Can humans and the environment flourish together? My answer would be, while we, humans, have to capability to make this possible, we simply won't do it. While there are increasing awareness about the environment around the world, there are still more countries that are willing to sacrifice nature for their economic finances. For example, United States, while being the largest CO2 emitter, doesn't participate in major CO2 limiting committees. Statistics are supporting the notion that major environmental problems are caused by over-consumption and over-exploitation of natural resources. Humans' using up of natural resources is much faster than what the environment can regenerate, and never before has been such an exploiting of such an unprecedented magnitude. From this, we can infer that we can let the natural environment heal itself by exploiting it less.
I've been to an eco-friendly village where people gained resources necessary from nature within a few kilometers around their settlement and still managed to maintain a high standard of living style. Houses were built from wood, mud bricks and some metal. Food was grown in their fields in a natural way (no usage of chemical fertilizers/insecticides was involved). Quite contrary to what many people think, they were having a better life, with more leisure time, regular exercise, organic food and healthy environment. This shows that humans and nature can enter a positive correlation in which there are mutual benefits gained by both sides.
Humans can flourish with environment. However, as long as individuals and government aren't willing to take risks and momentarily experience discomfort, environment will continue to be damaged, and sooner or later the humans will no longer have access to those resources.
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