If you watch kids doing this kind of thing, there is an inevitable point when they seem to reach a maximum point of development and then smash the whole thing to bits and start over. The smashing up usually involves lots of explosion noises and probably conversations between imaginary world leaders as they plot the systematic destruction of the 'world'.
It seems humanity is like that. We have plugged into our brains at some level the desire to destroy everything we've built up and start over. Hell, even computers come with elaborate ctr+alt+del codes to reset the system and start over. Every gaming system has a reset button. Nations have thermonuclear devices. Holy books have end-of-world scenarios and signs to look for that clue the faithful into the coming reset.
The reason I mention kids first is that the urge to destroy shows up very young, even before religious or social programming. If you stack up a bunch of blocks in front of a baby, it will eventually knock them down and even make a game of it, laughing and giggling every time the 'world' crashes down.
It's hardwired into us, this desire to destroy. It is the yang to our creative yin. It is the evil that offsets the good. In order to take part in the creative process, there seems to be a built-in reset button that drives us to destroy.
We humans are both Brahma and Shiva balanced on the lap of Vishnu waiting to totter off in one direction or the other.
It's like a Kubrick film, with phallic probes from a tanker aircraft seeking union with the receiving craft, and ending with an atomic explosion of a climax complete with Slim Pickens riding the Big One all the way in coital eruptions of "Yeehaw!"
We are a strange breed. I am not familiar with any other creature on Earth that burns with the desire to destroy all it has created to begin the whole process again. Beavers never tear down their dens. Rabbits never cave in their warrens. Birds may abandon a nest, but they don't rip it to shreds before doing so. It seems to be a characteristic unique to human beings.
Perhaps in the millennia that humanity has been asking the question, "Why are we here?", the answer all along has been, "Learn how to create without destroying." But with something so seemingly intractable from the human psyche, are we even capable of reaching that ultimate enlightenment?
But what do I know? I believe that 'global warming' is a cover story for weather wars.