I actually did mean it quite literally what I said and in no sensationist sense. Also I don't agree with your explanation of how nature and species behave but I do agree with some of your conclusions about humaninty. So let me explain myself in more detail:

Life in general spreads and consumes resources without any intelligent plan or design. It just spreads and consumes. I can agree with you that most living organisms and animals take what they only need but this is true only for individual creatures/entities. But when taken from the perspective of the whole species, any life form just spread until they hit a wall of what environment can sustain - in complex ecosystems there is an equilibrium of various factors and species which define these walls and balances out among each other.

I do agree however that humanity has capabilities that are unprecedented among Earth's life forms. It is this consiousness which you are talking about. It is the neocortex ability to visualize future and reason about it. So we can plan and organize the very aspect of life like the reproduction or resource consumtion. We can have intelligent plan and intelligent design instead of being mere game of life cells.