From the email inbox:
"I think Anton sees himself as a visionary romantic, wandering across the thyme-studded hills like Wordsworth among the daffodils. Which might be appropriate if he was living in a yurt with a composting toilet and drinking rainwater, but I imagine he has a very nicely appointed house and has enjoyed all the benefits of a jet-setting (and therefore envionmentally damaging) international sporting career ...:
and
'...Yet more irrigation on land that nature intended to be dusty and brown'. Somehow I can't see this being a particularly popular argument. Nature probably didn't intend there to be a large patch of manicured turf in the vicinity of Dunedin harbour either ... maybe we should remove Carisbrook? Not to mention any sign of human habitation on the planet. Which also raises the question of why people made such a fuss about, oh, the Christchurch earthquake when it was obviously what nature intended and as we all know, nature knows best.
Anton seems to be rather missing the point. He seems aggrieved about 'the natural world' subsidising windfarms and the like, when it's sources of sustainable energy like wind farms that will ultimately help prevent the planet going down an even smaller, smellier and browner creek than the one he envisions.
and
Ah, Anton, my fallen hero!
Funny how being a rugby man has made his view on the environment preferred over others. You can tell he's been to university. He uses VERY BIG words, when smaller words might do.