Another perspective on Neil’s activism
Filmmaker Tim Moen, who calls himself the Fort Mac Philosopher (as in Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada) writes a thoughtful blog on his recent experience with Neil Young and Daryl Hannah.
Moen was asked to film some aerial footage of the area for Shakey Pictures and Neil’s ongoing Lincvolt documentary.
His provocative blog post takes issues with Neil’s stance on the city’s oilsands. Young compared the northern Alberta oilsands city to Hiroshima after the atomic bomb.
Moen writes:
“All living things consume energy and pollute. Nature is as cruel as it is beautiful. Bacteria and viruses pollute this Earth and for the majority of our history have mercilessly put us in an early grave. Burning wood has improved our lives dramatically by allowing us to ingest more energy at less cost by cooking food and it keeps us warm. Our ability to find and harness energy has caused human life to flourish. Each energy source we innovate is not without it’s detriments. Nearly 2 million people die prematurely each year in developing countries from inhaling cooking smoke, what they wouldn’t give for the comparatively clean energy of coal generated electricity.
“People in developing countries generally care very little about the environmental standards we care about, they are too busy trying to survive to worry about their carbon footprint or how many blooms their community gets. The good news is that the richer a country gets the more environmentally conscious it tends to get and the cleaner and more efficient its energy tends to become. This investment in clean technology requires wealth, and wealth requires energy abundance.
“Neil Young himself proves this point in a number of ways. He is able to fight off the polluting secretions invading his sons lungs that would otherwise kill him if not for a fortuitous chain of events starting with the industrial revolution and all the wealth that it brought to the world that allowed a man enough free time to pursue a thing called rock stardom and afford round the clock care for his boy extending his life. His wealth also allowed him to pay a team of engineers and specialists to retrofit a classic car into a technological green marvel. His wealth allows him to pay for the energy expenditure to get cellulosic ethanol shipped from the one plant in the US that makes it to wherever his Lincvolt is. His wealth allows him to traverse the world with his entourage spreading the gospel of green. His wealth affords a helicopter to fly around and film him and that is okay. I promise you I do not mean this facetiously; getting to the cutting edge of cleaner technology creates a lot of pollution…always has. That’s why I don’t consider it hypocritical of Neil to preach clean energy while creating a bunch of pollution and why I’d like him to grant the rest of us the same consideration. We are conscientious adults with the same goals he has.”
He credits both Neil and Daryl afor trying really hard to make a difference in the world.
Moen raises points that will spark healthy debate.
Read more at:
http://fortmacphilosopher.blogspot.com/2013/09/when-neil-young-daryl-hannah-came-to.html
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