This is the correct way of thinking to move forward.
Humanity will have a large effect on our environment. Period. A static ecosystem didn't exist without us and it certainly doesn't exist with us.
Embracing that we have an effect and choosing to improve our environment rather than to get it back to some idealized past is the only way we can have a future.
It's too bad, then, that most of ecological thinking, as you've described, is so pervasive.
Interestingly, this thinking is really embedded in our fiction. Garden of Eden type stuff is very common. Tolkien's world also follows the idealized past trope. It might be part of a sort of jungian collective unconscious. I wonder what works exist that tell a different story trope - one aligned more with the economical way of thinking.
Humanity will have a large effect on our environment. Period. A static ecosystem didn't exist without us and it certainly doesn't exist with us.
Embracing that we have an effect and choosing to improve our environment rather than to get it back to some idealized past is the only way we can have a future.
It's too bad, then, that most of ecological thinking, as you've described, is so pervasive.
Interestingly, this thinking is really embedded in our fiction. Garden of Eden type stuff is very common. Tolkien's world also follows the idealized past trope. It might be part of a sort of jungian collective unconscious. I wonder what works exist that tell a different story trope - one aligned more with the economical way of thinking.