Australian entrepreneur Dick Smith has slammed the Australian government’s ‘Sustainable Strategy’ as “meaningless calls for sustainability” that serves only to “accelerate us towards the precipice”.

 

“Sustainability means ‘ongoing’. Digging up stuff from the ground isn’t sustainabile, and you have to actually admit that,” Mr Smith said.

 

“I said to them [Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott]: ‘One of the things you’ve got to say is our present system is based on perpetual growth in the use of resources is not sustainable. They both, in their political way, made it obvious that they were never going to say such a thing”

 

Mr Smith has warned that the world’s growth is fast outpacing means to produce for increased population, saying that “No one can confidently predict where we will find the food, energy, water and resources needed to supply even the basic needs of so many people. On a finite planet, we are already using up far more than we can replenish, literally exhausting the environment on which we rely for our survival” in an article written by Mr Smith in The Age.