The technological adaptations for population inflation have precedent in a lot of our history. The application of the potato as a food crop boosted the population of a lot of European countries due to the amount of calories one could grow on relatively poor soil and in Ireland and Britain that population later collapsed when viruses wiped out the crop and aid in the form of utilizing stores of imported foods were witheld. Spirituality is fairly key in shaping how we perceive our place in the world and while Heidegger has his "hold on a minute the world is finite" moment it is good to acknowledge that that philosophy is a lot older than he is through the lens of certain religion.

The river's value in a prior example is not limited to human's rather narrow concept of use. It is also an ecosystem that benefits other species, is a channel for delivering water and nutrients to plants and evaporation for weather patterns and if abused can become a vector for poisons. One could look at ghe preservativion of natural resources as not in the terms of commodity but of intergenerational wealth. If a system of artificial population support collapses much like the humble potato, it takes a swath of humanity with it.

One could look at some of the religious philosophy of shinto as being a way of connecting that sense of gratitude and a less human-centric veiw of nature. Shinto doesn't have an afterlife like heaven or hell, rather your spiritual stuff sort of breaks down and returns to the world because the world is all there is. There are hidden aspects of it but the afterlife is all around you so the idea of how one treats their environment becomes not something that you use and one day abandon for something else when you die but this is essentially all there is.

In a way that acknowledges the closed system we live in a lot more than a lot if western philosophy/religion does as the idea that we either live on in a separate disconnected realm or cease to be entirely after death doesn't capture that sense of responsibility one might have to previous generations to maintain the world as a living recycling system or to preserve it for future generations. How we conceptualize our connection and dependance on the Earth for our continuation is often subverted in our fantasy storytelling by the existence of other worlds or an eventual escape into space. In a way it feels akin to a denial of death as a very present danger but on a level of our species.

We are thematically made uncomfortable by both our complete dependance on these finite spaces and by extention the idea that we may be failing in a collective responsibility. "To hell with you I got mine" is a very common attitude of a very individualistic type that washes one hands of those anxieties by limiting one's care of something to their immediate personal use.