Free pillage to our above and below ground resources is whats left.

Of course they could work hard, encourage scientific endeavour and education and new technology produce value added products in a way that doesn’t denigrate our natural capital, but that would be too hard.

Conclusion of UN Report A/42/427. Our Common Future: Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development

In its broadest sense, the strategy for sustainable development aims to promote harmony among human brings and between humanity and nature. In the specific context of the development and environment crises of the 1980s, which current national and international political and economic institutions have not and perhaps cannot overcome, the pursuit of sustainable development requires:
a political system that secures effective citizen participation in decision making.
an economic system that is able to generate surpluses and technical knowledge on a self-reliant and sustained basis
a social system that provides for solutions for the tensions arising from disharmonious development.
a production system that respects the obligation to preserve the ecological base for development,
a technological system that can search continuously for new solutions,
an international system that fosters sustainable patterns of trade and finance, and
an administrative system that is flexible and has the capacity for self-correction.

These requirements are more in the nature of goals that should underlie national and international action on development. What matters is the sincerity with which these goals are pursued and the effectiveness with which departures from them are corrected.

Summary of NZIER viewpoint: Working paper 2009/7: Sustainable development: Have we got our priorities right?

The current global economic turmoil provides a reason to stop and take stock of the direction of sustainable development, but not for abandoning the idea. To ride out the turmoil, New Zealand needs to be able to make the most of all its resources, including those obtained from the natural environment. This means freeing up the use of resources from delays and inconsistencies that apply to current allocation mechanisms, but also giving due weight to the protection of environmental attributes against irreversible changes that impose costs on the future which, stripped back to basics, is what sustainable development is all about.

Fortunately there is a possible alternative action, we do have examples of people acting against the flow, actually going and doing things to save species and environment. My local heros grow plants for riparian zones and clean up streams. If everybody who is concerned changes just a few materialist habits towards sustainability and spreads the word we can reach a critical mass and bring down the materialist system from within. Think global, act local.

i think the ‘fast’ part is there to reduce the lameness factor of what it actually is, which is really just ‘follower’.

Might start calling them ‘Overheads’, on account of how they project so well.