The Troubling Rise of Eco-Fascist Solutions to Climate Change

“Human population numbers absolutely must contract, rapidly, probably to around 1 billion human souls…One’s knee-jerk fears about eugenics, euthanasia, and genocide don’t change the ultimate fact that we are in a dire state of population overshoot that must be corrected in short order.” These were the words said to me the other day in the Sierra Club Marin Facebook Discussion Group. This rhetoric was not employed by some troll or climate denier, they were made by the groups administrator and an executive committee member for the Sierra Club Marin. They are a textbook example of eco-fascism and Malthusianism and the Sierra Club of Marin’s Board refused to condone them. These words parallel a growing ideology among the left, especially well-off white liberals, to take “aggressive” action to address climate change. This is not a fringe movement. 24% of the population believes that the population is “far too high” and there is growing evidence that eco-fascist groups have been growing rapidly throughout the US. Their solution to environmental degradation is the enactment of global or selective one-child policies, eugenics, or brutal migrant suppression strategies enacted through authoritarian governance. I want to take this moment to explain where this type of rhetoric originates, why it’s growing popularity so rapidly, why it is so dangerous, and what are the actual solutions to environmental degradation that avoid mass genocide.

1. Where this rhetoric originates

Eco-fascism is not new. The idea of forced population control can be tied all the way back to Aristotle that argued that large populations would lead to “certain poverty on the citizenry” that needed to be controlled through forced abortions and exposition of newborns. In 1798, Thomas Malthus published An Essay on the Principles of Population in which he warns of exponential population growth and argues that human misery, especially of the poor, was an “absolute necessary consequence.” This ideology sparked the growing idea of Malthusianism in the west, especially among prominent environmentalists. For example, Madison Grant, who founded the Bronx Zoo and help establish Denali, Olympic, Everglades, and Glacier National Park, wrote The Passing of the Great Race which Hilter considered one of the great works of eugenics. Gifford Pinchot, the first head of the US Forest Service, served on the advisory council for the American Eugenics Council for 10 years. Henry David Thoreau stated that “the policy of the General Government toward the red man is not only liberal, but generous….To save him from…utter annihilation”. Population control’s connection to environmentalism grew within fascist regimes of the 1930s. The term “Blood and Soil”, a common slogan for the Nazi party, harkens back to the idea that genocide was a necessary to cleanse the land of non-white communities that were considered dirty and tainted. This was often used as a justification for mass-arson in predominantly migrant or Jewish neighborhoods as these communities were seen as more urban and less agrarian. After the war, these ideologies flourished, especially in the US. In 1968, Paul R. Ehrlich published the best-selling novel The Population Bomb in which he argued that the solution to the “population problem” were “brutal and heartless decisions” such as introducing sterilants into the water supply. These ideologies seeped into many left-leaning environmental organizations, including the Sierra Club. Just look at John Tanton, a self-proclaimed eugenicist, founder of the non-profit Zero-Population Growth, and leader within the Sierra Club for several years. The growing popularity and normalization of population control measures were the leading reason for the enactment of policies such as the forced sterilization programs in 26 different countries including India, China, Bangladesh, Canada, the Czech Republic, Japan, and right here in the United States where the government sterilized nearly a third of all women in Puerto Rico and 25–42% of Indigenous women seeking health care.

Even to this day, eugenics is a popular sentiment among leading environmental scientists. 11,000 scientists signed a statement last year urging for limiting population growth, potentially through eugenic practices, to save the planet. Prominent scientists have also bolstered the idea. Jane Goodall, for example has stated that “All these [environmental] things we talk about wouldn’t be a problem if there was the size of population that there was 500 years ago.” David Attenborough has said that “population growth has to come to an end” and that the naturally stabilized population is “rather higher than the Earth can accommodate”. Richard Dawkins has said that eugenics would work “in practice” and Bill Nye the Science Guy has supported state-imposed penalties for having “too many” children in an effort to address environmental concerns. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities has stated that such a policy would increase racial disparities.

To be clear, I am not arguing that continued exponential population growth is a good thing. A growing population does lead to increased economic disparity, especially for those living in locations with limited natural resources. However, the idea that population control, or in its extreme form eugenics, can solve Earth’s environmental problems is fundamentally flawed. Not only are these policies heartless and often rooted in deep racialized and authoritarian sentiments, but they are also ineffective. They ignore the often significantly easier and more effective measures recommended by the scientific community and they ignore the cataclysmic economic repercussions of rapid population decline. While the historical context gives us some idea of where these hateful and ineffective policy suggestions came from, the don’t explain, however, why these ideas are gaining so much traction recently.

2. Why it’s growing in popularity

Eco-fascist sentiments are multiplying in modern society in part though coordinated efforts by a number of neo-Nazi groups including the Greenline Front, the Proud Boys, Patriot Front, and The Base. There is increasing radicalization of young, white, men often due to a feeling of disenfranchisement. Neo-Nazis such as David Lane, a member of The Order and the man who coined the 14 words, repeatedly uses eco-fascism ideologies in their recruitment materials. This is one of the reasons why, for example, the phrase “Blood and Soil” was chanted at the Charlottesville riots. Eco-fascist rhetoric was also chanted at the January 6th riots at the Capitol including by the Qanon Shaman. These eco-fascist groups admittedly use environmentalism as a gateway drug for more extreme authoritarian policies. A common framing is that “the siege pill” (accelerationism) often follows “the green pill” (eco-fascism). Fox News has also espoused these beliefs, for example, when Tucker Carlson claimed that harsher border control was a solution to preventing wildfires caused by asylum seekers.

The left, however, is far from exempt from these types of propaganda tactics to push ecofascist ideologies. Several misinformation campaigns have been aimed at left-leaning liberals. We saw this in Michael Moore’s most recent film Planet of the Humans released for free on YouTube last year. That film frequently cited Ozzie Zehner, the author of Green Illusions, a book aimed at discrediting the adoption of renewable energy sources because they require some amount of mineral extraction to develop while ignoring the massively disproportionate impacts from fossil fuels. Films like these push the idea that solving climate change is a matter of reducing one’s personal carbon footprint and population control. This is despite the fact that according to leaked company memos, the concept of a carbon footprint was devised by BP to reduce public pressure on companies to reduce their emissions. Even the post on Sierra Club Marin’s facebook page cited an article by Jasper Bernes titled Between the Devil and the Green New Deal which inaccurately argued for a liberal audience that renewable energy sources are unsustainable and instead a “revolution” is necessary to curb consumption. Many times, these liberal aimed eco-fascist talking points falsely prop up the idea that climate change activists and climate scientists are in bed with large corporations in order to make money from the Green Revolution while also profiting from their misinformation. These appeals to anti-corporatism though are effective and draw in large numbers of left-leaning individuals in order to reduce trust between scientists and the general public about climate change.

3. Why it’s so dangerous

Eco-fascism directly tied to several mass shootings. Mass shooters such as the Christchurch mosque shooter, the 2019 El Paso shooter, the Unabomber, and the 2011 Oslo shooter all sited eco-fascist rhetoric, including quoting Madison Grant, in their manifestos. These shooters caused the deaths of hundreds of innocent lives through shootings often targeted at migrant communities. This rise in environmental dogma in mass shooters signifies an increase in the use “purifying” the land as an excuse for mass murder by neo-Nazi group members. Eco-terrorists groups, the FBI reports, also cause an estimated $40 million in property damage each year.

While maybe not as striking as mass shootings, the misinformation pedaled by eco-fascists can sometimes cause even more harm. These ideologies specifically aim at discrediting climate information and potential solutions in order to promote extreme policy recommendations that bolster white-supremacy. As such, this growing belief directly contrasts work that climate activists are doing to push for climate legislation such as the Green New Deal. Climate change’s impact on malnutrition, heat stroke, and infectious disease is expected to increase global deaths on the order of several hundred thousand people per year according to the WHO. Therefore, every day that eco-fascist ideologies delay climate legislation is equivalent to hundreds to thousands of lives lost. This is besides the fact that the policies of forced sterilization and genocide that they are recommending would cause the deaths of billions of people. Even the suggestion of these policies perpetuates racial discrimination and shifts the blame away from rich countries to poor countries largely not responsible for climate change’s impacts.

4. What are the actual solutions

The important thing to realize is that no one needs to die in order to prevent the greatest impacts of climate change. The Yale Climate Institute puts the cost of transitioning the planet to zero greenhouse gas emissions to $73 trillion. That’s less than one year of global GDP and would prevent us spending $8 trillion in climate related damages each year. If the US devoted its military budget to solving climate change instead of fighting wars, it would pay for transitioning the US to 100% renewables in less than 5 years. What I’m saying is that the costs here are not out of reason and policies such as a carbon tax would shift a significant portion of the financial burden from the taxpayers to the corporations responsible for environmental degradation. Policies such as the Green New Deal would be able to transition the US to renewable energy in a just and equitable manner and, considering that 63% of the population support it, it would be political feasible as well.

What Malthusian rhetoric often ignores is the fact that the wealthiest countries are largely responsible for environmental degradation. 50% of carbon pollution is caused by consumption from the richest 10% of the global population with 71% of emission produced by just 100 companies. The poorest 50% of the population produces just 10% of global emissions. Billionaires emit roughly 1000 times as much as the global average. Eugenics policies, especially those directed at majority non-white countries, would do very little to address climate change. Importantly, also, they would not transition us to 100% renewable energy since they shift the blame away from fossil fuel companies and allow them to continue emitting as they please.

The global population is no longer growing exponentially. New research suggests that global population is likely to peak in 2068 and start to decline to 8.8 billion people by 2100 (Vollset et al., 2020). This population decline is due to falling fertility rates (partially due to pollution), migration to cities, increased use of contraception, an aging population, and increased education of women. The strong correlation between female education rates and national birthrates (Saurabh et al., 2013) is the reason why many organizations serious about addressing climate change also are putting effort into educating women in developing countries.

Overpopulation is not responsible for environmental degradation, capitalism is. Allowing companies to emit pollution without oversight or regulation is why we have lead in the water and excess carbon in our atmosphere. We cannot blame overpopulation for the failures of laissez-faire capitalism. Human life should not be seen as expendable so that we can take overseas vacations. People are the solution to climate change and Malthusianism only degrades our ability to value the connection between humans and the environment. While people are causing climate change, we are not separate from nature. We need to acknowledge that solving climate change is about valuing nature not devaluing human life. We need to act like we can solve this issue because we can and, with your help, we will.