Orange County used to be a metaphor for bland homogeneity, its politics solidly Republican, its population overwhelmingly white, its problems small-town.

ECONOMIST: Orange County

The report calls for more emphasis on engineering solutions to problems caused by rapid population growth, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.

BBC: Harrabin's Notes: Population overload?

The building of more freeways in relatively low-population areas will not solve the congestion problems in the cities where the concentration of buyers is located.

FORBES: China's Auto Industry Shows Signs Of Impending Gridlock

This, the inevitable result of a pay-as-you-go system in an ageing population, is the cause of the programme's long-term financial problems.

ECONOMIST: Social Security reform ventures out in the open

Tourism is creating other problems for the local environment, too, including increased population density, over-dependence on wood as a fuel and construction source and the overgrazing and cutting of mountain slopes to feed livestock.

BBC: Everest's growing problem

Professor Stephen Glaister, director of the RAC Foundation, said the government was looking for radical solutions to the "chronic problems" of congestion and rising traffic levels due to population growth and under-investment.

BBC: Road pricing: More new roads could be funded by tolls

However, Russia has also made a great deal of under-appreciated progress in addressing these problems to that point that its natural population change is noticeably better than the largest member of the European Union.

FORBES: Germany's Demographic Crisis Is Now Worse Than Russia's

Many factors are causing coffee's problems, experts say, including climate changes in some coffee-growing areas and population growth in Central America, which has led to pressure to convert coffee plots into housing and shopping malls.

WSJ: The Indiana Jones of Coffee

Well, in one example, I would rather bet on a population of start-ups--a rich ecology, if you would--to solve the big intractable problems of this world instead of a single large corporation, a monoculture.

FORBES: Writing The Code Of Life