I have a friend who is a Bill Gates type capitalist and a hopeless optimist. He argues that when/if we deplete some limited resource companies will engineer a way around it. Fossil fuel reserve gone? Well that's a good incentive to invent fusion power. Topsoil gone barren? So that's the queue to finally get around to develop those replicators. Too much CO2 to be able to breathe? So let's find and switch that gene that will allow us to breathe CO2.

The reasoning is that capitalism can solve EVERY problem that it creates, but not until that problem is right up in it's face (because you know, capitalism is so short sighted, which incidentally is not a bad thing, just an odd trait).

So we wait and hope that the capitalists are right, which they of course aren't, but then they'll say they're sorry and we will feel good again.

How often Malthusions say:

OOPS, we are sorry, our predictions did not pan out. Good that we didnt follow our own conclusions because life would have been so much worse and it was not necessary.

How many times do Freudians, physicists, socialists, economists, biologists, say "we are sorry, our predictions did not pan out."

I'm a Popperian. When the facts (best available science) changes, I change my opinions. Also known as "science".

Whatever their faults, the Malthusians made predictions. To be debated, validated, debunked. Far more useful than the techno utopian unverifiable views of the libertarian ostriches.

Just because a ship misses an iceberg doesn't mean that spotting the iceberg was a waste of time.

It's not capitalism per se but technology is increasing at an arguably exponential rate. The problems we have and worry about now simply might not be relevant to the future. Someone develops a really efficient battery next year allowing for effective electric cars, and suddenly we are laughing at the people who thought global warming would be an issue.

And capitalism isn't that bad. If a resource is running out, people can predict that decades in advance and have strong incentive to conserve it or invest in replacements. The price gradually rises over many years giving the world time to adapt, it doesn't just disappear overnight.