There's a difference between clearing a few trees for a cabin vs desalinating and pumping millions of gallons of water and transforming the ecology of a state.
Yes. Indeed there is a difference between a philosophical consideration and a practical one.
Of course we're part of nature and whatever we do will not "destroy" the world like the world was not "destroyed" when algae pumped toxic oxygen in the atmosphere.
But for all intents and purposes we're able to "destroy" the things we care about the world and turn it into a place we would quite hate to live in (while cockroaches and rates may have no problems with it)
Check pictures from before 1920 - note that all the trees are cleared from around towns and buildings. The cumulative scale is immense when everyone had a cabin and used wood for heating. I think you're understating the impact of "a cabin." European style living is not very sustainable, compared to those that lived in NA for many thousands of years prior.
Yeah I admit when I was writing this little comparison I was trying to guess how many trees it would take to build the typical cabin and I was like "woof that's a lot of trees". So, yeah fair.