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Em suma, as fábricas poluentes acabam por destruir a natureza.

Em suma, as fábricas poluentes acabam por destruir a natureza.
In short, polluting factories end up destroying nature.
From Lesson 346:Summarizing and concluding (em suma, em conclusão, afinal)·Portuguese (Portugal)

Questions & Answers about Em suma, as fábricas poluentes acabam por destruir a natureza.

How exactly does em suma work here, and could I use em conclusão or afinal instead?
Em suma means "in short" or "to sum up." It is used here to condense a likely longer argument into one final, core point. You could easily swap it for em conclusão (in conclusion), though that sounds slightly more formal, like the final paragraph of an essay. You should not use afinal here; afinal translates to "after all" or "in the end" and is used to show a change in expectations or to justify something, rather than to summarize.
Why is the phrase acabam por destruir used to mean "end up destroying" rather than using a gerund?
In European Portuguese, the structure acabar por + [infinitive] is the standard and most natural way to express "to end up doing [something]." While you might be tempted to use a gerund like acabam destruindo, European Portuguese heavily prefers this por + infinitive construction for this specific expression.
Since fábricas is feminine, why doesn't the adjective change to match it, like "poluentas"?
The singular form of the adjective is poluente. Adjectives that end in -e (such as inteligente, verde, or poluente) are uniform, meaning they have the exact same form for both masculine and feminine nouns. To make it agree with the plural noun as fábricas, you simply add an -s, making it poluentes.
The English translation just says "nature". Why does the Portuguese sentence include the definite article a in a natureza?
In Portuguese, when you talk about an abstract concept, a substance, or a general category in its entirety, you must use the definite article. Because this sentence refers to nature as a whole generalization rather than a specific piece of nature, it requires the feminine definite article a.

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