"We have sympathized with the misplaced obsessive emotionality you have thrown into your delusional activities.” “What do you mean, ‘delusional’? I k… - Robert Sheckley

Earth, Earth," the short, alien Carmody mused. "I think I remember the name now. There was a recent study of isolated worlds and the peculiarities of their development. Earth was mentioned as a planet covered with an obsessively overproductive species. Object manipulation is their outstanding modality. Their project is an attempt to live in their own, ever-accumulating waste products. In short, Earth is diseased place. I believe it is being phased out of the Galactic Master Plan on the basis of chronic cosmic incompatibility. The place will then be rehabilitated and turned into a refuge for daffodils.

Esotericism, which is legal, but not too much fun, prescribes to our condition. But when one tries to follow a spiritual path, nothing much happens for most of us. Faced with this lack of results, the esoteric schools put the blame squarely on us rather than on any insufficiency in their doctrines or methods. Finally, they explain our failure by taking refuge in paradoxes. They tell us, for example, that we can attain only by not wanting to attain—a neat double bind.
Some esoteric schools caution the disciple not to practise the extraordinary powers which we will acquire in the course of our work. This is surely an extraordinary statement. Most of us can’t muster the power to give up smoking, much less to levitate.

Population growth and the multifarious forms of pollution: the human animal was overgrazing his range. The human animal had destroyed everything in sight, killed off the other big animals, used up millions of years of deposits of fresh water, oil, coal, and minerals. Fragile ecosystems had been pushed to the limit, some of them beyond recovery. The death of the earth was undramatic, but it was happening, and fast. And the governments continued to squabble and defend their various economic, religious, and social doctrines. The wealth of nations large and small was bled into the continuing efforts to increase the size, ingenuity, and ferocity of the armed forces. The humans were killer ants, devoting all their time to breeding more powerful mandibles.
Something had to be done immediately to preserve and maintain the great interlocking global system of ecosystems that sustained all life upon the earth. Only by managing the entire earth as a single unit could the basis of life continue on beyond the next century or two.
But twentieth-century civilization was locked into its self-destructive groove. Nothing could be officially done until the various threats became much more threatening. But by the time that stage had been reached, it would probably be too late to do anything.