The economic process is entropic from a physical stand point. It degrades the energy and materials when it makes things we want, increasing the entropy (disorder, used-up-ness, chaos) of the universe and the things we wanted will become waste.
The thing is economic theory kind of forgot, perhaps because we in the middle of 20th century had an economy 10 smaller than now and were only around 3 billion inhabiting this world, or perhaps because of hubris, the importance played by energy and materials in the economic process. A famous economist once ludicrously proclaimed
“The world can, in effect, get along without natural resources, so exhaustion is just an event, not a catastrophe.”
That belief have alongside an strong devotion to the God of technology to solve everything through substitution and efficiency put a world hooked on economic growth in existential denial when they were blind-sided and surprised that we are overconsuming our renewable materials, depleting our finite materials and have maxed out the capacity of our ecosystems sinks to handle the waste from our nonrenewable energy use, like carbon dioxide or plastics. So what looked like just event is more and more looking like a catastrophe!
What to do, what to do? Hmm, how to avoid a catastrophe for dummies?
Some pointers can be taken from how the ecosystems and some of its inhabitants, excluding a lot of human beings in modern age, lived in a fruitful relationships with nature for a long time.
Taking heed of natures teachings and accept the limits of our earth and ourselves and distribute the resources and use the materials our environment so that we can produce a functioning cycling ecosystem that would help us enjoy life rather than destroy it.