Ringing the Existential Alarm: Exploring BirthStrike for Climate

Abstract

Climate change is altering the horizon of a liveable future and as a result giving rise to a host of anxieties: ecological, demographic, reproductive, and existential. The BirthStrike for Climate collective was a group of people who were reconsidering reproduction as a result of the climate crisis. In exploring the case of BirthStrike we consider how these decisions were used as a tool for “existential” activism and how the campaign was encountered and discredited in the public realm. We argue the campaign ignited numerous anxieties, resulting in an inability to “hear” the existential threat BirthStrikers aimed to call into focus.