What It Is

If the following line in its namesake track didn’t—quite expressly—read “Sweet Home Alabama”, it could well be a blue collar man in any Alberta home this past week. It seems, however, that Ronnie Van Zant was well based when he voiced his opinions of Neil Young’s intruding tendencies thirty-some years ago. Now though, with “Southern Man” long since fallen off the charts, Mr. Young has taken it upon himself to set out on a new moral crusade. His hair might be a little greyer now, but Young’s misinformed and overgeneralized opinions are just as lively as they were in 1970.

That being stated, his thoughts don’t entirely lack merit, nor is there a complete absence of truth from his doctrine. The unfortunate reality, however, is that by basing his argument so intensively on rhetoric and spouting statements riddled with factual errors, Young’s ‘Honour the Treaties’ tour can be considered no less an opinion-piece than this blog. Consequently, while he might have raised a few bucks for a fair cause, he won’t change the hearts and minds of the decided. Those who oppose oil sands development will continue to act upon their beliefs, and oil sands proponents much the same.

Adversely, if Young wishes to sweep new support in his favour, he needs to drop the bullwhip images and play the big-boy game with big-boy facts—accurate and emotionally-detached. Whereas Fort McMurray might be experiencing outrageous inflation, it certainly isn’t Hiroshima, as Young implied it to be. Even with skyrocketing costs on your basic necessities—rent, food, and cocaine—most inhabitants are doing just fine, because that’s the reality of a booming oil economy. The oil sands mines north of the Mac don’t resemble the Japanese city either: they look much, much worse. I’ll attest to that first hand after having flown over them in a light aircraft on several occasions—at least there were still a few branchless tree trunks amid the rubble in the weeks that followed the blast. There are no tree trunks there, nor is there much of anything else.

Man’s anthill stretches out, where fifty-tonne trucks scuttle like insects, and carry their loads back to the colony. Trees go down, bitumen comes out, and oil fans out into the pipelines that are the arteries of our society. Our cars can run, our wounds are bandaged, and dorm students can use plastic cutlery to avoid doing dishes. Our air gets worse, our economy keeps floating and jobs are made available. An aging rock star does his rounds in support of what he feels right—and he has every right to do so. I sit here and type this post, and the world keeps on spinning.

It is what it is.