Freelance writer and former editor of Toronto Star Wheels Mark Richardson writes about Neil Young being named Toronto Star Wheels’ Newsmaker of the year.
“For playing concerts in January, writing a book and spreading his message through the year, and for actively promoting alternative fuel — while never forgetting that cars are really cool — Neil Young is Wheels’ Newsmaker of 2014,” Richardson writes.
He quotes Young:
“I’ve had a lot of cars and I bought cars as rewards for projects that I did . . . They were all old cars so they already had a history. And the designs reflected the culture of the time,” Young told the Star’s Ben Rayner in an interview this year.
Richardson writes about Special Deluxe: A Memoir of Life & Cars and the stories about the cars Young has owned, “all of them bought used and all of them interesting.”
“His new book is a chronicle of his experiences as told by the memories his cars invoke, everything from a Mini and a Citroen 2CV to a Corvette and a Hummer H1. Throughout it, he details the fuel consumption and the exhaust emissions of the vehicles. His family’s 1951 road trip to Florida in their new Monarch sedan, for example, spewed about 1,296 pounds of CO2 into the atmosphere each way; that Route 66 drive to L.A. in the hearse would have emitted 4,900 pounds of CO2.”
Eventually, in 2003, a friend of his daughter’s called him a hypocrite for being an environmentalist who drove such gas-guzzlers, and the accusation stuck. He resolved to find alternatives to gasoline for his cars and diesel for his tour buses.
Richardson writes: “His message is not against cars, which he loves passionately, but against the fuel that powers them. ‘We can have as many cars as we want, as long as the highways can hold them,’ he told the Star, “but we have to think smart about how they run.”
With another deadly climate disaster in the Philippines taking 10,000 lives the world is sure to be more aware of Climate Change. It’s a slow awareness, creeping into daily life. The more awareness that human
activity causes climate change, the more people start to wonder what they can do to help stop it.
Cars are not the only cause of CO2 rising in our planet’s atmosphere and causing global warming. Cars are just one of the big contributors. We have been talking about cars and CO2 for a while now, building an electric car that drove across North America without using any gasoline and sharing how ultra low CO2 emissions can be possible even with a big car. We demonstrated that there is a real alternative to fossil fuelsin daily personal transportation, a clear way that negates the need for gasoline.
In our journey across North America we saved the weight of our car (over 6300 LBS) in CO2 compared to what would have been emitted if we had used gasoline. When we arrived in Washington, I spoke to the National Farmers Union about bio-fuels and what CO2 is doing to our planet. Recently at SEMA in Las Vegas I spoke about the replacement of fossil fuels in daily driving with the Bio Electric Transportation model.
I hope we start to bring CO2 back down to earth, back in balance, where it belongs.
After Neil Young’s keynote speech earlier this month to the 2013 SEMA Show held by the Specialty Equipment Market Association in Las Vegas, UQM Technologies Inc., a maker of high-tech motors for electric cars is publically praising his initiative.
UQM is also the supplier of the engine for Young’s LincVolt – his 1959 Lincoln Continental clean energy prototype.
Mark Harden, News Director of the Denver Business Journal writes about it in the Wall Street Journal: “We have a pretty good idea that Neil Young is on the playlists of execs at Colorado’s UQM Technologies Inc. To the Longmont-based makers of high-tech electric motors for vehicles, Young is a rocker with a heart of gold, sending UQM a lotta love.”
“We are delighted that Neil Young once again chose UQM for the electric motor and controller for this second-generation LincVolt,” Eric R. Ridenour, UQM’s president and CEO, said in a press release. “We commend him for using his considerable fame to reach an extremely diverse audience with positive messages about the benefits of vehicle electrification.”
Harden, name-dropping song lyrics, writes: “In other words, Young is a transformer man who feels there comes a time to go out on the weekend with an electric-powered old man’s car that runs like a hurricane. My, my, hey, hey.”
“I\'m like Mexico. Everything that works above the border turns against you below the border. Things are reversed. That\'s who I am.” by -- Neil Young
Neil Young on Tour
Sugar Mountain setlists
Tom Hambleton provides BNB with setlists, thankfully. His website is the most comprehensive searchable archives on the Internets about anything Neil Young related setlists. Goto Sugar Mountain.
memphish on 
Albert Stromann on 
liza on 
Baz on 
