I have come to the conclusion that it's not a question of handling. It's a question of wealth, something deadly engraved in our genes: we have to have more.
The world consumption exceeds roughly 3 times the earth biocapacity*, so to make it even, we all would have to divide by 3 our standard of living (and bear in mind that a really large part of the population cannot reduce its own because it's already so low). That includes, but is not restricted to: dividing by 3 the surface of your home, dividing by 3 the distance you travel or the number of times you travel, dividing by 3 the number of appliances you own, dividing by 3 the quantity of food you consume or swap it for something that requires one third the energy/land to produce, etc.
Nobody is going to willingly do that. Especially when they see some not doing it.
In fact, everybody wants to increase its own standard of living, People that are at the bottom of the list rightfully so, you could say.
So the deficit between biocapacity and footprint is going to grow until it all collapses and people will be forced to downsize. Just like the storm has no sense of your feelings when you decide you're entitle to take the boat out, the equations behind the evolution of our environment do not take into account our desire for more wealth or our reluctance to downsize.
If you think a pandemic is hard, think of a pandemic when health care has become to expensive to be common.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
* https://data.footprintnetwork.... - look at this map and realize that countries with high deficit are not necessarily rich countries, but also countries with a large population.