There are also cultures that vanished after thousands of years, and crisises in which millions of people died. Human ingenuity and technological progress didn't

There are also cultures that vanished after thousands of years, and crisises in which millions of people died. Human ingenuity and technological progress didn't solve every problem. We just forgot about the dead (classic survivor bias). Collapse by Jared Diamond has some examples of societies that failed - by comparison, our current civilization is very young and hasn't really "played out" yet. Maybe the estimates of Malthus were wrong, but the underlying concern is still correct. Our current food production is not sustainable because it relies on non-renewable energy sources. I don't claim no solution can be found for that, but there is also no reason to believe there will be a solution. Another way to look at it makes it very plain: the surface area of earth certainly is limited. So if population would grow forever, we would reach a point where every person would only have one square foot of ground to live on. Even that might be doable - we could live in a stacked way (skyscrapers), or Matrix-Style in coffins with virtual environment. Nevertheless it doesn't seem like a very desirable future.