Tag Archives: Dayna Baumeister

I was thinking about my personal dependence on oil as I was getting ready for the World Without Oil (WWO) symposium in January, powering my hair dryer, considering my tube of toothpaste, my toilet seat, the emissions from cultivating and transporting my coffee beans, and on and on.

Let’s face it, as biologist Dr. Dayna Baumeister said at the symposium, “Oil defines all of our realities, not to mention all the realities of every other species on the planet.”

From provocative presentations like Mirko Zadini’s reflections on global responses to the 1973 oil crisis (including the emergence of board games like “Oil War” and “Energy Crisis”), to curious predictions shared by Bruce Mau (we might have 50,000-60,000 years left of oil extraction), it was refreshing to hear important questions being raised about what so-called “industrialized” societies can learn from indigenous communities and traditional knowledges in the transition off oil.

This marriage of “old” and “new” thinking, industrial production and handcraft, will require unlearning, relearning, new learning.

· Mau asked the audience to reframe the discussion – can we imagine a beautiful future with oil? Not because we should, but because we can. It would be embarrassing if we don’t.

· Fritz Haeg and Baumeister reminded us that we are nature. Nature is not something we escape to on the weekend.

· Baumeister shared her thoughts on biomimicry as a practice of deep remembering of who we are as a species. It’s time to throw away our egos, admit we don’t know what we’re doing and ask for help. It’s time to leave an era of extraction and borrow some recipes from the biosphere and our co-inhabitants.

The calibre of thought leadership at the symposium was inspiring, but I left the symposium hoping future dialogues about oil venture will evolve into a more cross-disciplinary debate.

What else was missing from the day?

Perhaps a discussion about why Canada was named the “colossal fossil” by Climate Action Network International at the 2009 Summit on Climate Change held in December in Copenhagen. Few countries have had the dishonour of receiving three consecutive fossil awards.

Despite the dishonor, Canada continued to aim low at the Copenhagen talks, not letting a day pass without earning a Fossil of the Day award. This “prize,” bestowed on countries blocking progress at the summit, was awarded daily by a coalition of 400 leading international NGOs.

Let’s not forget that the Oil Sands are the fastest growing source of global warming pollution in Canada.

Extensions of the Word Without Oil symposium that cannot be overlooked:

· A film called “Petropolis” is a fantastic resource for a deeper understanding of how Canada is transforming the Athabasca Watershed at a spectacular rate to fuel. This way of life requires some serious rethinking. Peter Mettler’s aerial perspectives of the Oil Sands in Northern Alberta offer cryptically beautiful insight into the magnitude of the impact of oil extraction and an embarrassing reminder that we are facing the end of cheap oil.

· David Orr’s 2009 book, “Down to the Wire,” addresses the reality that we have already exploited the cheapest and most accessible oil: “Having exhausted the easiest cheapest and nearest sources of oil, what remains is deeper down, farther out, harder to refine and often located in places where the politics are unfathomably contentious – as a result it has become far more expensive to extract, refine, transport and defend our access to it.”

· Hubbert’s peak theory, which accurately predicted U.S. oil production would peak in the 1960’s, also applies to our global economy. Orr reminds us that we are not just facing the end of cheap oil, but the end of a way of life built on flimsy assumptions of easy mobility, convenience, and dependability of long distance transport of food and materials.

It is dangerous to talk about oil in isolation from climate destabilization, habitat destruction and consumption. We are faced with a convergence of challenges of an unprecedented, global scale. This is what Orr calls humankind’s long emergency.

A world without oil is also an unprecedented design problem. Our long emergency will require the genius, commitment and passion of all the disciplines.

Nadine Gudz

Director, Sustainability Strategy