I thought about this back in the Peak Oil days, as well. The part that I tend to think about is the "alternate universe" theory and what didn't happen that might have. The thing that keeps coming back in this picture is that we have already been slowed down: by oil prices and wars. If WWII had not been fought as a world war due to competing colonialist legacies, and the USA had cooperatively joined the industrialization banquet (instead of manipulating toward economics-triggered wars) Germany and Japan were building sans the Eurocentric war, then the USA would have become the central focus of oil production, freely drilling around the world, supplying refineries, and Wall Street finance to drill and produce as much fossil carbon as possible.

Oil would have been even cheaper, we would have burned even more, even faster, and the moneyed interests would have destroyed any environmental concerns before Rachael Carson was born.

In other words, just the competitive Fates and War gods caused the world to slow itself down due to monetary costs (including wasted resources on the Cold War) already, and the last 50 years or so have been the grace period we have wasted instead of learning to stop being extractors.

At this point, any efforts we make may make the difference between humanity surviving another 50 years (slowing down enough to climb down the cliff) or going extinct completely (in wars over the last minerals and high ground). Most likely, we just keep holding the accelerator to the floor (the Economy of Stupid).

At some point, the realization will set in and people will start to act, but thanks to Marketing and the Oblivious Eighties, Nineties and 'Oughts, we have lost several decades of thoughtful leadership AFTER having already been granted a second chance through foolishness and high prices.