You should see that we, humanity itself is at a stage of being born into a different mode, where we start to add energy put to use on Earth, like a plant that just formed its first leaves, instead of taking it out of Earth. The plant formed an energy overdraft to Earth too, but just humanity formed a much bigger overdraft, of thousands of years, but now we grew our first leaves, we are starting to add to Earth too, its just that we have to learn how to value it, and encourage it. Did Earth ever have too many plants? This is something we actually don't have much power over, other than the power to end our birth to the next mode by nuclear war, then our species would simply be stillborn, self destructed, before we could become an adult species, capable of paying back our energy deficit to Earth, many thousands of times over, just like every plant. If you need proof with numbers, see the link I provided to Erin above.