Demographic Policy in the Context of the Environmental Crisis

Abstract

The article discusses the potential of demographic policy as one of the ways to solve the environmental problem. The author shows that today high-quality demography is the only real opportunity to reduce the pressure of humanity on the ecosphere. Other “survival strategies” are either not effective enough (en­vironmentalism) or have not yet reached the level of practical application (trans­humanism, posthumanism, etc.). The author notes that in historical perspective, demography initially acted as an area in which the quality of individuals was of significant importance. Thus, Adam Smith already considered the share of able-bodied citizens in the total population to be the main factor in the “wealth” of the state, thus dividing people into categories with different qualitative cha­racteristics. The ecological motive in the assessment of social dynamics goes back to the works of T.R. Malthus and his “law of population”, according to which population growth is described by geometric progression, while the re­sources of the Earth increase in arithmetic progression. In the context of the ag­gravation of the ecological crisis, largely due to the overpopulation of the Earth, it seems reasonable to move from a quantitative demographic policy to qualita­tive demography. The difficulty of such a transition is due to the fact that this term was used by classical eugenics at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries as an incomplete synonym for describing its specific tasks (along with the terms “racial hygiene” and “human genetics”). Negative connotations coming from that time, as well as an excessive enthusiasm for political correctness, prevent free discussion of demographic issues