Edward Burtynsky: The End of Oil?
Toronto photo exhibit offers provocative images and asks tough questions
By Carter Hammett
In a new exhibit of stark imagery currently on display at Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum, photographer Edward Burtynsky asks a question that’s always in the back of many an industry stakeholder’s mind.
Is this the end of oil?
For those who have had their heads in the oil sands too long, Burtynsky is a world-renowned Canadian photographer, subject of the recent documentary Manufactured Landscapes and a shrewd commentator on the rude realities wrought by our over-reliance on fossil fuels. “ Our dependence on nature to provide the materials for our consumption and our concern for the health of our planet sets us into an uneasy contradiction,” Burtynsky states on his web site, and indeed, the entire thrust of his career has been this contrary and uncomfortable juxtaposition.
In 53 landscape-sized photographs, Burtynsky explores three themes surrounding oil: Extraction and Refinement, Transportation and Motor Culture and The End of Oil. The anxious relationship with and contrast between our dependency on oil and the effects it has on our planet, make for uncomfortable viewing at times. The ecosystems in the highways he presents reflect the ecosystems of human bodies and how oil touches almost every facet of our lives. The miles of piles of abandoned cars, tires and oil filters, awaiting their final journey in Hamilton, ON have literally changed the landscape we’re a part of.
While Burtynsky is careful to only imply man’s role in the degradation of the earth, it’s hard not to ask yourself, what emerges from our dependency on oil? How is this affecting the way C-stores and gasoline dealers do business?
Make no mistake: human behaviour has changed with price increases in both gasoline and oil. Drivers are carpooling their way to work and bundling their trips. Multislacking teenagers are walking as much as possible. This behaviour change has impact on your business. Speculative investing in oil markets has driven the price of crude oil, in turn inflating the cost of gas. Fiscal healing also takes into account rising prices. But this also means that US gas prices will hit $4 by summer. Accounts by American C-stores who testify to a dip in local sales are already starting to appear on the landscape. Less gas means less impulse purchases in other channels. This translates into huge losses for the C-store industry. Gulf CEO Joe Petrowski recently affirmed in a TV interview that “the tipping point” for consumers will be the magic $4 figure, adding that he thinks the market is peaking out and that prices will start to drop sooner than later.
But at what point do we start moving towards solutions? Economic cycles will one day drive prices beyond that $4 figure. Scientists suggest that all of earth’s oil will be either be gone in 50 years or so expensive only the very rich will be able to afford it.
And therein lies our great contradiction: our short term thinking goes only as far as the next tank of gas take us to.
Edward Burtynsky: Oil runs until July 3 at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. For more information, visit: http://www.rom.on.ca/exhibitions/special/oil.php
