Neil Young calls Fort McMurray oilsands 'a wasteland'

This is why I put no stock in the opinions of celebrities or athletes.

Who the hell is Neil Young? And why does his opinion matter?

He's still alive ?

Great songwriter, great guitar player. Expertise/relevance ends there.

Thinking a little longer, he's also a liar.

If he was in Fort Mac, he knows it's a beautiful city. In which case, the Hiroshima comparison is a lie. If he wasn't in Fort Mac and just spewing Greenpeace propaganda, then he's also lying saying he was just in Fort Mac.

Objectively speaking, having actually been there more times than I'd like to remember, Neil's right. The town is an overly-expensive and ugly shithole full of rude, mean-spirited assholes. The open pit sites are a disgrace on Alberta. A necessary disgrace, so we can feed our cars and the US Navy and Air Force and make all kinds of synthetic items without which the economy and much of society would grind to a halt. But the place remains a hellscape of a disgrace nonetheless. No oil means that no one, except for the Natives and some die-hard hunters/fishermen/campers, would even want to go anywhere near that worthless swamp in the first place. Neil's a left-wing jerk, and is obviously doing this on behalf of the Gore/Suzuki clique, but he certainly isn't 100% wrong on what he said.

He may be right, but I'd rather hear it from someone with actual knowledge about the issue than a figure head for the latest cause-celeb. And Neil a lefty? Dunno about that. He's pretty much an anarchist; seems more of an extreme righty than an extreme lefty.

I'm not sure if there's much of a natural connection between environmentalism and anarcho-libertarianism, but I guess anything's possible under the sun these days.

Neil Young is an anti-type person. Anti war, Anti south, Anti Fort McMurray. I'm sure he will come out with another nasel voice song decrying the condition of Fort McMurray. What he needs to remember is "a Southern man don't need him around any how."

He's right about the area being a moonnscape. Large open pit mines aren't pretty. He's wrong about the impacts. There's not a lot of evidence to support that people are dying due to the oil sands operations. The problem with bringing the First Nations into it is that due to astronomical levels of smoking (compared to the general population) not to mention rampant alcohol and substance abuse issues, it's impossible to tease out any potential minor effect that may be related to oil sands.



Latest cause? I don't think so. He wrote a song called "After the Gold Rush" in 1970:

Look at Mother Nature on the run
In the 1970s

The thing is that there is a groundswell of movement that is against the pipelines and against the oil sands, but a lot of it is due to the fact that they are worried about oil dependency and global warming and the complete failure of the political and corporate structure to deal with it. That's why these people rail against pipelines and the oil sands, but can rarely articulate what their specific issues are (in the same way the Tea Party crowd railed against Obamacare, but apart from a couple of talking points, couldn't articulate what they didn't like about it).

Thinking a little longer, he's also a liar.

If he was in Fort Mac, he knows it's a beautiful city. In which case, the Hiroshima comparison is a lie. If he wasn't in Fort Mac and just spewing Greenpeace propaganda, then he's also lying saying he was just in Fort Mac.

Beautiful? I don't know about that.

It's certainly not Hiroshima-like, but beautiful is hardly the word I'd use to describe Ft. Mac.

Average is the word that comes to mind...

Maybe he was referring to this?

Maybe this....

hiroshima actually looks a little better IMO