I vaguely remember encountering a hypothesis concerning humanity's disproportionate fascination with diamonds, particularly after the discovery of carbon-rich planetary environments such as 55 Cancri e, where extreme pressure may facilitate the formation of diamond. It makes me wonder whether an extraterrestrial civilization originating from such an environment would perceive diamonds as an entirely mundane geological resource, while regarding Earth's abundance of trees, cellulose and organic biomass as something extraordinarily valuable. Their concept of luxury might be fundamentally incompatible with ours.
Which leads to an interesting possibility: If human civilization has already contributed to the destruction of approximately 46-50% of the planet's forests, what exactly makes us assume an extraterrestrial species would behave any differently toward its own natural resources? Perhaps they have their own equivalent of deforestation, except the ecological catastrophe involves the systematic extraction of planetary diamonds. An entire civilization could be mining the geological foundation of its own existence without recognizing the consequences.
This also raises the possibility that diamonds serve some biological or ecological function for hypothetical organisms native to such environments. Perhaps their relationship with diamonds is comparable to ours with trees: Something so deeply integrated into their survival that its absence would eventually become an existential problem.