Take the imperialism of old: people did not do this because beeing evil is fun. They did this because beeing exponential in a linear world produces conflict anyway and to dim the lights elsewhere allowed you to keep the civilizations lights on in the heartland longer.

People fought wars for fertilizer. Now you have hippies protesting against fertilizer made with harber bosch, who would kill each other as some north korean stunted growth dwarfs in imperial wars if they would get their wish.

Not exactly wrong, but an extremely pessimistic perspective which ignores all the positives of the process.