How did life survive?

In Discordant harmonies, Daniel B. Botkin briefly describes the history of Earth, and the important role that life has played, especially in the formation of the present composition of the atmosphere. The idea is that life has always succeeding in exploiting the available chemical resources, which resulted after every major evolutionary move in a change of the main composition of the atmosphere. The question that struck me is then: how come did life succeed not to kill itself by over-exploiting Earth's resources, a question obviously of utmost important for the human race?

Several hypothesis: 1) there is a Gaia-like theological process where life keeps itself within limitis where it can survive, 2) just luck. Both answers are not satisfactory. The first one avoids to answer the question: why would there be such process? The second one does not provide any mechanism that we, human, could use to manage Earth correctly.