Oh hooRAY, it’s the latest morsel of wisdom from StarPhoenix columnist Les MacPherson! In today’s column, MacPherson implies that Neil Young is a hypocrite to criticize the tarsands because Young has a job (being an awesome rock star) that comes with a high carbon footprint.
From MacPherson’s delightful satire, “If Neil Young Actually Walked His Talk, We’d See”:
In an effort to reduce carbon emissions and stick it to the oil companies, Neil Young says his fans must walk to the venues for his latest Canadian concert tour. The 69-year-old rocker said at a news conference that he cannot lament what he calls the “tarsands” while promoting concerts that plug up entire streets with exhaust-belching traffic. “If people walked instead of relying on internal combustion engines, we wouldn’t need the tarsands,” he said. Young said parking lots around the venues will be closed for his concerts. They should be reclaimed as green spaces anyway, he said, where children could play among grazing bison.
I get it! Great Master Of Satire MacPherson is making the point that Neil Young should just shut the fuck up because Young, like all of us, has to rely on existing energy infrastructure. He has to use planes! His fans often drive to his concerts in cars! What a hypocrite!
If Neil Young actually wanted to help, he’d invent an infinite reusable energy source that could painlessly end our dependence on fossil fuels. Has he? No? Well then, Young obviously has no business criticizing the tarsands.
Bravo, Les MacPherson!
Of course, I could point out that MacPherson is a global warming skeptic who has written columns casting doubt on climate change by, for instance, pretending that petroleum engineers who advised then-Governor Ronald Reagan on energy policy are climate scientists whose opinions matter. I could also say that StarPhoenix editors were negligent for allowing a climate skeptic to even touch this topic. I could even toss around words like “journalistic malpractice”.
Nah, that’d be surly. I’ll leave the mud-slinging to Les MacPherson — I’ve got better things to do. Like actually listening to rock stars whose opinions aren’t at their root informed by a maliciously stupid and cowardly understanding of science.
