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Youth Quake
The earth faces a future of rising populations and growing strains on the planet . Whatever else the future holds, significant population increase is inevitable and the current UN forecast of 9 .2 billion by 2050 – itself a 40 per cent increase on the 6 .7 billion in 2007 – may turn out to be an underestimate . The environmental damage resulting from population increase is already widespread and serious, ranging from climate change to shortages of basic resources such as food and water . By 2050, humanity is likely to require the biological capacity of two earths . Without action, longages of humans – the prime cause of all shortages of resources – may cause parts of the planet to become uninhabitable, with governments pushed towards coercive population control measures as a regrettable but lesser evil than conflict and suffering