Recently a new exhibition opened at the photo museum Fotografiska here in Stockholm. It’s the Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky who has spent the last 12 years portraying humanity’s relation to oil and what it does to the planet. He shows the oil fields – from the first one in the US to depleted ones in Azerbaijan – giant highway intersections, graveyards for engines, tires and oil tankers being dismantled by hand in Bangladesh. One year ago he also went to cover the disaster in the Mexican Gulf, when the BP oil drilling rig Deepwater Horizon exploded.
Highway intersection from the exhibition OIL at Fotografiska in Stockholm. Highway #1 © Edward Burtynsky, courtesy Stefan Röpke, Köln/Flowers, London/Nicholas Metivier, Toronto.
Walking around at the museum I was hit by how massively our love story with this energy source affects the planet on all possible ways. But there are plenty of voices saying that this can’t go on forever. One of them is the physics professor Kjell Aleklett, Sweden’s own “Mr Peak Oil” who has spent the last 16 years doing research about Peak Oil and who is indefatigable repeating the message that oil is in fact a limitied resource.
Peak Oil means that when half the oil available on Earth has been pumped up and used (with production at its peak), the extraction of new oil will inevitably fall. According to Kjell Aleklett we passed this peak already in 2006, while our demand for oil just keeps growing. During the last decade he has been talking about the urgency of adapting to a future with less oil, targeting business leaders and politicians. Because adapting, says Kjell Aleklett, won’t happen fast. We need about 20 years to get rid of our oil dependance.
In Sweden our electricity comes from nuclear energy. Most people no longer heat their houses with oil. But – Kjell Aleklett points out – we still fuel most of our vehicles with oil, transporting people and goods that we would have a hard time living without. Since 1970 that oil consumption has gone up by 83 percent. So there’s a lot to do in Sweden too.
Tomorrow Kjell Aleklett will speak about Peak Oil in the European Parliament. In a debate article in one of Sweden’s largest morning papers a few weeks ago he wrote “I hope it will contribute to a review of the European Union’s energy policies. In ten years it will be too late.”
A graveyeard for old tires photographed by Edward Burtynsky. Oxford Tire Pile #2 © Edward Burtynsky, courtesy Stefan Röpke, Köln/Flowers, London/Nicholas Metivier, Toronto.
