Seeking Climate Change Solutions from within a Diseased Dystem?

I have been involved with global environmental and climate change related issues since my high school days in the 80s - that is well over 20 years. Having a geo and physical science background, I try to look at the entire problem from a whole systems perspective, and at the root of the entire global change syndrome seems to be the coupling of energy/resource use and economic growth. There is no evidence that economic growth (defined as fiscal/monetary growth) is going to be de-coupled from physical resource depletion anywhere soon (how could it?) - energy consumption and resource consumption pretty much follow the growth curve of the global GGP (gross global product). And yet aside from some fringe groups the topic of economic growth itself as the main cause of environmental degradation and, indeed, the main threat to the very planet itself is not taken up by anyone (Why do we need continuous economic growth? What drives it?), aside from a few fringe groups without influence in the political arena. Instead, enormous attempts are made to accommodate the climate change issue within the existing institutions and to find fixes that turn climate change into even further economic growth. In my view the wrong incentives are in place everywhere - e.g. Carbon trading focuses on trading profits, not on carbon reduction. In my view topics like our financial crisis and climate change also are deeply intertwined. And nobody could yet plausibly explain to me how a monetary and economic system requiring perpetual exponential growth in order to function could ever be sustainable - if I am not mistaken a physical and mathematical impossibility. I am not in any way ideological, but my prediction is that it will be impossible to adequately address the climate change issue within the existing economic and financial paradigm. Kyoto has been a band aid, and here in Germany - a world leader in renewable energy - the power hungry Internet alone easily outperforms all contributions of the renewable energy sector and the so called emission reduction successes in this country were nothing but a statistical trick made possible by the historical coincidence of the re-unification.

If anyone thinks that the issue will be solved by efficiency or a service oriented society: there is no 100% efficiency and there is no service that does not require any energy or resources at all, therefore a perpetual exponential growth is impossible in any case. And even if we consider that economic growth will more and more rest with non-material goods (e.g. software) there is another limited resource: consumer time. It does not matter how we look at it: perpetual exponential economic growth is not possible. And there also really is no need for it from an individual's point of view - it merely is a built in requirement of our financial system. Every single unit of money forming out of thin air results in a corresponding quantity of resource consumption and pollution.

If anyone can explain to me where I am wrong and how perpetual exponential economic growth in a limited world is possible without violating the most fundamental physical and mathematical laws, I would be very thankful. I also need to understand why even the richest country requires continuous economic growth in order to function properly. I hold a Ph.D. in Astrophysics, and studied Economics, Climatology Oceanography and more, so you are most welcome to throw some serious theory and math at me. Before you do that, however, you might want to read Prof. Binswanger's rather mathematical book "Die Wachstumsspirale", though.