Perhaps "conquer" is bringing to mind some unpleasant connotations. But even when empires conquer territory, they don't destroy the land and the buildings, although a brutal war is often required to establish dominance. I don't think conquering nature needs to be destructive. What's involved, indeed, is a harnessing and a repurposing. We should be building a sustainable form of civilization on nature, and ideally, learning how to redeem nature's impersonality in the long term.