This reminds me of hearing people talk about someone's untimely death with comments like "but he was fine, he never got sick". But then you take a closer look and often find out that the person in question had all sorts of unmonitored issues and rarely, if ever, had any exams or went to the doctor. Our body gives us warning signs and they're not really that precise either. You really can't say when you'll have a stroke or heart attack if your BP is completely unregulated, but it will happen.

Predicting civilisational collapse is obviously even more complicated than predicting when someone who's ignoring all signs about their failing health will die. Unfortunately, the green revolution and many of our other accomplishments has given us the false notion that we can solve anything with technology, but we really can't.

Certainly not when we ignored Ehrlich's warnings and spent almost all of our natural inheritance making consumer goods and putting research that could have benefitted all of mankind in the back burner.