Question: How are we going to cope with the world's burgeoning population?

Anaïs Pujol answered on 19 Mar 2015:

As technology and medicine have improved average lifetimes have increased. The UN estimates that by 2030 the world will need 30% more fresh water and 50% more energy. This has increased demand on the earth and the resources that we can get from it. By 2050, global population will grow to greater than nine billion, more than two billion additional people compared to today. As the world population goes up the infrastructure should increase and will go to where resources are available, meaning bigger cities.
One of the major factors to coping is food production – by 2050 we will need 70% more food. We have to be able to produce enough food to keep people healthy, including diet changes and the effects. Currently, 842 million people in the world still suffer from hunger and even more are malnourished. We have to use the land available as best we can, with only 12% of the earth’s land available is farmland. Agriculture uses 70% of the world’s fresh water at the moment. Farmers and scientists have been able to double the grain production in the last 40 years. In 1960 one hectare only had to feed 2 people, now it’s over 5. Science is at the forefront of solving these issues, but they need to make a lot of progress in a short space of time.
Of course most importantly we have to make sure we maintain the Earth better than we have previously, to be sustainable, and respond to changes in climate. Nature can’t repair as fast as we have destroyed before.