Story of Intelligence and Thought: Which one could be a free radical in Gaia?

We are facing a global crisis that has to be quickly mitigated before it goes out of control. To understand how we allowed this emerging condition, we have to once again recall some basic questions and review the explanations in the context of it. For example, what is intelligence? What is thought? Is it one and the same or independent properties? Are these found in other living things too? If it is so, is our behaviour similar to it? If not, why is it so? More importantly, how living things and we have treated nature? The answers we find would indicate whether the steps taken to overcome the crisis would work or not.