Why Societies Destroy the Environment

When i read your books, it seems to me that the few examples you have where a society successfully protects their environment in cases where there's real scarcity is the miracle. It seems obvious and inevitable that almost any society faced with scarcity is going to end up destroying the environment around them. That's what an economist would think. So am i right in characterizing you as someone who's surprised when people follow their basic human nature, and government and society doesn't manage to reign that in? Nowadays i've gotten used to the fact that societies destroy themselves. But naively, if you don't know that happened, and you don't knows the details of how it happened, it is counter