Not saying you're wrong, but I'd like to share my own take, which is that one of the clearest, bluest skies I've ever seen was over North Korea. Because they sucked at doing "industry" compared to the South Koreans. In the 90s in South Korea, the rivers ran black and every corner you turned had its own putrid chemical smell from whatever fly-by-night entrepraneur had found a way to make a buck there. But that's an anecdote and I haven't been back to see what it's like now.
Yes. For many folks there is an intrinsic value to protecting the environment.
I find more and more that even within the NGO and environmentalist community people only care about how natural resources impact people in a utilitarian sense. I can respect that philosophical position, but it makes me equal parts angry and sad that it's taken as a given. I don't believe life on earth exists just to serve human needs.
I think there are two kinds of environmentalist - the purist kind you prefer and the practical kind. The practical kind has the arguments that appeal to most people with things like "let's not run out of oil because it's useful" and "lets not cause climate change because it'll lead to problems for people". But the purist kind is really more of a religious belief that you can't persuade people of in practical terms. That doesn't mean it's wrong - it's just that even adherents don't know why it's right, if it is. Just like religion. You see the purist kind extending to things like "lets not colonize the moon or Mars because we'll damage their natural state." Maybe in a million years, they'll turn out to have been right, but nobody knows that today.
When pointing to another country in a discussion about policies, the point is never "we should be absolutely 100% like them in every single ways". There will never be a path for a country A to absolutely follow country B's path anyway.
In that respect, unless you believe over polluting the environment is an absolute necessity to avoid malnutrition, pointing at NK's economic policy issues in this discussion doesn't help us much.
Out of curiosity, are you from NK? I am fascinated with that country. Wrt South Korea, Koreans I spoke to only complain about the environment when winds blow from China.
