We are just about to force future generations to (quite likely not) live through the unintended consequences of current and past generations ignorantly and recklessly engineering their environment out of a misguided desire “[grow] the economy, and [make] money along the way”, and in response the author seems to suggest we use more ignorance and recklessness to drive even more unintended consequences?

We don’t want to lose deserts and more than we wanted to lose forests and wetlands (and are now desperately trying to save them)… just because humans are too stupid to see the complex reasons why specific ecosystems exist doesn’t mean they should KEEP acting on that stupidity.