Using and consuming This makes sense. All human activities require the use of energy, and the most environmentally destructive of those activities for the most part require a great deal of it. Human beings use energy to obtain resources, process them into useful items, and then use or consume them. At every step, environmental damage is done. Wood cut for fires or structures regrows, soaking up the carbon dioxide produced when it was burned.
Water extracted from streams is replaced by rainfall.
Soils in fields are regenerated with the help of crop residues and animal manures. Wastes are broken down and reconverted into nutrients by the decomposer organisms of natural ecosystems. At the other end of the spectrum, paving over fields and forests with concrete and asphalt, mining the coal and iron necessary for steel production with all its associated land degradation, and building and operating automobiles, trains and aeroplanes that spew pollutants into the atmosphere, are all energy-intensive processes. So does industrialized forestry for timber and paper production. The relatively small population of rich people therefore accounts for roughly two-thirds of global environmental destruction, as measured by energy use.