I'd probably imagine that the people before the age of renaissance would think the aspect of living in orderly cities, suburbs and civilizations to be impossible. Those living before the industrial revolution would probably think modern mechanization and processes impossible. Those living before the time of efficient living and reducing impacts probably thought those things impossible (but it's happening right now, houses powered entirely by their solar array, hybrids like the volt getting amazing mpg, things getting better everywhere). While the "cost" of these things is often higher than keeping the old systems and things at first, given some decent time things change and evolve. We all want our cake and we want to eat it too. Only someone completely ignorant would think that we can procreate and keep expanding without any consequences. There are those of us that want our civilizations to exist without collapsing on themselves, which has been noted time and time again in history.

We are weaning off from dependency on carbon deposits in the ground. That doesn't mean we are not dependent, and that we won't be for a while, but we have electric airplanes soaring around, cars getting amazing mpg compared to years ago, high efficiency solar powering homes and running power back into the matrix, different ways of re-capturing and regenerating fuels being pursued. None of these is any kind of end-game solution to anything, they are just the evolution of a society as noted above. There are those that will cringe and fear the change, hold out to what they know and believe regardless of what is happening, and there are those who will embrace it. I don't mean to come off like some of us here do not, but the attitudes I see seem to indicate that "no science will ever be good enough".