The Ambiguous Role of (Eco)populism in the Work of Timothy Luke

Abstract The concept of “eco-populism” has been used by the political theorist Timothy Luke to designate the possibility of open-ended green political futures which might be constructed beyond the limited ecological imaginaries of technoscience, neoliberalism, and Marxism. This article interrogates the conceptual origins through which “eco-populism” became the preferred name for this alternative. Eco-populism is taken to rightly critique some of the class characteristics of ecological destruction, but it obscures their extension into the realms of reactionary politics, private property, and North American agrarian settler colonialism. This article develops an immanent critique of the formal limits of populism, while also demonstrating its historical formation in the US steers it away from more radical orientations towards climate justice.