Unless "intelligent" life inevitably renders its local environment uninhabitable and collapses in short order - a proposition looking more likely by the day. It may be that the intelligence required to maximally exploit the local negentropy is strictly less than the intelligence required to not do that, despite being able to. Indeed it's difficult to see how the trait of "behaving responsibly with an entire planet" could evolve - the selection pressure is rather all-or-nothing.
This is my belief as well, although slightly different in how I phrase it: humans are incapable of seeing much beyond their own selfish desires, and as a result will wind up causing their own extermination. The denial of death is widespread and understandable: to truly consider existential demise is exhausting, and I suspect has been backgrounded for simple evolutionary reasons.
Regardless, the species is naturally incapable of averting averting crises that are foreseeable but distant.
