Their framing of environmental destruction as the “end of the world” is thinly guised all lives matter rhetoric, where indigenous life is assumed as other---less important than white survival---and blamed for planetary collapse. This reconstructs denial of indigenous ownership.

In addition, many 'end of the world' narratives interpellate subjects of white privilege by assuming that readers are not (currently) affected by the harms distributed unequally by global structures of environmental racism. For instance, Barnosky and Hadley) state, if you are anything like we are, you probably think of pollution as somebody else's problem…you probably don't live near a tannery, mine dump or any other source of pollution'. For many people of color, living near a source of pollution may be nearly inescapable as a result of structural-material discrimination, including zoning practices and the accessibility of housing. 30 Viewing ecological harms as 'someone else's problem' is a privilege afforded to those who have never been forced contemplate the destruction of their communities or worlds.31 At the same time, these authors - along with many others working in the genre - invoke narratives akin to 'all lives matter' or 'colour-blindness’ that erase unequal distributions of harm and threat. For instance, during their international travels for scientific research and leisure, Barnosky and Hadley (italics ours) describe a dawning awareness that the problems we were writing about were everybody's problems no one was escaping the impacts. . . including us'. They go on to frame as equivalent flooding in Pakistan that displaced 20 million people and killed 2000 with the inconveniences caused by the temporary flooding of the New York subway system in 2012. In addition, they cite evidence of endocrine disruption in American girls caused by pollution, stating that the youngest of the cohort are African American and Latina but that "the most dramatic increase is in Caucasian girls. In this framing, even though BIPOC children remain most adversely affected, white children are pushed to the foreground and framed as more urgently threatened in relative terms. These comparisons background the disproportionate burden of ecological harm born by BIPOC, and reflect a stark calculus of the relative value of white and BIPOC lives. The 'all lives matter' logic employed here constructs a universal human frailty in which responsibility for ecological threats is attributed to humans' in general, and the assignment of specific culpability is avoided. While Newitz avers that assigning blame [for ecological harm] is less important than figuring out how to. .. survive, we argue that accurately attributing responsibility is crucial to opening up futures in which it is possible to dismantle the structural oppressions that unequally distribute harms and chances for collective survival.

Preoccupation with the subjects of whiteness in end of the world' discourses is also reflected in the framing of BIPOC communities as threats to the survival of 'humanity'. These fears are perhaps most simply and starkly expressed in anxieties over population decline within predominantly white countries, paired with palpable fear of rising birth rates amongst BIPOC communities. Chillingly, such fears are often connected to the mere biological survival of BIPOC, and the reproductive capacities of Black and Brown bodies - especially those coded as "female', and therefore fertile' within colonial gender binaries. For instance, in his treatise on "over'-population, American settler science writer Alan Weisman addresses the 'problem' raised by the likely significant increase of survival rates (especially amongst children) as a result of widely-available cures for illnesses such as malaria or HIV. Since, he avers, it would be "unconscionable to withhold these vaccines, Weisman suggests that malaria and HIV research funding should also promote family planning - that is, control of BIPOC fertility - since 'there's no vaccine against extinction' Here, BIPOC survival and reproductivity is literally - even if not strictly intentionally - framed as an incurable disease that could culminate in 'extinction'. Although some of these discussions examine total growth in human populations globally,38 much of this research focuses on relative population sizes, usually of BIPOC-majority places to those inscribed as white. For instance, British doctor John Guillebaud predicts a 'birth dearth' in Europe while likening 'unremitting population growth' in other parts of the world to "the doctrine of the cancer cell' 39 Although these regions are described in various ways throughout the genre - for instance, as 'poor' or 'developing', the areas slated for growth are almost always BIPOC-majority. For example, Hungarian demographer Paul Demeny argues that Europe's population is steadily shrinking 'while nearby populations explode. Drawing on Demeny's work, Homer-Dixon warns of a future 3:1 demographic ratio between North Africa/West Asia and Europe, along with 70% growth in Bangladesh, 140% growth in Kenya, and a doubling of the populations of Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Nigeria. Directly after sharing these statistics, he appends a list of international news reports referring to, for example, clashes between Indigenous communities in Kenya, riots in Shanghai, and murder rates in Mexico. In so doing, he directly juxtaposes BIPOC population growth with stereotypes of violence and 'incivility'.

BIPOC are often represented in these narratives as embodiments of ecological collapse and threat, embedding the assumption that black people don't care about the environment, 42 and that the global 'poor' will always prioritize short-term economic needs above ecological concerns. This belief is reflected in travelogue-style descriptions of ecological devastation, including Barnosky and Hadley's musings, while on holiday in Utah, that the ancient Puebloan society collapsed because they had run out of water - a situation which they project onto future Sudan, Somalia, and Gaza. In addition, they diagnose the fall of what they call the 'extinct' Mayan community to overpopulation and over-exploitation of resources - despite the survivance of over 6 million Mayan people in their Ancestral lands and other places at the time of writing. These descriptions chime with the common refrain on the part of settler states that BIPOC are unable to care properly for their land, even in the absence of conflicting data. This constructed ignorance allows those states to frame BIPOC territories as 'wasteland' awaiting annexation or improvement, or as dumping grounds for the externalities of capitalism. What's more, the use of BIPOC communities as cautionary tales for planetary destruction strongly suggests that the redistribution of global power, land ownership, and other forms of agency toward BIPOC structures would result in ecological disaster.