“Thank you for coming on this gorgeous day, to sit in an airless, lightless room and discuss how to save the world,” said John Mutter, director of Columbia’s PhD in Sustainable Development and a member of the Earth Institute faculty, in welcoming the audience of the Sustainable Development Seminar, “The Population Bomb: Defused or Still Ticking?” The seminar brought together a panel of demography and population experts, who, Mutter calculated, shared a total of 121 years’ experience in the field. It became apparent, upon the beginning of the discussion, that the population bomb was not so much ticking, as exploding. The current world population, which is estimated to be 7 billion, is projected to reach 10.2 billion by 2100.
