Why Must We Preserve the Earth's Resources?

According to an editorial in The Onion:

As we move into the 21st century, it is our responsibility to think of the future of the earth—not for ourselves, but for those who will inherit what my husband and I leave behind when we're gone. If we do not join together and do what's best for this, our only planet, there may not be an environment left in which my five children, and their 25 children's 125 children, can grow up and raise large upper-middle-class families of their own.

Nothing less than the preservation of my descendents' lifestyle itself is at stake.

Imagine a world devoid of pristine wilderness for my progeny to explore on the weekends in the sport-utility-vehicles of the future, leaving my youngest son, Dylan, with nowhere to blow off steam on off-road adventures. Imagine a world in which my beautiful middle son, Connor, is denied his twice-daily half-hour hot showers because of water shortages. …

Why would we have to preserve the Earth's resources? Resources, in the sense they are finite, consist of atoms and energy. Atoms aren't usually used up at all, and the two hundred quadrillion watts of solar energy hitting the Earth is vastly greater than that consumed by humans. Even if we fill up the Earth, there is the rest of the universe. (We do not currently know if it is possible to create artificial universes. If it is, there are no limits.)

In outer space, there will be far more room for Dylan and Connor's water can be recycled indefinitely. The other alleged problems cited are either trivial or can be solved in similar ways.

Yes. I realize The Onion intended the editorial to sound like it was written by a complete fool. They succeeded in that … but not necessarily in the way they wanted.