[23throwaway23]

The intent of the analogy is to make clear that consumers have little recourse over their "choice" to consume this material.

Lots can be said about the tradeoffs of industrial civilization. We now see that it is leading us to extinction.

It's like bacteria in a petri dish, for 50 years it accelerated our consumption of our limited resources and made the petri dish increasingly hostile to life within it.

We all know how the story of bacteria in a petri dish turns out.