Tar-sands and the damage done

Rock musician Neil Young kicked off a recent four-stop Canadian tour with some strong words about tar-sands oil production in the province of Alberta.

Just prior to the start of his “Honor the Treaties” tour, Young (pictured)—a Canadian expat who lives in Northern California—held a press conference in Toronto denouncing the rapidly expanding tar-sands industry in Alberta, according to an article in the Toronto Star. He called the controversial tar-sands project a “devastating environmental catastrophe” and accused Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Conservative party of “selling out their grandchildren’s future for the sake of short-term financial gain,” the article said.

Young’s Canadian tour is a fundraiser to help the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation’s legal battle to stop “reckless development” by the petrochemical industry and have the tribe’s constitutional right to be consulted about such development be honored.