The basic function of civilization (city walls) is to isolate humans from the risks and responsibilities of the natural environment that spawned us. Civilians exist in an artificial environment that is an evolutionary trap. Even if we stopped all fossil fuel use, the extraction and competition mindset dominates and the depletion of other resources would still happen because all of our leaders are tools of that original isolation from physical reality. The only influence they attend to is artificially generated, and the pyramid scheme is all about the pyramid, not the soil it stands on. Until the pyramid is submerged or the food stops showing up on the altars of cities, then the only concerns they have are imaginary beings and imaginary value. As they teach in schools: Imagination is Everything.