I'm thinking in terms of an organism going against its own ecosystem.
Imagine if a new species of killer ant evolved that has no natural predators, procreates quickly and eats up its habitat. For a short while it's going to be the greatest species in its ecosystem...
Of course we likely wouldn't see such an ant because it would have wiped itself out by resource exhaustion unless it adapted (or e.g. a natural predator came about).
An ant couldn't do much about its biological makeup or its instincts and so nature would run its course; it lacks self-awareness and general intelligence.
Now imagine humanity, posessing these traits, would recognize that it itself is the killer ant and would organize itself with their great scientific and economic prowess and with the same fervor it discusses about banalities during this - historically speaking - mild pandemic (mild in the sense that coronavirus is not the black death, not mild in the sense that so many people died unnecessarily due to our own shortcomings) to not eat their habitat. Or it would stop constantly working against its self-imposed conflicting incentives in poltics or the economy. Or it would stop trapping hundreds of millions of people in self-serving mind cages optimizing for metrics that make no sense and pondering about how to best mind control their userbase. Or it would stop allocating so many resources (money) towards fads, consumption crap and get-rich-quick schemes.
The pandemic forced our hands, it couldn't be kicked down the road for some later time (an excellent motivator!) and so we adapted; unfortunately biosphere degradation as a whole does not yet, which is why our reaction is so sluggish and overconsumption or pollution are still mostly seen as some optional or cosmetic problem (but at least they're seen, I guess).
And no, many solutions offered by businesses are none: replacing hundreds of millions of cars with hundreds of millions of other cars? Replacing plastic straws in fast food restaurants with paper ones while the food served there is subsidized by an agricultural industry with ridiculous land use (just look at current satellite maps... holy crap).
The patient earth is ill and treating overconsumption with another (more nicely dressed) form of overconsumption is symptomatic at best and a distraction. If you're a smoker the only thing you can do to truly cure the ailments is to fix the root cause and stop smoking, not take pills to mask the symptoms.
I hope one of these days a critical mass realizes that modern manufactured-demand capitalism has run its course or we're in for a bad time (the more sensitive individuals already are). But I suppose that would entail realizing that so many of us dependent on it have been living a lie.
/rant (not really related to parent, so sorry if you felt antagonized, but I had to let this out somewhere whew)
P.S. Somewhat related to the article: I recently discovered these good looking closed aquariums called ecosphere. Turns out if you put higher organisms like shrimp in there they won't procreate due to bad environmental conditions.