> But at the cost of catastrophic destruction of ecosystems and disruption of a climate that made that possible in the first place. I disagree. We could have w

> But at the cost of catastrophic destruction of ecosystems and disruption of a climate that made that possible in the first place. I disagree. We could have wrecked the natural environment even if we had a much inequitable and oppressive society, think Nazi Germany winning the second world war and entering a nuclear race with the US. There is no single "western model of exploitation", there is a whole family of them (in an alternate history sense), all capable of destroying the planet, but with massive moral differences, and your framing loses that nuance. This nuance matters because your implication is that the environmental costs are a tradeoff for this prosperity, where in reality they are just a direct result of a runaway species with technology. And our proven ability to control this process towards moral goals, such as material welfare for the masses, suggest to me that we can, in principle, limit and reverse the environmental damage, as long as we recognize it as a worthy moral goal.