familyplanning as a low-cost climate mitigation strategy. It contributes towardscholarship on demopopulationism by turning attention to SF capitaland eco-emotions. The significance of this study is that it builds oncritical feminist scholarship which documents the violence ofpopulation alarmist “solutions” to climate crisis to consider the role ofthe speculative and eco-emotions in what I term the “populationistclimate futures industry”. With populationist arguments once again onthe rise alongside pronatalism, it is vital to be attentive to how thepopulationist climate futures industry promotes neo-Malthusian ideasand interventions, co-opts the language of reproductive andenvironmental justice, and mobilizes eco-emotions. It is critical for thefield of climate communication to attend to these ecofascist visions, therole played by the speculative in the circulation of populationist ideasacross media and discourses, and vital to begin to understand how ecoemotions– a central concern in contemporary climate activism – can beweaponized for reactionary ends.
Author(s): Iossifidis MJM
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Environmental Communication
Year: 2026
Volume: 20
Issue: 1
Pages: 231-246
Print publication date: 19/01/2026
Online publication date: 19/01/2026
Acceptance date: 04/12/2025
Date deposited: 22/01/2026
ISSN (print): 1752-4032
ISSN (electronic): 1752-4040
Publisher: Routledge
URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2025.2601613
DOI: 10.1080/17524032.2025.2601613
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