Earth as a 3D printer

A popular internet meme goes as follows:

Another 'crazy' observation is that the Earth, or more specifically the biosphere, can be understood as a 3D printer for fossil fuels and other sedimentary processes that build up as underground veins over long spans of geological time.

Each spring, the sun and rain combine to activate seeds, fungi, and other biological actants that render a layer of carboniferous growth drawing on the CO2 in the lower atmosphere for substance.

As the biological agents of the biosphere 'print' an annual layer of biomass atop the dead layer of sediments left over from the winter, a portion of atmospheric CO2 is depleted in the same way the ink in the cartridge of a printer is depleted.

Year after year, the layers of 'printed' sediments are covered over by new layers and gradually a 3D mass builds up under the ground (surface layer). The question is what other processes occur within the sedimented/buried layers as well as on the surface that make this 3D-printed mass continue to live and develop even after its 'printed' layers have been stack year after year (think underground processes that continue to mold biological sediments into the denser fuels we discover as coal, oil, etc.).

If we understand the living surface of the planet as a 3D printer in this way, it becomes crystal clear that the way humans sculpt the Earth's surface determines how the sedimented mass will be shaped over long periods of geological time. We are not only altering the already-sedimented/printed mass by mining into it and harvesting various fossil fuels and other materials/resources; but our activities and developments on the surface, including infrastructure; are going to determine what future humans will discover when they try to explore and mine the underground mass that's built up beneath their feet through many millennia of human generations that came before them.

It is quite amazing to contemplate that humans have achieved such longevity as a species that we can begin to recognize ourselves and our actions as a factor in the long-term geological shaping of the planet as a whole; and perhaps even more amazing that our ability to make sense of our own existence and place in the universe is facilitated by our ability to create and understand technologies, such as 3D-printing.