If it is true that human activities (such as energy consumption) are unnatural to the natural condition of life on earth, then humans must also be an unnatural force. We are the Aliens that don’t belong or fit in to “natural” earth nature.
But if we humans are a natural evolution of earth life, then all our actions (and resulting reactions) are also natural, no matter what we do and “bad” effects we create.
We may not wish to believe the obvious. Every ancient civilization we have studied has gone through the same cycle. When environment is good, human density increases and changes the “natural” environment consuming available resources. Climate is modified and the environment becomes unfavorable to dense cultural center (cities) populations. Such great “civilization” centers dissolve and are slowly return to a non-human habitation condition. One might state, to a “natural” condition.
I believe such decline may be due in part to eventual human body waste pollution causing spread of infectious deadly diseases. Sewage sanitation is an extremely difficult task in dense population centers. Thanks to the complex and enclosed sanitary sewer systems we have today, large, highly populated cities can now exist.
Bears shit far into the woods for a reason… But I have seen domesticated dogs eat their own feces… Just saying… Poop (a very natural process) may be inherently safe from healthy individual animal, but otherwise become a serious health risk as a disease carrier.
Add climate change and crop failure to a primitive sanitation practice. Throw in human “envy nature” to war and conquest of neighbors, creating a need for life defense at city/state level. Most ancient civilizations reached a “natural” overburdened failure point.
What remains are called artifacts of our presence. Usually buried in the debris of this “natural” earth evolution processes.
Humans are not destined to exist forever. We assist “a natural failure process” in our own change and modification to our personal environment, even to the point of our total extinction. It’s a part of the “natural” processes of the entire cosmos. Nothing exists that is constant or steady-state.
Our insignificant personal awareness life span, make some humans believe “constant state” is a natural desire or condition. It is only an experience of a limited exposure to the reality of change. Change itself is a variable and not constant. But it is inevitable.
Living forever (as a species) is a dream, not our destiny.