It's hard to imagine how someone can look at the track record and then think "impossible! we will never figure it out!" when human history is basically a detailed record of us constantly "figuring things out" that previously seemed impossible. When something has yet to be figured out you are supposed to be baffled because the part where it all make sense doesn't come until after we figure it out. It doesn't guarantee we will figure out this or that specific challenge, but the well-established pattern gives ample reason to be optimistic.
Survivorship bias. You're missing the big graveyard of civilizations that thought they could persist in the face of changing external circumstances but miscalculated. Many of those are buried in what are now deserts, created by their misguided land management.
I appreciate the case for optimism, and I agree that as a species we can be quite clever. We can also fail to address important issues with simple and obvious fixes in ways that boggle the mind (e.g. getting vaccinated or wearing masks during COVID). Whereas I might have once thought that our ingenuity would rule the day, it seems like a functional society requires more than just technology.
Getting vaccinated wasn’t an option during the halcyon days of Covid and like 95%+ of people I saw at public businesses in my red state were wearing masks (or at least attempting to) during that time period. But unfortunately people still needed to eat, work, purchase necessities, learn, get treated, etc.
This all to say that I don’t really think your analogy really holds up in this context.
