Ultimately, lowering the production of a good used by people is a reduction in economic activity. Reduce, reuse, and recycle means less economic activity, but not less wealth. Until we realize this, we are destined to pursue policies that are bad for the environment and waste resources.
Edit:
> The main problem being is that (obviously!) economic forces have driven us into the situation in the first place.
Yes, costs of pollution were (are?) not being correctly applied to those creating the pollution. That's not a failure of economics, it's a failure of people to correctly account all the economic factors that exists.
(1) by a technicality; since complete environmental collapse and subsequent starvation could be "calculated" as a total loss for humanity. But no one does calculations in these terms; they do it in money.
I don't disagree with that either, but I think that has historically been largely due to our erroneous belief that we had a negligible effect on the world at most, which is thinking that is thankfully coming to and end. I don't doubt there was a time in the past where we believed we couldn't affect the ocean, and prior to that a river or the soil in an area. That isn't a good track record to hoping we understand it earlier next time (if our species is lucky, in some number of decades or centuries the discussion will be about our effects on the solar system, not our planet), but it does point towards eventually getting the idea and taking steps to fix the problem behavior, even if it's not always adhered to or a perfect solution.