"For a long time he stood gazing at the owl, who dozed on its perch. A thousand thoughts came
into his mind, thoughts about the war, about the days when owls had fallen from the sky; he
remembered how in his childhood it had been discovered that species upon species had become
extinct and how the 'papes had reported it each day - foxes one morning, badgers the next, until
people had stopped reading the perpetual animal obits." ---Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)
Man can be forgiven for not being able to do more to stop its effect on nature. To control the pollution emitted by a 7 billion strong global population is a Herculean task, and it's only been about 70 years that we've known that nature is suffering from industrial civilization, and thus that pollution control and habitat preservation is something we ought to do.
I am a conservationist to what some would say is the extreme and yet I agree with you. My eco-actovist friends would probably never talk to me if they heard me agree with you but it's true. We are naive. Some of us are greedy and through greed destroy, but even those people are naive. We are still monkeys with rocket ships. Forgiving ourselves coupled with dedication towards preservation of life is our only way forward. Everything else is ugly.