I saw this article yesterday after a conversation with a friend about this dilemma:
If humans are part of nature, then why are we destroying so much of the natural world – including our own life-support systems?
My answer is that we humans have evolved a specific mechanism – culture – which allows us to adapt to many different environments and changing situations. Unlike a Wallaby or a Deer, we are not born with a mostly complete innate sense of what kind of animal we are and what kind of environment we will exist in. Humans have to be shaped by culture over a number of years (it’s a year before we can even walk and another year before we start to talk).