Not for nothing, though, Aria, but everything makes trouble for some other part of the Totality. Animals consume animals which in turn consume plants. Erecting a structure casts a shadow that alters flora distribution in the affected area. Tectonic activity alters the course of rivers, destroying lakes full of fish, which in turn leaves massive salt deposits that choke the life out of the soil nearby as the wind blows it across hundreds of kilometers. Travel in space disturbs particle flow as ships move through the stellar wind at subluminal speels, which can be disruptive in ways we haven’t even bothered to study.
[Edit for completeness of thought: And the reverse applies: Those animals - if they don’t kill other animals, their own young starve. If the structure isn’t erected, people aren’t housed, services aren’t rendered, or other needed functions aren’t met. If those lakes don’t die, that salt is never mined to meet the needs of populations distant enough to have their own arable land. If the ship doesn’t travel through space, medical supplies don’t get to where they’re needed.]
Everything you do makes a splash. Everything you don’t do makes a different splash, only it’s usually in a much more diffuse, unpredictable, and often bigger way… because the splash you know about is one you can mitigate. Why is, for example, the disruption of a dozen lives you’ll never interact with more significant than the disruption of a thousand lives you’ll never interact with, just because of which kind of mammal one set is?