Climate change and its impact on our agriculture, infrastructure, and political systems will be an increasing damping force on technological changes this century that I'm surprised didn't get a mention in this article.
> In this century, we urgently need to undo some of the consequences of the last great boom by developing affordable zero- and negative-emissions technologies. That's another hard problem—and to solve it, we'll need to recapture some of what made the “special century” so special.
So you're postulating that hunger will get much worse than it is today, without really tremendous population growth, and with significant technological opportunity available in terms of applied computation/robotics and genetic engineering. This seems like an emotional argument, not a scientific one.
Water will still exist. Soil will still exist. Short of postulating worst-case scenarios (which are possible), this is all stuff we can handle with existing technology, much less the technology of a century from now.