In the same article I mentioned earlier by Pau D’Amato I found the name Frederick Engels who “shows a remarkable grasp of the process of human intervention into nature and its implications.”
He states how animals and humans can change their environment by acting on it, although animals do it through instinct and then humans consciously act on nature in order to “harness” its forces and materials. In short
“The animal merely uses the environment and brings about changes in it simply by its presence, Man by his changes makes it serve his ends, masters it”
(Engels) Engels describes it perfectly, humans manipulate its environment and take advantage of it. Humans don’t just take what they need, through their changes they strive to provide the necessary. It is completely irrelevant to them what the environments changes are. But Engels goes on to say;
"Let us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human victories over nature. For each such victory nature takes its revenge on us. Each victory, it is true, in the first place brings about the results we expected, but in the second and third places it has quite different, unforeseen effects which only too often cancel the first."
I love what he says here, that in a way nature is fighting back, that we think we are getting what we want, the profits, the convenience, but humans with all their science and technology seem to neglect the long-term effects, and the long term effects might completely right off what was expected.
"Thus at every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside nature--but that we, with flesh, blood and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst, and that all our mastery of it consists in the fact that we have the advantage over all other creatures of being able to learn its laws and apply them correctly."
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