Global population lecture opens Nelson Institute series

As Joel Cohen sees it, humans may have “finally outgrown our childhood and adolescence as a species.” Then again, maturity poses its own problems.

Cohen, a world expert on population trends, says human numbers could grow from the current 6.7 billion to more than 9 billion by mid-century. Virtually all of that growth will be in poor countries. But growth rates have declined since peaking in the 1960s. Now, he says, the world faces a “tsunami of aging” and unprecedented urbanization in the years ahead.

Cohen will give a free public lecture, “Global Population and the Global Environment to 2050,” at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 7, in 165 Bascom Hall. The event opens the fourth year of the Gaylord Nelson Lecture Series, hosted by the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. “Population and Resources” is the theme for 2008–09.

Cohen is the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of Populations at Rockefeller University and Columbia University in New York City. He combines backgrounds in applied mathematics and public health to study the nature and effects of populations. Understanding how demographic, economic and cultural changes will interact with Earth’s physical, chemical and biological environments will be a major challenge in the decades ahead.

For more information, contact Molly Schwebach, 265-6712, mayoung3@wisc.edu.