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I am not sure one can use civilization and population interchangeably, for one reason: population either adopts to new conditions or dies, civilization, on the other hand may change environment and survive. That's how human species differ: they are alloplastic, while other are autoplastic.

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Individual members of populations of every species alter their environments. Humans may do it more deliberately, but as either civilizations or as a species as a whole it's not clear to me that we're all that much better at anticipating and avoiding environmental disasters than other species; we just do everything at a larger scale (more massive individuals, across the whole planet) than any other single species. Not necessarily longer time scales though - that remains to be seen.

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