I’ve always said that you need to be careful when you point your finger at others because, when you look down at your hand, you’ll see there are three fingers pointed back at you. The reason I bring this up is that, while driving past the oilfields south of King City, California, I am reminded of the finger-pointing so many celebrities have done towards Canada and the Canadian oil sands.

While the open pit method of extraction is not pretty and the area of the oil sands currently appears like a lunar landscape, Canadian remediation and reclamation is among the most stringent in the world. Those areas will be cleaned up and returned to a standard that other countries can only aspire to, including the United States. I have always been appalled at the lack of regulatory control in the U.S. as this field of pumpjacks and surface pipeline, with no spacing control or apparent standard of maintenance, amply illustrates.

How do celebrities travel while they’re criticizing other countries’ practices? I’ve always said that, unless we’re prepared to live like the Amish and renounce our dependence on fossil fuels, we need to support North American petroleum operations and reduce our dependence on the Middle East for supply. We all need to do our part to find alternative energy sources, but while we’re still highly dependent, let’s not point our fingers at others unless we know we aren’t being hypocritical.