The big picture

One of the greatest failures of the Tasman District Council and the Waimea Dam project is to think that storing water is the only option.

True, "doing nothing is not an option".

But tragically existing practices such as dumping treated sewage water, green waste burning, poor irrigation management, less than 100 per cent harvesting and narrowed minded attitudes, to say a few all add up to a great expense to the environment both socially and economically.

The TDC have never researched these options but I must commend them on the psychological insecurities they pound everyone with.

In this day and age we need people who can see way beyond their selves and the broader picture. obvious that Ms Romney has followed that advice to the letter.

As for Martin Hanson (Mar 9) one wearies of trying to explain to these people the difference between adaptation (now wishfully called ‘‘microevolution’’) and the full-blown Darwinian version (now called ‘‘macro-evolution’’. Surprise!)

That adaptation takes place is a given. Most everyone knows that. But to observe ‘‘micro-evolution’’ and then extrapolate to ‘‘macroevolution’’ is not only an impossible leap of faith, it is blatantly dishonest. Hanson makes the same mistake that Darwin made 160 years ago. After all, no matter how much those beaks varied they were still very much attached to finches, weren’t they?

Yes, there very well could be a resistant microbe causing a pandemic where everyone will die. Wouldn’t it be a shame if Mr Hanson died in ignorance! paragraph: "[R]andom change in a complex system is always negative".

Not only is biology replete with examples for anyone who cares to look (Dawkins’ The Blind Watchmaker is a good start), but that statement doesn’t even withstand a moment’s thought.

Aren’t there any deliberate improvements to any complex system that could occur by chance? Unless you can say that they’re all impossible (not merely improbable), Petterson’s statement is false.

Correspondence on this subject is now closed upwards of 70 per cent of the population were against it - and subsequently you were voted out of government in a landslide in 2008.

You lost sight of true democracy then and it seems you still don’t really get it.