you are most interested in preserving the environment and other species.
I am interested in preserving the environment and other species for humanity's sake. It is completely nonsensical to pursue 'higher quality human life' while destroying the paradise we've thrived in - still our only home. Short-term human suffering is minor compared to the bigger picture threats to our survival that we have created.
I see what you're saying and why you're pessimistic about it. We've somehow managed to make it this far despite nuclear and biological weapons where messing up once leads to ending it all. That could be entirely due to luck--or maybe our institutions and society is more robust than it appears.
I tend not to think we'll wipe ourselves out environmentally because even if the entire world took the path of China (which I'd consider the worst-case scenario), we'd be living with a toxic air soup and poisoned rivers but still living. Clearly that's not a world or life I want, however. Humans are perhaps bad at estimating true risk, and there is an asymmetry in outcomes here--better economy and material prosperity with some environmental destruction vs possible total annihilation if the environment is destroyed too much--so it could make sense to be more conservative regarding the environment than the naive utility calculations might show.
Changing topics slightly, do you consider AI as one of these existential threats? I consider it one and could easily imagine the science fiction scenarios where autonomous machines consume and harvest entire planets for more resources. Plus even if it doesn't lead to this apocalypse, at a minimum you're looking at billions of people who suddenly have to change how they live/work/etc. As a another aside, what do you consider the solution to environmental problems? Is it even possible or feasible for humans in an industrial society to give up their profligate lifestyles?
I am very worried about AI as well. On the bright side, perhaps one human party will use weaponised weak AI to exterminate all other human competition (and then stop developing) before strong AI arises to forever enslave or eliminate all of humanity.
I think technology has given humanity too much power when it's clear we have no wisdom. Global problems could be easily solved if we were all decent enough to act with collective intelligence. I see no way to make us wiser in time, and having opened Pandora's box with no way to turn back time, I think we're basically screwed.
PS:
Is it even possible or feasible for humans in an industrial society to give up their profligate lifestyles?
If the people of the industrial society were 'good' people, it would be ridiculously easy. We are not good people.
It appears we're approach this with different value functions: I'm more interested in higher quality human life (e.g. freedom, health, safety, comfort), and you are most interested in preserving the environment and other species. Fine. All of these are important, and it is a value judgement as to how to weigh the tradeoffs between the two, because it is impossible to have all of these.
The civilised world has indeed performed very well for my standards (abolishing disease, providing clean drinking water, material comfort, better human rights, etc) and poorly by yours (strip mining, oil spills, deforestation, etc). But even if we look at things from your side, Yemen (and certain cultures) won't offer solutions to solving this, so like you're saying, they're largely irrelevant at best here, but more realistically they would fuck up the environment as much as anybody if they had the scale and capabilities, so once again we shouldn't encourage their approaches and values. Some cultures and values do value preserving the environment, and I'd say we should look to them for insights.
But things besides the environment and other animals matter, so I'd challenge you to consider the plight of humans and suffering too. Which is ironic because what started this exchange was your comment that some people still care about human life (but maybe you meant that others do and you don't).