You're on to something, but I think it's simply a case of chronological proximity bias. The problems we face today always *feel* like the most severe problems ever faced, but that is probably often just because they are the most prominent in our minds. I mean, look how many writers from the last century predicted widespread famine, because when you ran the numbers it just didn't seem possible. They thought it was the biggest problem humanity ever faced. Eventually we managed to overcome it and now it feels like a big nothing. Instead we have our own, new, biggest problems humanity has ever faced. Except they're not, not really. They just seem that way because we know that the other ones got solved, and we don't know yet how to solve the unsolved ones. And those writers, in turn, were probably overestimating the relative severity of that problem compared to other historical problems.
It's the same perspective problem that causes doomsdayism.