> If humans weren't that exceptional we would just go and destroy nature everywhere it benefits us with no thoughts about the future or how this could ever hurt

> If humans weren't that exceptional we would just go and destroy nature everywhere it benefits us with no thoughts about the future or how this could ever hurt us Let’s start here: humans are literally in the process of doing this via carbon emissions. There seems no way of stopping it as we’re all slaves to economic incentives. If you take a step away from the details of how we do this, you’ll see plenty of animals destroy their local ecology through things like over grazing, and need predators to bring them back under control. Again, the details and scale are different but the base behavioural trait is there: optimising local maxima and causing long term damage. So no, humans don’t follow a divine obligation: we actually do the same thing every animal does and tries to maximise our short term goals to the detriment of everything else. We’re not exceptional in this regard.