Which historical circumstances would you identify as Malthusian predicaments? Black Death is not exactly a Malthusian restriction. Wars were hardly fought out of desperation, but rather because it was an "enjoyable" and quite ample way of making living. Europe's population now is much higher than during any possible previous Malthusian peaks.

It wasn't faced consciously, it just happened. It could easily just happen again. The predator curve peaks, there's a die-off, everyone is happy.

European populations have been alternating between increasing (short term) carrying capacity and hitting the limits of existing capacity, with the usual round of death and famine that happens around that point.

The challenge this time seems to be to manage the death and famine intelligently, rather than have them just happen.

But what does Malthus have to do with the situation in Europe now? He was mainly concerned about the consequences of population increase, and the birth rates in most of Europe suggest that we've finally solved that problem. We may be running out of natural resources, such as energy, which will be a very serious problem if we don't come up with a solution in time. But this has nothing to do with Malthus: A solution, whether renewables, or energy efficency, might really be a solution, whereas under Malthus it will just buy time until the population gets even bigger.