To Rogers Rabbits, I don't understand why you deride the very people who work so hard to re-build the world we know you love.

The Green vision is of a place in which the environment takes precedence over pollution, people walk more gently on the planet and our grandchildren enjoy the same wellbeings that you do.

It has clean rivers, jobs that preserve rather than destroy the environment, and children who are well-fed and healthy.

Surely you can find something of value in that list.

Yet you frequently use your powerful column to debase the Green perspective, along with making direct attacks on so-called Greenies, as on July 25. In this column, you describe a Greenie that actually 'walks the talk”.

Well, just because you haven't met a person, it doesn't mean he or she doesn't exist. If you took the time to meet local Greenies, you'd find people who minimise their use of cars and planes, grow much of their own food, use bikes and buses by choice and spend more in order to consume less, for example LED lights or a Toyota Prius.

There are many ways to walk the talk.

Greenies live in the same world you do, dominated by a growth-obsessed economy.
They're just as real as you: they take children to school, go to work, buy groceries, attend meetings, pay the mortgage, look after their whanau and support community activities. It may disturb you to know they look a lot like you.

Ian McLean, Green Party Tauranga candidate.

Response: Rogers Rabbits

Real ‘Greenies' don't shove message down our throats

Ian, thanks for your letter. Here lies the hypocrisy: Many ‘Greens' think because they do all that stuff and strut around with a Green badge they are somehow better than the rest of the naughty world.

Yet they'll be the first to drive their car from one end of the country to the other, to join a protest march.

It may interest you to know that we do all those so called ‘Greenie' things, and more, which I will detail in a separate email, there's too much to list here.

In fact we go many steps further than the greens you describe here – we rarely buy groceries. Your comment about the groceries is very telling. If Greenies were ‘walking the talk', they'd not need groceries.

Because we grow, fish, hunt and gather so much of our own food, and are disgusted with the throwaway world and its packaging and processing, we refuse whenever possible to eat from packets. This is a health decision as much as an environmental one. But our most illustrious ‘green' contribution that never seems recognised, is the establishment of the Bay's leading news site, which is completely web-based and a huge environmental benefit over traditional news systems – and the way of the future. Completely sustainable.

I don't see any of the Green Party applauding this huge step forward for the planet, but then, they never have done much constructive, just waxed on about theories and not delivered in practice.

If the Green Party walked the talk, every one of them would be signed up as a free subscriber and have cancelled all their wasteful daily newspaper subscriptions. Save some cash, save the planet, it's a no-brainer.

Some would even refuse to fly, as mentioned last week in the case of the Nina crewman. Despite our closet green actions, we don't feel the need to ram it down every else's throats, along with a left wing socialist agenda.

They don't seem to be able to be environmentally-savvy without also being hell-bent Left, and the two march inseparably.

They consume and generate waste, just like other people. Just because they see others as Centre or Right, doesn't automatically disqualify them (or any other environmentally conscious and caring people) from being green.

Rogers Rabbits, Sun Media Ltd.