In the last 200 years, we were mostly lucky. Humanity runs like compulsive spender who keeps finding credit cards in his house. We've almost maxed out the ones labeled "wood" and "coal" and "oil", since they were left on the table, easy to find. We stumbled upon "nuclear fission" which has a stupidly high line of credit but it's green, and the other day we met a drunkard who told us green is evil, so we shy away from it. Credit agencies are starting to call, so we're now hoping that the "renewables" card will help pay down the first three, while hoping that the "nuclear fusion" card we've ordered 50 years ago will come to us soon.

The point being, we're not solving our most important problems, we've been merely leaving them out for later. If we hadn't found that "oil" card, we'd already be fucked, per what "overly dramatic forecasters of doom" were saying. Lucking out of a problem is not something you should attribute to your skills.

Moreover, problems we had in the past weren't serious. And we haven't thought our way out of them - we just let them happen. War? Famine? Floods? Oh, people died. So what, there are people elsewhere, and civilization didn't fundamentally change since the ancient history anyway. Only after the industrial revolution, when the progress of technology finally gained its pace, we've entered the times in which we actually have something to lose if we fail to maintain our civilization. We've also entered the era when for the first time in history, we're creating extinction-level problems for ourselves.

I love science and I do believe in human power to solve even most difficult problems. But let's not pretend that we got here by something else than just being lucky. And let's not treat serious problems as if they were child's play.