KEY POINTS:
I'm doing a South Island road trip, driving down the east and up the west in a tractor capable of reaching speeds of 330km/h. Yes, I know the IPCC says the world's going to climate hell in a handcart fuelled by oil, but I don't feel guilty. Our exquisitely designed mode of transport leaves the most stylish carbon footprint you could ever imagine.
Tonight I write from an astounding place in Central Otago called St Bathans - population: five. I'm sitting on my bed in the Vulcan Hotel - toilets and showers down the hall to the right - drinking red wine from the toothbrush glass. The ancient bar's through the wall; dinner's served at seven o'clock. As Paul Theroux once wrote, you can't improve on bliss.
If you only do one big thing before you die, then drive over the Pigroot from Palmerston to Alexandra on a late afternoon in early autumn, when the dying sun lights the poplars, intensely yellow as the road signs. I last drove through St Bathans in 1978, and always longed to return. When you leave Waitaki country and pass through the hills into the Central Otago basin, the sweeping views and big blue skies take your breath away.
Anyway, I don't believe much of the doomsday hype about climate change. I can't help thinking there's a touch of the watermelon anti-capitalist mentality at work here. Watermelon as in eco-greenie on the outside, pinko socialist in the middle, which manifests itself in the politics of envy; those who begrudge other people's wealth because they see it as the cause of their poverty.
Whereas much poverty - if you can call it that in New Zealand - is caused by brazen stupidity. People who still don't grasp the basic concepts of cause and effect. Nowhere was this more obvious than crossing over on the Interislander ferry. On the door of the ferry's equivalent of Air New Zealand's Koru lounge were two large signs stating entry was forbidden to those without a special pass. As plain as the spotty nose on the mawkish faces of (I counted 30) imbeciles who tried to open the door. The scene - repeated ad nauseam - went something like this: "Let's go in here." Waggle, waggle, tug, tug of the door handle. "Oh, we can't get in. What's this say? Just for rich people. We're poor, we'll have to stay out."
See? Stupid. No realisation that "entry forbidden" means you won't be able to open the door.
Just like the tourists down here who fall over waterfalls and down glaciers because despite reading the Department of Conservation signs warning visitors not to go any closer, they clamber over fences and plummet down the cliff. It must be so tempting to leave them there; rid the world of a few idiots.
Obese people won't face the fact that if you eat you'll get fat. Instead, they chow down on pies, chips, fizzy drinks, giant muffins, wondering why they can't shed the kilos. It's about time airlines started charging these people overweight baggage at check-in. If I weigh 40 kilos less than fatso beside me, why do I get charged overweight if my bag weighs 40 kilos? Perhaps I could lodge a complaint with the Human Rights Commission on the grounds of discrimination against slim people. Actually, what the fat population needs is a good dose of campylobacter - that shaved more than five kilos off me in three weeks, and I'm still not cured.
South Islanders are generous of spirit. Filling up with petrol in Timaru, a boy from the workshop came outside to slobber over the tractor's classy shape. "Very sexual," he smiled. Instead of sneering in jealous spite, he expressed the fervent desire to have a job where he could work on such a beast, if not own one. He was, in his racing car cap and overalls, a delight.
We're amused by bizarre names - Mt Misery, Cust, Mt Horrible, Crikey Creek, Gout Creek, Square Top Culvert, Windwhistle. I feel like I'm speeding through a book by Robin Morrison, the late, great photographer who changed the way we look at the South Island's beauty. In vain, he joined the fight to protect the Clutha Valley, now drowned under Lake Dunstan. Is this what the Green Party calls renewable energy? Continuing to ruin the country's unique rivers?
Tomorrow the tractor growls over to Haast and up the West Coast. I might not beat the global warming propagandists, but I sure as hell ain't going to join them. Let them eat our dust as we speed past their anti-nuclear, save the whales, Greenpeace bumper-stickered "smart cars". Tractors rule.
