The behavior you describe is essentially inertia-driven, only producing change when it becomes inevitable. And it'll be the reason we won't manage to prevent most of the ecological collapse that is already happening.
If we don't behave in a way that's sustainable for an indefinite time, we're living on borrowed time. Sooner or later this debt will catch up. IMO the belief that technological progress will save us is naive. The problem is not technological, it never was, but a matter of priorities.
No one is denying that, but that is missing my point. How is population growth a good thing in the context of sustainability? Improvements in efficiency have generally been more than offset by increased productivity and thus (unsustainable) resource consumption, which is the reason the deterioration of all ecological indicators is accelerating.
What I meant with "matter of priorities" is that we've had the means to stop that trajectory for some time, but it just wasn't and isn't a priority. We've already caused irreparable damage to much of our biosphere. There's positive glimpses here and there but nothing changed fundamentally. I don't see us escaping the Great Filter.
If we don't behave in a way that's sustainable for an indefinite time, we're living on borrowed time. Sooner or later this debt will catch up. IMO the belief that technological progress will save us is naive. The problem is not technological, it never was, but a matter of priorities.