Humanity doesn't have the ability to understand and control the world, not yet.

Eventually, as knowledge gets larger, we are going to very quickly start to learn. I have a pet theory that the "breaking point" will be global warming, creating ecosystems on space stations, and so on, where we have an easy, controlled, environment to maintain, before we start to really develop the ability to create a self-contained, human-made environment on earth.

Global warming is the wakeup-call. The first step to becoming a species that seizes control of the environment it lives in. Space technologies will give us the environment to make the tech, to learn the process, and then the continuing need for resources will ensure that we do turn the earth into a massive human-supporting ecosystem only. This isn't a process we will see in our lifetimes, but I do believe it will happen.

We should care for nature, for our own sake, and we already do, in many ways. So many regulations, so much knowledge, exists today about how to keep the world sustainable enough. We shouldn't ignore that knowledge, but we shouldn't demonize human society because it comes at the cost of nature either. In the long run, we will do away with it, and that will be a great thing, leading to millions of new lives, new technologies, new ideas, new stories, and so on.