How can we reach a consensus that's the big question here. How to make awareness among users that not to send the recommended fees by the clients they are using.
The only thing we can do is to spread the word. Every time there is a temporary surge in transaction fees there are dozens of threads on this forum and plenty of people complaining in chat rooms. That's a good opportunity to educate people how it all works.
I believe that in the long term the free market will come to a solution. For example, I recently wanted to move some coin from one exchange to another and found it was cheaper to exchange into LTC for the transfer and exchange back to BTC when it got there. That was one less Tx in the mempool, the more people making those sort of decisions the bigger the impact. Also, high fees incentivise the technical advancements. It will speed up adoption of Segwit and off-chain transactions in the future.
Ligtning Network may seem to be a long way in the future but high fees give an added incentive to get there quicker.