I suspect that it might take more than "a little reading" to catch up on all that is known or that is reliably conjectured about human cognition. And it seems if we want to explain how people respond (or not) to PO we would have to invoke the behaviors of social groups and the influence of culture, politics, and emotion rather than about how brains work. How brains work is important to understanding individuals, but the problem with our inability to do anything about PO is primarily cultural and social in origin. And groups of people behave very differently than individuals, as evidenced by:

"the bizarre, twisted logic of economics"

I, too, have trouble thinking about the modern "morality" of business and its apologist, economics.

At any rate, I would guess that some of the conclusions that can be made about "our inability to plan" may involve stories about our culture more than about our fundamental properties as humans. But perhaps the actual origin of the behavior doesn't matter after all, because the culture I'm living in really doesn't seem at all interested in planning for the future. Unless something changes really soon, the reason for our not changing until it's too late is going to be of no practical interest.