What is a "Cornucopian government"?

Question

The following excerpt is taken from a best-selling vocabulary workbook: Check your English Vocabulary for IELTS

page 52, Q7. The Cornucopian government made this sudden decision to dissuade / rescind / sever diplomatic relations with their neighbouring countries.

The answer is sever.

I admit I had to look up the adjective, Cornucopian. Although I knew what cornucopia meant: the basket or container shaped like a horn (from the Latin cornu copiae, ‘horn of plenty’) filled with the fruits of the land, a symbol representing fertility, prosperity, and abundance, I had never seen the expression Cornucopian government before.

It seems that a Cornucopian government (it is capitalized in the workbook) believes that mankind is the single most important element in the world; animals and nature exist in order to be exploited by humans. It sustains there can be no shortage of natural resources and any problem that presents itself, e.g. food shortage, can be resolved through either technology or the free-market. The ingenuity of mankind has always met and overcome environmental and social issues.
Encyclopædia Britannica

In order to explain its meaning to my private students, could I say that the USA is currently governed by Cornucopian ideas?

Why is the adjective capitalized in “Cornucopian government”? Should it be? Is the term C/cornucopian used by British or American TV newsreporters, how well-known is it? Does it largely have positive or negative connotations? What would be a more common, more easily understood, equivalent term?

Answer 1

Other versions of this IELTS question found on Google Books appear to indicate that it is likely a name of an imaginary country used to create a hypothetical scenario for the question. (See this comment by Laurel who first made the observation).

To end something suddenly and finally. The Cornucopian government decided to _____ relations with Utopia.

This also answers the question about why "Cornucopian" was capitalized, just as one would write "The American government..."

But the IELTS question as worded in the question is confusing to a native reader who might be aware of "cornucopian" in the context of economics and futurism, which as the OP points out, is a real term that refers to those holding a belief that technology will solve problems of resource management and rapid population growth.

The subject is discussed in depth on Wikipedia, with reputable sources linked.

A cornucopian is a futurist who believes that continued progress and provision of material items for mankind can be met by similarly continued advances in technology. Fundamentally they believe that there is enough matter and energy on the Earth to provide for the population of the world.

A similar technical definition is not found in the OED or other dictionaries that I checked, so I assume that it is a very esoteric term.

In conclusion, I would not recommend trying to explain the term to students learning English beyond perhaps describing how the fictional country name derives from the word "cornucopia," along with any requisite explanation of cornucopias.

Answer 2

Many thanks to those who answered my question, either in the comments (@Rob_Ster and @Laurel) or stuck their necks out in the answer box as @RaceYouAnytime did. I feel, however, that I need to complete this quest by including a reputable resource that uses the names of two fictional countries that bear no resemblance to any real country or state.

From Michael Swan's Basic English Usage (1984), in the chapter dedicated to the present perfect simple, the following names were used

FINISHED ACTION                RESULT NOW

Utopia has invaded Fantasia -----> War

In the land of fictional countries, the British newspaper, Independent composed a list of the top 50, which included:

Ambrosia, Atlantis, Eastasia, Eurasia and Oceania, El Dorado, Freedonia, Laputa and Lilliput, Neverland, Ruritania, Utopia, Wonderland, and Zubrovka.

P.S. Cornucopia is not listed by the Independent nor in Wikipedia's extensive List of fictional countries