Virtually every productive activity has negative externalities, and to deny those is as naive as thinking of wealth as zero sum. It's not zero-sum, but it's not monotonically positive either.
This is why East Germany was by far a worse polluter than West Germany, similarly for North and South Korea, etc. Thinking that virtually every productive activity has negative externalities may be true but should also take into account the much greater positive externalities.
Someone is becoming very wealthy pulling oil out of the Niger delta, but the people living there are becoming much poorer as a result. http://234next.com/csp/cms/sites/Next/Home/5524695-146/niger...
Wealthy countries become wealthy not by harvesting natural resources but by harnessing entrepreneurs and generating ideas. It's why capital overwhelmingly gets invested in developed countries and not developing ones - ie the returns are simply better.