This enormous wave of young people -- kids born in the 80s, 90s, 00s -- are going to topple established trends in ways we cannot imagine. This population increase of one billion people in ten years means that one in every seven people on this planet is under the age of majority. In ten years you'll start seeing change on the scale of the Arab Spring like you wouldn't believe.

Sustainable? That's the big question, if we start running out of various non-renewable resources - oil just being one of them - can we? Deforestation, topsoil erosion, overfishing, lots of resources can maximize production for a short while but afterwards they go into sharp decline. And if you start running into famine conditions, don't think anyone is willing to die to let nature recover. Don't be surprised if this is the cause of war in the late 21st century...

National Geographic has been running a series of articles that try and answer the summary's question:
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/7-billion [nationalgeographic.com]

No.

This is one of the most retrograde ways of thinking available to the third world. A good deal of the Left in Latin America adopt this thesis (read Eduardo Galeano, an Uruguayan author, for an example). But the third world is sucks because it's own failings. I'm a citizen of Brazil so I'll take the examples from here since I know it's history better.

Back when Brazil was a Portuguese colony it showed an amazing period of growth when gold as discovered in the current Minas Gerais state (indeed, Minas Gerais means General Mines). Since the gold industry created a small middle class, a small number of industries (textiles) and trade (food, from southern Brazil and leather from northeastern Brazil) was developed internally. This could be the seed for Brazil starting it's own industry early on it's history. By 1785 the Portuguese taxed us to hell (the "derrama", a full fifth of all gold profits besides normal taxes) and then prohibited the industry at all to be developed in the colony. Besides a few angry manifestos, the Brazilians did nothing. It should be noted that Brazilians had no representation in the Portuguese Cortes.

Ten years before the Americans fought their independence war. It was the time for Brazil to do the same. We didn't. We never did, actually. Brazil stopped being a colony after Portugal was invaded by Napoleon and the royal family fled to Rio de Janeiro. Brazil was then elevated to the status of United Kingdom of Brazil, Portugal and Algarves. By 1822 a royal prince "gave" the Brazilian independence and took the crown to himself. As part of "reparations" Brazil gave (a lot of) money to Portugal and promised not to conquest the other Portuguese colonies. Instead of kicking their asses back to Europe, like the Americans did to the English.

My country own history is similar to much of the history of Hispanic America and Africa. The third world is shitty because of it's own failing and nothing else. Of course, the first world did nothing to help but it's not it's responsibility. It's a dog eat dog world and countries should look for themselves.

War

Unlikely. Nearly all population growth is occurring in developing countries [sustainablescale.org]. They would handily lose any war with the industrialized countries where most of the food is grown and consumption takes place. Most industrialized countries are at or near zero growth, with some experiencing negative growth (they are shrinking in population).

For whatever reasons, industrialization leads to lower population growth. What's needed to arrest global population growth is to provide education, engineering expertise, contraception, and economic assistance to developing nations so they can modernize their economies ASAP. Providing food, water, and medicinal aid actually exacerbates the problem. They increase survival rates in developing countries without doing anything to stem their high population growth rates, making it that much harder to modernize those countries and increasing their future reliance on foreign aid.

In other words, as contradictory as it may seem, modernization towards self-sufficiency and economic globalization combat global population growth. Anti-globalization and reliance solely on humanitarianism allow it to continue or even exacerbate it.

The arab nations, even those with high financial wealth never stopped breeding. Some of them managed to finance a relatively high standard of living purely based on oil sales. Iraq? Taxes? Unheard off. Same with Libya, the regime wasn't nearly as brutal as the west currently wants you to believe. Oh, people were tortured and killed but these were on the whole not people the west would like in the first place. See how one of the new libyan leaders was sent over there by the west for questioning.

But there is only so much you can do even with virtually unlimited wealth, the Arab nations exploded because they got to many idle hands. Not exactly poor, they are not starving to death like further down but living an entire life on hand outs creates unrests. And when maintaining the benefits becomes more expensive because of food prices... well... we saw what happened.

That is why China did not explode, China has a high population density and social repression and unfair distribution of wealth BUT people are working. They got a way out, not an easy one and not one that everyone will make BUT there is hope.

China has strict population control and NOT just birth control. You can't just get into China. The west has population control through its culture but is letting in a lot of immigrants. That was fine when there was a lot of work westerners did not want to do and we thought we could afford a large percentage of natives being unemployed (It is a nice capitalist idea that everyone should work for a living but you want to be the boss of someone who only works because he has absolutely no choice?) consuming tax money.

But the economy took a nose dive and suddenly having high un-employment and importing workers seems a bit contradictory.

About the only alternative is to create more work but how? And how are you going to get generations raised on not working, working on boring jobs? It always sound so good, create jobs but even if your scheme has some nice jobs, those will be taken by those with skills. How do you get the average london rioter or paris suburb kid working for a minimum wage in a back breaking job?

See how many of the arab spring protestors are university students complaining they can't find a job? Same in Greece and Italy. What did they study? Islam... liberal arts!... what kinda job creation can you do that demands these skills? There is currently a shortage of all kinds of IT staff especially developers/coders in Holland. Haven't had a job in my entire career as a web developer were we didn't have more then one position open often to anyone in the world... switch a dutch company over to English for one immigrant? No problem. Have seen it multiple times BUT never African (I have worked with a few blacks but their recent roots lie in former dutch colonies and they speak excellent dutch invariably). East European is the main source of IT talent.

This is a huge problem, now the revolutions have happened, things got to change but how? Were are all those people in Libya that got an automatic weapon going to find work? Oil industry? Not with an Islamic education you are not. There is a reason most oil companies are western. That Libya had a HUGE immigrant population itself. Work is hard and a lot of it ain't fun. So when you can avoid it, you will.

Note that this post may sound racist but places like Liverpool and Manchester are much the same, colonies of unemployed white people sustained by a magic income from the rest of the country for so long the culture has changed from factory workers to gangland. And while entire regions have it as the norm not to work, those in power says the country desperately needs immigrants from all over the world to do the work...that is not sustainable. Something has to give... see the riots. And the recent ones in London were not the first and other countries have had them too.

We are living in a world in a which a US coca cola plant is so efficient that a crew of less then a dozen can do in a shift more then a million can's per perso

due to unsustainable population areas means we're just making it worse

I'm not going to tread those waters, but I'm come close to it without offending anyone. I would agree that our hand-outs are and have been making things worse around the world. In the name of God (American's are mostly Christian), we feel it's our duty to feed the needy and hungry. Personally, I agree. But the fact it, it also perpetuates dictators and corrupt regimes in the process. If it wasn't for global economy crashing, there wouldn't have been an Arab Spring and the domino of revolutions that followed. It was an event that was destined to happen, but our "aid" kept prolonging the inevitable. The road to hell is paved with good intentions and all that.

Unlikely. Nearly all population growth is occurring in developing countries. They would handily lose any war with the industrialized countries where most of the food is grown and consumption takes place. Most industrialized countries are at or near zero growth, with some experiencing negative growth (they are shrinking in population).

A few issues with that theory:
1. Wars could break out between neighboring developing countries, it doesn't necessarily have to be about food. It might be about water, for example, which is more likely to be locally scarce if there is a high demand on it. Some countries import a lot of food- I don't know any that import water.

2. "They would handily lose any war with the industrialized countries..." Sure, so the developing countries won't necessarily pick a fight with the industrialized countries, but they do tend to have resources (oil, etc.) that the industrialized countries want/need, so the industrialized countries may very well pick a fight to gain access to the resources.