Sebastian Vettel has continued to raise awareness over environmental issues, as he sported a new helmet design at the Canadian Grand Prix weekend.
The message behind the design relates to the oil mining in Alberta, which has one of the biggest operations around the globe.
After Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and Iran, the oil sands in the Canadian province of Alberta has the fourth-largest oil reserves in the world.
Throughout the 2022 campaign, Vettel has been outspoken over several issues regarding the environment and climate change.
Speaking ahead of the race weekend in Montreal, Vettel criticised the mining operations and how they are conducted in Alberta, desiring them as a “crime”.
“I do a lot of reading on the subject because I find this… fascinating might be the wrong word, but there’s a lot going on,” Vettel said.
“And I think we live in a time and age where we are so much aware of a lot of things.
“I think what happens in Alberta is a crime because you chop down a lot of trees, and you basically destroy the place just to extract oil.
“And the manner of doing it with the tar sands, mining oil sands, mining is horrible for nature. Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions also have gone up since they started doing it.
“The site has only, I think been, as far as I read, founded like 20 years ago. I think the prime minister said that no other country would find these resources and not take them up.
“I think in principle, you know, every country and every person has their opinions and their stance.
“My personal opinion is I disagree. I think, you know, as I said, there’s so much science around the topic that fossil fuels are going to end and living in a time that we do now these things shouldn’t be allowed anymore, and they shouldn’t happen.
“So I think it’s just in principle to raise awareness of what’s going on in the first place. I think a lot of people in Canada, a lot of people around the world don’t know about it and yeah, that’s only a small gesture.”
The viewpoint was met with backlash from Alberta minister for energy Sonya Savage, who labelled Vettel’s message as hypocritical, pointing out Aston Martin’s title sponsorship deal with Saudi Arabian oil and gas company Aramco.
“I have seen a lot of hypocrisy over the years, but this one takes the cake,” she wrote on Twitter.
“A race car driver sponsored by Aston Martin, with financing from Saudi Aramco, complaining about the oilsands.
“Saudi Aramco has the largest daily oil production of all companies in the world. It is reputed to be the single largest contributor to global carbon emissions, of any company, since 1965.
“Rather than demonizing the oilsands, which is on a path to net-zero, people could look to lowering their own personal carbon footprint. Perhaps a pedal-car for Formula 1?”
Vettel has previously addressed the issue of hypocrisy, and admitted that he does ask himself questions regarding his profession while also preaching messages in relation to protecting the environment.
Poor Vettel has been brainwashed . those toxic oil contaminated tar sands have been there for millions of years.
Those tar sands have indeed been there for millions of years – undisturbed, providing containment for not only all the poisons but also the carbon. If they remain undisturbed, those poisons and carbon will remain contained and not bother us.
How is the weather where you are? Hot? Lots of rain? No rain? Thank the oil companies.
You should about as intelligent as Vettel. If he had any common sense, he would be attacking Monsanto and other global elite companies responsible for weaponized weather (geoegineering) and toxic food and water supplies, but his bubble of alt-left information would never allow him to even learn the existence of these things. It’s all the fault of big oil, of course. And of course nothing he uses needs oil, especially electric cars, the industry and that pays his (overpriced) salary, or the production for the device he uses to read the commie propaganda that is retarding his thinking (and apparently his driving as well).
These guys should go to South America or Africa and see a lithium mine. It’s no better than the oil sands. It’s simply a catch-22 and we’re damned either way.
But feel free to feel pompous, virtuous and superior with your opinion that doens’t solve anything.
How does this guy still have a job in F1? When he was signed to Aston I thought it was to attract sponsors (because he can’t drive worth a sh*t), but at this point it has to be assumed he is actually bad for sponsors because he causes so many problems with his idiotic opinions and lack of logic.
Actually, he is driving pretty well – usually beating his teammate (the Boss’s Kid).
Amazing to me how people are selective in defending or denying Free Speech.
Beating Lance Stroll is nothing to brag about. A 4-time world champion BARELY beating Lance Stroll is even less braggable. Vettel has been a bum of a driver since Red Bull lost their dominance in 2013, not to mention a nuisance to the paddock and every team he has been a part of.
Nothing in this article has anything to do with free speech, but rather hypocrisy from the mentally ill left, and lack of common sense.
come again? vettel just beat stroll for 17th qualy position by 0.02 seconds. lol. what a masterclass driver. meanwhile alonso just nearly beat verstappen for pole in a car that has about as much pace or less than an aston martin.
Wrong setup you buffoon
I love F1. I wish I had been able to fly or drive to Montreal for this weekend. Gas is just too expensive. The hypocrisy is not just in the sponsorships but also in the fact that they jet the engineers, crews, broadcasters…etc all over the world to promote a sport which without the sound created from a fossil fuel burning combustion engine would lose alot of its attractiveness as a live sporting event.
i wonder when was the last time the alberta govt chopped up a reporter or ran over some lbtq people with tanks?fyi the carbon foot print of oilsands production is about the same as saudi sweet oil production and more than twice as low as russia heading to net zero vettel is ignorant but hes rich rich rich so it will never impact his life
I like Vettel, he has a good sense of humour. However, he is making a fool of himself over the climate rubbish. What exactly does he think powers the cars he has driven for the last decade plus, which have made him a very wealthy individual. Yet, even more than that, if he wants to have a dig at a government, he ought to concentrate on his own, which is doing the largest share of financing shorty Putin’s war on Ukraine with its oil and gas imports from Russia, which it has so far refused to reduce. And why is Germany so dependent on Putin? Because its Green Party, supposedly working to save the world from damnation, put a stop at the start of the last decade to the country’s nuclear plan, which appalling policy also resulted in Germany returning ro opening new coal-fired power stations to make up its energy shortfall. If Vettel thinks the Green movement is about saving the planet he is utterly deluded.
Formerly a fringe movement, pursued in the background by a small number of cranks, the alleged global warming crisis was jumped on by the hard-left after the fall of the Berlin Wall and break-up of the Warsaw Pact, as an alternative route towards a global socialist state, as they saw the prospect of their beloved USSR bringing it about all but disappear. Employing propaganda to enlist a stream of useful idiots, such as Vettel and the Swedish cabbage-patch freak, the aim is to undermine western democracy from within, and the green agenda is a leading part of it, supported by the likes of BLM, Antifa, and Amnesty Internation, as well as infiltration of formerly more mainstream left-leaning political parties and public service organizations such as education and universities.
The claims made for the effects of carbon on the future climate make absolutely no sense in the light of the non-relationship of levels of carbon in the atmosphere to temperatures throughout the history of the planet. The stupidity of the claims have only been able to flourish via the tactic of terrifying children too young to know any different, and brainwashing them into a form of cultish zealousy. Like the Berlin Wall, one day the fallacy they have built will come crashing down to Earth, which will itself continue just as it always has.
This has got to be one of the stupidest rants I’ve ever read. Go back to waiting for Q drops in your mother’s basement.
I shall endeavour to take your detailed and insightful criticisms on board, work tirelessly to change my erroneous ways, and seek to achieve remissibility under your ruthlessly analytical gaze.
I was a vettel fan but this is comically stupid. How can you collect a pay check from aramco and complain about oil production. The fact the giant aramco sticker is right above the climate crime sticker is about the stupidest hypocrisy I have ever seen. All the while he and a giant convo globe trot around to display the speed he can produce from hydro carbons. Either leave racing or shut up, your worse that that hypocrite decaprio.
If he is that well read he would know Oil is naturally replenishing liquid from mainly Algy and plankton and will never run out. The Fossil fuel tag was to promote the illusion that it is finite and to manipulate the price. In the UK with 30 million diesel and petrol cars to convert every one to Electric is not possible and the real truth is they don’t want us in cars electric or otherwise . They will try and blame climate change or Putin but really they have a darker agenda and Vettel is just a useful idiot in their plans.
Vetttel should shut up about the environment and rainbow people and just focus on driving.
It’s obvious that he needs to put more attention on that aspect of his job…