population and resource implication
Answers
There are several problems that the rapidly rising population are producing, and they are coming down our way. They include: resource scarcity in the form of realizing greater difficulty in finding oil, gas, and other fossil fuels on which our modern, industrial lifestyle depends on. (I will comment on the prospects of fracking and solar/alternative energy a little later.), or fresh water, on which our life depends on; global climate change, which is the direct result of the expansion in the global population and global consumption, the expansion of the industrial lifestyle from the advanced, industrial countries to the less industrial countries and emerging countries, like Brazil or China, and more immediately the increase in fossil fuel burning (mostly in factories, industries, transportation and households) and trapping of CO2 in the atmosphere, which also traps more solar insolation and heat energy.
Resource scarcity will certainly increase distributional struggles and warfare among nations and groups, which threatens social stability and our civilization. Global climate change will make our existence on the planet much more insecure. Humans tend to have this idea about their invulnerability, but from a long-term historical viewpoint, this idea is entirely unreasonable.
One human lifespan, though it is longer on average than ever before, is no more than 80 years, in some cases more or less (in poorer countries the tendency is less). Human existence on earth is no more than 1.5 to 2 million year, while earth’s existence is closer to 4.5 billion years, which indicates that our time horizon is fairly short, and, therefore, our ability to accurately predict our survival chances are equally small.