Others have commented on the other fallacies in your post but you say
>If evolution had been “conservative”
When has evolution not been conservative? Tiny changes over the span of generations is certainly not liberal or radical. It took what, hundreds of thousands of years if not more for us to evolve into Homo sapiens and develop intelligence.
You are thinking human timescales. The sheer diversity of mindboggling lifeforms that exist and have existed have been everything but conservative. And also very wasteful/destructive.
Goalposts. You specifically mentioned intelligent life, which is dealing on human timescales.
You mention wastefulness and destruction which only makes me think of humanities actions in causing extinctions, caused by our lack of regulation or something synonymous.
>If evolution had been “conservative”
When has evolution not been conservative? Tiny changes over the span of generations is certainly not liberal or radical. It took what, hundreds of thousands of years if not more for us to evolve into Homo sapiens and develop intelligence.