While everybody talks about growth they often do not point out what they actually mean by it. Growth in GDP and physical growth are not distinguished but rather implicitly taken as synonyms. From my point of view an academic debate deserves more accuracy.
After the workshop on limitations on resource consumption Dennis Meadows responded to my question on his understanding of growth:
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEFLHAGllHM
(Unfortunaley the embedded video doesn't work for mysterious reasons)

 
While D. Meadows rightly implies that GDP is not a measure of well being he emphasizes the fact that a absolute decoupling (which is actually the only thing that can help us to escape from environmental disaster in the long run) is not happening right now and by many experts here at the WRF not expected to happen in the future.
 
But what follows from that?
- Are all efforts to improve efficiency and recycling not really helping?
- What about the service sector? Could one really not imagine a world were all value-adding happens in the service and information sector?
- Or do we maybe have to change the system itself that brings ever growing resource consumption about as D. Meadows argues for decade?
 
These are crucial questiones that need to be addressed more intensively by the WRF and the scientific community as a whole.