Here's how we got here:

In 1972, one year after president Nixon was forced to close the gold window, the Limits to Growth report was published. It stated that unless all countries of the world utilized a low growth sustanible development policy back then, human civilization would suffer major calamities between 2020 and 2040 leading to a total collapse by 2050 due to the planet running out of the resources it needs to sustain its population. The book itself was debunked by a lot of people and was once consigned to the dustbin of history. Seeing how the repo market collapse of September 2019 occuring a few months before COVID-19 began shaking the globe, I believe that the book is going to ultimately prove all of its critics wrong. Already, in the 48 or so years since the book was published, we are already starting to feel the consequences for our actions. The deadline to save our civilization was in 1972.