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.