ABSTRACT
In the mid-1990s, elements of the social justice movement joined growthists and religious conservatives in a veritable Greek chorus of opposition to the problematization of population growth. This unlikely alliance was highly successful in mainstreaming population denialism as well as turning overpopulation into a taboo subject, especially in the West. In the quarter-century since, natural scientists, environmentalists, demographers, journalists, and policy makers have systematically avoided problematizing population growth, with grave consequences to public awareness and debate as well as to interdisciplinary experts’ ability to properly diagnose the causes of and most effective remedies for climate change and a plethora of other creeping catastrophes. This chapter traces the ideological roots of population denialism and the taboo to age-old growthist ideation in combination with the shaming discourse and idealized expectations of human behavior from late 18th century utopian thought. The problem of overpopulation has become vastly worse over the last 200 years or so, but the rhetorical strategies for dismissing and shutting down discussion on the issue have hardly changed.
