THOUGHTS ON: Ishmael and longevity of life and world

I am surprised that the book Ishmael: An Adventure in Mind and Spirit hasn't crossed my reading path before now. It is an important book with concepts that are imperative to the world's longevity.
This book is peppered with so many lightbulb moments, but the most important one for me was the explanation about why most of the world seems aware of the fact that we have embarked on systematic destruction of the earth, but that it doesn't seem to amount to any serious action. Unbelievable but true. We just continue on, more or less happy to plunder it of its resources. And in some cases even denying that problems like global climate change/warming exist.
The most interesting point in the book for me is the proposition that we have interfered with evolution - somehow coming to the conclusion that we are the 'end' of the evolutional journey - which has given rise to massive population explosion that the world cannot support, for one, but the worst thing is that the 'civilised' part of the world's population wants more than it needs - this not only applies to food, but the insatiable 'hunger' of an incredible consumerist and throw-away mind-set. We think we need it to be happy, but there is much more mental illness in 'civilised' society than in other societal groups.
While reading it I was reminded of this quote by US journalist Ellen Goodman:
"Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for - in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it."
Why do we think it's so important to have the right to live such futile lives?

SM