Of the human footprint

There's much being published nowadays on the subject of the individual's footprint on the earth - that is, the amount the individual living on the earth will consume. Most recently, a TV show had a piles of all the vegetables we'll eat in our lifetime, all the cars we'll use, etc.
Image being presented: Mother Earth being looted. The BBC magazine Radio Times gave us the lesson we're supposed to take away: the earth would be better off without us.
A bit of a misanthropic tone, perhaps? And a huge value judgement, too, that the earth without reasonably intelligent life on it would be "better".
It's also one-sided. Because one could also make a show illustrating how much we all produce during a lifetime. That would show the other side of the ledger - everthing we consume has been produced by someone too - otherwise we'd never buy it. Even "free" stuff like water, has to be purified and delivered to us.
An honest review would comment that some resources are being depleted, used up. But similarly, we are also adding to a long-lasting store of knowledge, which never runs out and can be used gain and again to invent ingenious solutions to our problems.

So let's not be pessimistic, shall we?