Neil Young: 'It's Time to Get Real on Carbon'

Neil Young was an early advocate of biodiesel and spent years trying to build an electric car, so you might say he's interested in cleaner transportation. Now he writes in The Huffington Post that higher gas-mileage requirements for American vehicles won't have the intended effect of lowering our carbon output. "For survival of the planet and our way of life as human beings, we need to drastically reduce our carbon output," Young writes. "The approach being taken does not do that."

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Mandating that American vehicles use less gasoline won't affect carbon emissions in other parts of the world, Young writes, and won't slow down devastating natural disasters like Hurricane Sandy. Instead, he calls for a move away from high-carbon fossil fuels with "laws that encourage and reward American ingenuity" to develop cleaner running engines and "low-carbon fuels and machines to use them."

Young writes that "the government must step away from the cozy relationships with oil producing companies," and he advocates moving manufacturing back to America as part of a push to reduce trade with China, India and other countries that produce high levels of carbon, concluding, "It's time to get real on carbon."