Our current society, at least the western version of it, is by far the best human society that ever existed on this planet. Our levels of wealth were inconceivable even 300 years ago. Not even kings could have things we take for granted, like medical care, round the world air travel, indoor plumbing, lasting peace and physical security, access to information and learning.
In a very extremist fashion, of course you can define a moral standard high enough that we will always fail. But the opportunity for you to think about such absolute moral issues - as opposed to literally slaving in a coalmine or birthing you 14th child and dying before the age of 45 - was created by moral pragmatists who were "effective altruists"[1] of their times , even if the only thing they did was to seek profits by inventing some type of better machine.
We're at a cross road now where the existing mode of wealth production, focused on growth and individual material satisfaction, has reached the point of diminishing returns and even negative returns if we consider our fate as a species in the natural environment. But denying our ability for incremental improvement, forgoing our world building tools and returning to some elusive harmonious state of nature can't be the answer.
[1] though I dislike that term due to its abuse by virtue signaling sociopaths
There's no need to strawman a "return to nature" argument. We've always exploited each other, and the current shape of society has an unprecedented proportion of people living in prosperity, yes. But at the cost of catastrophic destruction of ecosystems and disruption of a climate that made that possible in the first place.
I get it, modern life for the average western citizen is quite amazing. Using that as an argument for 'thus the western model of exploitation is superior' is not warranted at all.
> But at the cost of catastrophic destruction of ecosystems and disruption of a climate that made that possible in the first place.
I disagree. We could have wrecked the natural environment even if we had a much inequitable and oppressive society, think Nazi Germany winning the second world war and entering a nuclear race with the US. There is no single "western model of exploitation", there is a whole family of them (in an alternate history sense), all capable of destroying the planet, but with massive moral differences, and your framing loses that nuance.
This nuance matters because your implication is that the environmental costs are a tradeoff for this prosperity, where in reality they are just a direct result of a runaway species with technology. And our proven ability to control this process towards moral goals, such as material welfare for the masses, suggest to me that we can, in principle, limit and reverse the environmental damage, as long as we recognize it as a worthy moral goal.
In a very extremist fashion, of course you can define a moral standard high enough that we will always fail. But the opportunity for you to think about such absolute moral issues - as opposed to literally slaving in a coalmine or birthing you 14th child and dying before the age of 45 - was created by moral pragmatists who were "effective altruists"[1] of their times , even if the only thing they did was to seek profits by inventing some type of better machine.
We're at a cross road now where the existing mode of wealth production, focused on growth and individual material satisfaction, has reached the point of diminishing returns and even negative returns if we consider our fate as a species in the natural environment. But denying our ability for incremental improvement, forgoing our world building tools and returning to some elusive harmonious state of nature can't be the answer.
[1] though I dislike that term due to its abuse by virtue signaling sociopaths