The book "not the end of the world" by Hanna Ritchie makes a neat point that humans have never lived in what we would call a sustainable way, but it's possible for this generation to be the first one that does.

The Māori ate all the Moa before Europeans showed up, and they had some pretty damn good boats before capitalism.

Not disagreeing or anything, just thought it was a funny anecdote.

so capitalism gets the credit for technological advancement but not the blame for environmental degradation?

Capitalism is just one form of "let people with power use that power freely to accumulate more power", which never ends well.

But the alternative "overthrow power" is costly enough that we usually procrastinate.

The main difference being the scale we can (and we do) bring species to extinction nowadays, even collaterally. Also nowadays we know exactly what we are doing, yet we press the gas pedal even harder to maximize shareholder value. So no, the comparison doesn't hold.