Neil Young’s utopian vision of Mother Earth
Neil Young’s utopian vision of Mother Earth
Published on September 27, 2013
By Mark Milke
In the 20th century, much of the divide in politics and policy was over how best to create jobs, incomes and keep people from starving – in other words, how to create opportunity as part of the good life. Those on the “left” argued for state intervention and often outright state ownership; those on the “right” pointed to open markets and other elements of capitalism as the superior route to avoiding poorer populations.
The outcome of that titanic struggle is well-known; the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the implosion of the command-and-control Soviet Union two years later cratered support for the most extreme forms of state intervention.
But that was then. These days, a policy divide often opens up in the struggle to convince large chunks of the public, especially in urban areas with little contact with rural life, not to kill off development.
Part of the problem in such an exercise is that not all development comes wrapped in a pretty package.
An example comes from folk singer Neil Young who recently ranted against Canada’s oil sands. In a Washington D.C. speech, Young said that the northern Albertan oil sands city, Fort McMurray, “looks like Hiroshima.”
>>> read more: journalpioneer.com/Opinion/Columnists/2013-09-27/article-3409461/Neil-Youngs-utopian-vision-of-Mother-Earth/1
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