Head of Population Connection group to speak Oct. 29 at UW-Green Bay

The president and CEO of the grassroots Population Connection organization will deliver an address, “Soaring Past 7 Billion: Population Challenges for a Crowded World,” at 6 p.m. Monday, Oct. 29 in Room 250 of Rose Hall at UW-Green Bay, 2420 Nicolet Drive.

John Seager has been part of the Population Connection group since 1996, having served with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency during the Clinton administration. He also was Chief of Staff for former U.S. Rep. Peter H. Kostmayer, D-PA, a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs and Interior committees. Since 1968, Population Connection (formerly Zero Population Growth, or ZPG) has advocated for population stabilization, working to inform people about their congressional representatives’ stance on population growth and family planning issues. The group’s website says it seeks to pursue global population stabilization through universal awareness and access to voluntary family planning, together with the full empowerment of women. Seager has written articles on population stabilization, including its connections to poverty, its future outcomes and the concern about population decline in some highly developed nations.

Seager’s talk is hosted by UW-Green Bay’s Environmental Management and Business Institute (EMBI), an organization that works with public- and private-sector partners to solve environmental concerns in a sustainable manner. EMBI’s goals including strengthening and connecting academic programs that analyze environmental problems; providing outreach to businesses and agencies looking to address environmental problems; promoting research aimed at solving those problems; and serving as an academic resource on campus. EMBI takes no stance on the issue of family planning, said associate director John Arendt, but the Institute does have interest in issues related to scarcity of resources and global sustainability. Seager’s talk is free and open to the public.

For more information on Population Connection, visit www.populationconnection.org. For more on EMBI, visit www.uwgb.edu/embi.

#12-151