I guess I have to start my own school, then. We are so accustomed to anthrocentrism that we just can't mentally break away from thinking like net consumers of our environment.

We don't think that way with our children, or when someone is in trouble, or when we are in love: we simply give, even if it hurts or kills us. Yet, when it comes to the environment we need above everything in the civilized world, we can only think in terms of taking. This is, as you so eloquently put it, our only two schools of thought: precisely in the fact that we are schooled to do so: to take and grow until collapse, or to reduce our taking and delay collapse (not counting the impossible fantasies of perpetual expansion to space(it's mostly empty and expensive, FYI) or being perpetually stuck in heaven with a bunch of selfish asshole bible salesmen).

Prior to the invention of extractive hierarchal civilization, our environment demanded that we be cooperative contributors or die off. Now that we have all this science, available labor and energy, and schools, why aren't we taught to be giving value to Nature instead of taking value and then throwing it away in landfills and luxuries? The problem with every discussion about population, birth rates or wealth is twofold: We forget that the only significant value is Nature's, and we never stop competing with each other long enough to establish a sensible collective contribution to the planet. Thanks to the Invisible Hand, we are "indeterminately existing": perfect for selling any product, but especially "leadership authority" and random solutions to invented problems.