Intelligence Obligation

      We've discussed a lot this semester about how the environment gets treated, what we can do try to make things better, and learned a lot more about the environment as a whole, which makes sense, since this is an Environmental Ethics Course. A common theme that I noticed though is that a lot of our discussions come back to morality, and whether we are morally responsible for what we do the the environment.
       The most recent discussion we've had that has really stuck in my mind was the question about being morally responsible for actually giving up when people don't listen to what you have to say about protecting the environment, or changing the amount and preventing the damage we are causing. What I feel like we forgot to ask or to take into account is, do we have an obligation, due to our intelligence to try to save the world. A lot of our conversation talked about the tipping point where the world was going to end as we knew it regardless of what we do, but we didn't really talk about our obligations as intelligent sentient beings.
      We are causing all this damage to out planet, and although it's pretty obvious to me that it's not morally responsible to just throw our hands up and stop fighting for what needs to happen. Should there be more of an emphasis on our intelligent responsibility, or the thought process that, not only did we cause this mess, but we have the intelligence to at least try to alleviate the problem a little bit, so we should? What do you all think?