Sure, but it was education and awareness that brought us electric cars on an industrial scale.
The economic reality of change is that there needs to be a driving force for it. But by just waiting to let the market correct for it in the case of resources you will make it nessesary to compete with the price of these resources untill they are depleted enough to be more expensive then the new tech.
That is not what you want...
You want to prevent the exhaustion of a resource.
And the market does not help us prevent that.
You want the most efficient use of resources, yes? Low price means more efficient. If you switch away from one resource while using it is still the more efficient option, you're acting against your stated desire. So, which would you rather have, a big, inefficient stockpile, or efficient use?
If we didn't change society to prevent air pollution in the 70s then we would all live in smog everywhere. Such changes are not rought about by the market. They are real changes in society and expressed in laws and governance.
Government is not all bad. Not all institutions are useless.
In fact, i'd say most institutions are important for society.
On the contrary, The use catalytic converter and the phaseout of Tetraethyl lead was already in progress when those regulations came in. Advances in fuel technology would soon have made TEL completely unnecessary. Laws have always lagged behind societal changes.