I was talking to a Native American History Professor (he was NA, he taught history of technology). Apparently, Europe nearly deforested itself, particularly Spain. This changed the climate, turned Spain into a sort of desert, and threatened life in that part of the world. Note this was a man-made environmental disaster and since nearly everything required wood for everything from building to heating to cooking - it looked like armageddon to the Europeans of the time.
In the sixteen hundreds, the entire east coast of North America was densely forested. When settlers came to the continent, the first thing they saw was wood. In fact, the English Crown funded the colonialization of America primarily for wood, the lack of which was threatening serious civil unrest back in England. When you drive interstates 64 and 95 down the eastern seaboard today, all of those clear fields were created by cutting lumber and sending it to Europe.
A couple of points: First, our history has been a continuous cycle of us overconsuming a critical resource and then fighting for a new source of whatever critical material we need to feed our consumption. Second, the Amazon forests are the lungs of the world because we have already cut away the lungs elsewhere and exploited the environment to benefit our own pockets (that's why I say pay them to not cut it).
When America turned to coal as a primary source of heat (for houses, trains, etc.) the air quality got so bad in urban areas that everyone from the city had an incessant cough. And disease was rampant. The air quality was actually worse than it is anywhere in the world today! Ironically all those trees we cut could have helped swallow some of that carbon!
The dust bowls of the 20s were the result of over-farming of crops that left the soils dry and depleted. Drought conditions simply put the nails in the coffin.
So, armageddon is a common theme to mankind. It has defined most of recorded history. So green is a big thing. We have never learned to live on this earth in a balanced way that does not create exploitation and conflict. Exploit and conflict is what wastes money.