We were very priviledged to host this exhibition in Swansea for most of the month of October as it tours the UK. It has been hosted by the Co-operative in conjunction with Greenpeace and WWF and shows stunning images by Greenpeace photographer Jiri Rezac. These photographs for me are so haunting, showing the pristine boreal forest and how this has been devastated and turned in to an industrial wasteland in the hunger to extract oil from the ground. Many toxic chemicals are used in the process to extract the oil and these are left behind in huge lakes which are an obvious hazard to wildlife and human health. Not just this but the process is so energy intensive that it is contributing massively to CO2 emissions. Swansea greenpeace volunteers with additional help from Cardiff collected cards with signatures from concerned people attending the exhibition to send to the minister Norman Baker to stop such oil from being imported to Europe under the Fuels Quality Directive.
Two films were shown in conjunction with the exhibition, Dirty Oil and Gaslands. Dirty Oil is about Tar sands and is shocking but for me the film Gaslands made an even greater impact. Gaslands is about the process of fracking or extracting gas from shale and I was vaguely aware of it becoming a current issue in the UK. Again this uses many toxic chemicals to extract the gas from deep underground and could affect many areas of the world. It is particularly relevant here in South Wales where there are areas of the gas and the big worry is that it poisons ground water. It is really disturbing that in the rush to get to dwindling energy supplies we could be jeopardizing one of the most important fundamentals of life - clean water.
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