Neil Young and the Tar Sands: Don't Be Stupid Enough Not to Listen

           

"Can you hear me now?"

    Let me put this in plain terms: I recycle. I reuse. I try to conserve water and energy in my house. I teach my children to be good stewards of the environment. I support unions. I deplore many to most aspects of capitalism. I am against the unchecked expansion of the Alberta tar sands. Hell, I use the term “tar sands” which is itself a political statement. I believe that Canada is going to be crushed post-growth and post-peak oil, and face one of the greatest economic crises in our history because of our short-sightedness after over-investing in a non-renewable pollutant, spending rather than saving.

                BUT. I also drive a three quarter ton diesel truck. I shower daily and I take a bath once in a while. I’ve had a coffee in a disposable cup this week. I’ve bought something at Wal-Mart in the past six months. There are a few products I insist on buying by name.

                I could explain away many of these (i.e. I walk to work rather than start my beast 90% of the time), but it won’t do any good because you’ve probably already made up your mind, haven’t you? If you stand on either side of the environmental discussion, on the Great Oil Debate, you’ve already painted me as too green or not green at all, and that’s that. You’ve found hypocrisy—real or perceived—and decided, and my hope that you’ll read the rest of this post with an open mind is, well, weak.

                “You can’t be an environmentalist unless your every behaviour is 100% dedicated at all times. If you take thirty seconds too long in the shower, every positive thing you have done this week is negated.”

                That’s our world. That’s the hyper-critical knee-jerk partisanship we’ve stooped to, where we judge each other freely, readily, ignorantly. We’ve become the stupidest smart society of all time.

                Neil Young.

                One of my musical heroes, but painted lately as Public Enemy #1 in Alberta (just ahead of David Suzuki and Justin Trudeau).

                One of the great frustrations I have with living in Western Canada is the view that oil is king, and that our precious petroleum-driven economy trumps all. You’re either with it or against it, and to criticize any aspect of the industry is to be called out as a hypocrite negating any valid argument you may have.

                That’s what Neil Young faced. Out here, when people get worked up over oil, they stop listening and they stop reasoning. They become partisan robots, goose-stepping to the beat played by Stephen Harper, Allison Redford, and Brad Wall.

                I encourage you to criticize Young’s proclamations, but you must do so rationally. You have to listen before forming a judgement. Albertans appear incapable of this.

               

                He said Fort McMurray looked like Hiroshima. Would I have done that? No, because I haven’t been to Hiroshima and I haven’t spent a lot of time in the tar sands. I wouldn’t lie to you.

                It was an extreme statement. It got attention. Sort of the point. He wanted to make some noise about the unchecked and irresponsible expansion of the Athabasca project and its dire effect on the Athabaskan Chipewayan. You weren’t listening to them. You listened to him when he dropped the Hiroshima bomb (pardon). Agree or disagree, you were paying attention now.

                Then folks started comparing him to Jenny McCarthy. Easy. She’s a twit who single-handedly (well, with a little of that Oprah oomph) started a wave of paranoia that saw reams of idiots failing to protect their children from diseases we’ve had beaten for a century. Neil is not a brainless playboy bunny with a pet cause. He’s been an environmentalist AND an activist AND a supporter of Native rights AND a royal shit-disturber for fifty years. Remember “Ohio”? “Cortez the Killer”? “Rockin’ in the Free World”? Do your homework. Read the damn lyrics. This is the man that Lynyrd Skynrd called out in their greatest hit. He’s immune to your criticism.

                They say he’s not telling the whole truth. Because he’s not putting the spin on it Big Oil is? I mean, have you seen their pro-tar sands commercials? They’re not exactly up front about tailings ponds and river pollution and water consumption, are they?

                Oh, and he has a tour bus and uses plastic: that makes him a hypocrite. You have to be a special kind of Tea Party Wild Rose nutbar to hear “Honour the Treaties” and understand it as “Stop Using Oil.” This is a man who has developed an electric car in the hopes of seeing it mass-produced. In our land of oil worship, whenever we question our dead dinosaur juice, we’re called out for our personal usage of petroleum products. Like because I use a product I can’t question how responsibly its produced? I don’t want milk taken from diseased cows. It’s okay to expect a little ethics from producers, is it not?

                Criticizing Neil Young’s extravagant delivery is fine, but it doesn’t mean you should be stupid enough to dismiss his whole argument. The fact is he’s right: Canada—Alberta especially—has an unhealthy dependence on oil and its revenues. Because the oil and natural gas sectors are booming and making many people rich, all the way into the tertiary industries, are we supposed to accept it with no question? That’s unreasonable. Even Hitler made the trains run on time.

                Yeah, I played the Hitler card. Are you paying attention now?

                Big Oil—the tar sand investors and corporations most of all—cannot go (and grow) unquestioned, uncriticized. It’s a democracy, we have the right to protest dumb moves, and our ever-precious economy shouldn’t cost us the future. Surely we can do better than this in preparing for post-growth, post-oil.

                It’s easier to criticize a “know nothing rock star” than to change. More convenient.

                Neil Young will be gone before the oil is, before the boom ends, before the belts tighten and we look at our empty sprawling suburbs, our immobile giant cars and trucks, our wasteland tar sands. He won’t have his chance to tell us that he told us so.

                Better to listen now than to be counted among the stupid who did nothing. 

http://www.thegreenmarketoracle.com/2013/09/neil-young-compares-canadas-tar-sands.html