Cindy,
You note that ". . . economic prosperity, as we currently define it, depends on growth."
This summarizes the problem perfectly. Our mainstream economists define a healthy economy as being a growing economy. A recession is defined as a cessation of economic growth.
Yet it occurs even to bright middle school students that on a finite planet endless growth is impossible. But being an "adult" means denying this obvious fact.
In an underdeveloped country, economic growth is needed just to provide enough for everyone. But in over-developed regions like the US, growth serves mainly to provide more wealth for the already rich. And despite the events of the past two weeks, it is the rich who run the country, including its media, and who keep alive the myth that growth equals prosperity.
We clearly need a new economics, one which defines prosperity as sufficiency, not growth.
Richard Douthwaite has written a very good book whose title summarizes these issues. (The Growth Illusion: How economic growth has enriched the few, impoverished the many, and endangered the planet, New Society Publishers, 1992, 1999.)
Tom