I am thinking very broadly. This includes destroying our own bodies. The questions weren't a comprehensive list.
Part of it may also have to do with the human propensity to want instant gratification - or an immediate short-term benefit at the expense of long-term health or other factors.
As an example, I was thinking about the rise in fast-food restaurants, which are often blamed for being environmentally destructive and providing unhealthy food to its consumers. It was different back when most people lived on farms, as farmers would eat all their meals at home. But as people started working more in the cities and factories, they often had very little time to eat lunch. If they didn't want to bring a cold lunch from home, then fast-food seemed a good option for a quick hot lunch.
A lot of households are so hectic in the morning that there may not even be time to make lunch. Or even dinner, so a fast-food dinner is a lot easier for people who are tired from a long day at work and don't feel like cooking dinner.
That brings up another point which has always baffled me: With all the devices and technologies out there designed to save time, why is it that we're always so pressed for time? A lot of people are stressed out, facing deadlines, running out of time, and "there aren't enough hours in the day" to get everything done.
Some people call it a "rat race," but no matter what you call it, the daily stresses of life lead to people finding ways of dealing with it which might entail destroying our own bodies. For example, smoking cigarettes is harmful to one's body, yet when one is stressed out and needs "something" to alleviate the stress, some people might turn to smoking. Then there's also alcohol or other substances people might use. Some people try to reduce stress and gain comfort by eating, but eating too much of the wrong foods can also have detrimental health effects. Many others might use various medications to reduce stress, anxiety, depression, and other such maladies which seem far too common in our society.
Meanwhile, there's a planet of 7 billion people who need food, medical care, housing (beyond just the ramshackle housing that most of the world's population lives in), transportation, communications. The push towards greater development, industry, and infrastructure in the third world has been going on for quite some time, so that they can enjoy the same benefits and standard of living that we have come to enjoy. The UN and other agencies around the world have focused on world-wide hunger, poverty, lack of permanent housing, disease, shortages of medicine and trained medical personnel. They want to improve the lot for billions of people, clean up the horrible slums and awful living conditions we hear so much about.
This is where we've got ourselves in a box, because in order to improve and modernize the developing world, it's going to require even more industry and many of the same environmentally destructive processes which we're talking about. Many of our cities were also in pretty bad shape, which fed the drive for tract homes and suburban housing so people could get out of the crowded, unhealthy cities and into a more suburban or semi-rural environment. Trouble with that is that it wiped out a lot of forest and farmland to make room for all these people who wanted to live better lives and get out of the city. Plus, the need for more roads, freeways, traffic - and the pollution that goes with it.
So, it's kind of a vicious cycle, in a way. We all want our comforts and luxuries that consume energy and resources - and the demand for such things will only continue to rise in the years to come.
But the upside is that humans are also rather clever and may be able to come up with new technologies to alleviate environmental damage and depletion of resources. That may be why most people just want to go on business as usual and hope for the best. Who knows? Maybe someone will invent replicators or warp engines someday. Or maybe not, but I still think there's reason to be hopeful that humanity might find a way out of this dilemma.
But the more immediate problem right now is not so much environmental, but geopolitical. We're just a self-destructive species I guess.
