Friday, 28 March 2008 Transcript of an address given March 4 to the Brisbane Institute by the Honourable Andrew McNamara, Queensland Minister for Sustainability, Climate Change and Innovation.

I'd like to pay my respects to the traditional owners of the land on which we gather this evening.

I want to thank the Board of the Brisbane Institute for the invitation to address this gathering.

Tonight I want to talk about capital S Sustainability.

By that I don't mean the usual narrow environmental concept of sustainability in agricultural production and land use.

I mean the future of our society, our economy and our environment; the structure of our cities, their energy and water sources and demand profiles; the treatment of these sources of our wealth; the imminent peaking of world oil supplies; our use of finite resources like gas and coal; and the way we dispose of those resources when we're finished with them.

I will begin by considering what sustainability means to me.

The full transcript is available at the website of ASPO Australia: Australian Association for the study of Peak Oil and Gas.