Dyer was focusing on the pollution and environmental damage as being the limiting threshold for technological civilizations, but I think there is another aspect to consider.

We are genetically descended from what is essentially our most rapacious and Machiavellian ancestors. As comic Colin Quinn once put it, "We didn't descend from the group that starved to death waiting for their place at the dinner table." While there are remarkably wondrous and laudable examples of human progress, they're still largely within the framework of a dog-eat-dog rat race.

In a materialistic universe, with the emergence of life itself always advancing as a variation of eat or be eaten, it serves to reason that life universally has been distilled through this crucible of measures and countermeasures that is life in the foodchain. At what point does a civilization gain a consciousness of the oneness of life and existence when their evolution was also exclusively a product of the winners and losers of species roulette?

The point Dyer makes on societies choosing in time to change course seems to presume that the dynamic of the strong preying on the weak has been suitably altered or constrained. The top of the heap rarely if ever accepts their own power and opulence being diminished for any reason. Such a world in their minds is too alien to contemplate. Dyer did mention a 70% die off likely when the runaway conditions peaked. Maybe a variable element to be added to the Drake equation is that the 30% remaining are the distilled Machiavellians too self centered to give a shit about the rest of the cosmos, particularly as they sit as king of the hill on their wounded planet. Stats have already shown that that so much can be mechanized as far as manufacturing and the like, that it will be a much smaller workforce needed to service the powerful.

Interesting but for us to assume just how many planets in the universe that maintain human life would be the same as asking a 5 year who’s blind to describe the bottom of the ocean.

So until we can get past our own moon I’ll have to believe that our universe is filled other like beings who are most likely wandering the same thing.

It is notable that all civilizations before ours ended at some point...unless there are Etruscans hiding out somewhere.