What is it with celebrities and nonsensical political pronouncements? The shakier the factual basis and shallower the knowledge, the nuttier the rhetoric.

It isn’t news that lefties, greenies and their entourages dislike Alberta’s oilsands. But there he was, songwriter Neil Young, claiming that new oilsands projects violate First Nations treaty rights and are as devastating as the atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945. On his same Western Canada swing in mid-January, Young muddled basic facts about the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, saying its oil would go to China. I get why an aging rocker can’t keep his mouth in check, but from a thoughtful poet like Young, it was bizarre.

The exact meaning of First Nations treaty rights is open to haggling. What can’t be sustained is claiming First Nations haven’t benefited from the oilsands. First Nations-owned/controlled businesses billed the industry more than $1.8 billion last year, and annual corporate spending on First Nations communities is in the tens of millions of dollars. Oilsands firms take this issue seriously, and they work to respect First Nations interests far from actual reserves, such as rescheduling activities to avoid disrupting trappers’ lines.

Comparing the cycle of resources assessment, development and reclamation to atomic bombs was outrageously false and staggeringly insensitive to the descendants of those killed by atomic bombs. Although it’s an article of faith that the oilsands have devastated the boreal forest, all oilsands surface mines combined cover only 760 square kilometres (km2). Toronto’s census metropolitan area is 5,904 km2 and the still undisturbed portion of Canada’s boreal forest is three million km2.

Young came of age in the 1960s, and perhaps he sees the revolutionary impulse driving his declarations. Everything that exists must be upended; every tradition trashed; the Establishment unseated; authority defied. If that’s what it is, Young’s thinking is a half-century out of date. Today, the cultural left is the Establishment.

There’s nothing transgressive about trashing the oilsands; in cultural circles, defending them would be radical. Worse, he’s sticking it to the very people the Left used to stick up for – the ordinary working stiffs. The oilsands benefit everyday folks: welders and other tradespeople, including First Nations; urban office workers; and pensioners. The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and almost every public-sector pension manager are huge oilsands investors.

So, why are some of us seemingly captivated by celebrities stepping beyond singing, dancing or acting? Their political pronouncements should have not merely zero value but presumptively negative value. A lifetime spent in aesthetic and sensual pursuits doesn’t furnish much intellectual capital. That’s fine. Just don’t tell the rest of us how to live and work.

I’ve always loved Young’s music, and I worshipped him through my teens and my own pathetic guitar years. Perhaps that’s an insight in itself: rockers appeal mainly to the adolescent mind, and most of their positive reinforcement comes from the immature. The rest of us grow up.

More of Koch’s articles can be read at www.drjandmrk.com.

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