If animals have no understanding of the concept of hunger then why do squirrels gather nuts for the winter? If that can be dismissed as DNA-led instinctive behaviour, then so can the human desire to intellectualise, and to go into the abstract (often while ignoring the reality staring us in the face) - it's just a rote, instinctive behaviour specific to our species. That it's as inflexible (and sometimes counterproductive) as any other instinctive behaviour is witnessed by the wars we fight, the environments we poison, and the children we kill, due to abstract concepts like "God" "wealth" "success" "honour" and so on. I don't think causing out-of-control climate change in the name of abstracts like "the economy" is intrinsically brighter than anything any animal species does, be they bower birds or termites - it's just a different kind of blind instinct.