One point I missed in my other comment:

The scale of dynamics is so large because most of us are just like individual polyps in a massive coral reef, secreting their own shell of calcium carbonate. Except in our case, each human being “secretes” (on average) about one cubic meter of new concrete per year. And the most important (also impact-wise) ingredient in concrete is calcium carbonate, as limestone, i.e., mostly ex-corals.

A longer quote from Jan Zalasiewicz’s book, where I found this nice analogy:

“A termite mound, conversely, can be compared to a city: its architectural
complexity, heat control, and air conditioning are arguably the equal of anything that we can make. But, termite mounds cannot be said to have global impact.
There is, though, a living phenomenon that combines infinite constructional
complexity and global, landscape-altering scale. Here again we meet
the corals, and the quite stupendous reef structures that they build. Small
bi-tentacled metazoans with a talent for making limestone are, in a sense,
our immediate competitors for immortality. Both skyscrapers and coral
reefs are basically large masses of biologically constructed rock, worthy
monuments to our respective phyla. Our immediate contribution to the
skylines of New Orleans, Amsterdam, and London certainly seems impressive enough, and satisfactorily solid, as regards both the visible and
invisible parts of it.
It is worth simply recalling the size and the status of coral reefs as prehuman cities. The Great Barrier Reef, stretching 2,000 kilometres along the Australian coast and covering a quarter of a million square kilometres, is
justly renowned. More surprisingly, it seems to be a baby reef, less than a
million years old. It may be visible from space, but it is only just beginning
the process of wholesale landscape modification.
A reef is a biological city, quite as complex as New York, Beijing, or London,
but built on a quite inhuman scale as regards both time and space.
The Pyramids, Great Wall of China, and New York are striplings by comparison.
Still, we humans have only been in the city-building trade for a few thousand years. The coral organisms have had hundreds of millions of
years. We are catching up with impressive speed.”