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How will the planet sustain 9 billion people?

How will we thrive on the future Earth?

Experts project that the Earth will be home to nine billion people by the year 2050. It may be near the peak population of the current human-dominated age of the Earth, the Anthropocene, but how will the planet support almost three billion more people than are alive today? How will we get our energy, our food, and our water?

The University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment, or "IonE," is attempting to answer these questions, researching solutions that will allow us to survive—and thrive—on a human-dominated planet.