Security hawks should be freaked about population growth

Never mind the climate hawks. National-security hawks ought to be seriously stressing about rapidly rising population numbers: “About 80% of the world’s civil conflicts since the 1970s have occurred in countries with young, fast-growing populations, known as youth bulges, according to an analysis by the nonprofit Population Action International.”
That’s from an L.A. Times article, “Runaway population growth often fuels youth-driven uprisings,” part of a series about population by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Kenneth Weiss. More from the article:

In many developing countries, runaway population growth has created vast ranks of restless young men …, with few prospects and little to lose. …
[Y]outh bulges have emerged in [Afghanistan,] Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia and the Palestinian territories — part of what security experts call an “arc of instability” reaching across Africa, the Middle East and South Asia.
Of the 2 billion or more people who will be added to the planet by 2050, 97% are expected to be born in Africa, Asia and Latin America, led by the poorest, most volatile countries.

Read more: http://grist.org/article/security-hawks-should-be-freaked-out-about-population-growth/