On Oil

A journalist, and former roughneck, considers our long, complex, tortured relationship with oil.

Oil has dominated our lives for the last century. It has given us warmth, progress, and life-threatening pollution. It has been a gift and it is now a threat. It has started wars, ended wars, and infiltrated governments--in some cases, effectively become the government. In On Oil, Don Gillmor, who worked as a roughneck on oil rigs during the seventies oil boom in Alberta, looks at how the industry has changed over the decades since. The latest in our Field Notes series, On Oil illustrates the ways our dependence on oil has led to regulatory capture, in Canada and elsewhere, and contributed to armed conflict and war across the world. Gillmor considers as well the origin and application of early concerns over global warming and documents what oil companies have done to misdirect conversations about environmentalism and frustrate efforts to create lasting change. The twilight of oil is upon us and it is fighting to survive, even as we are ourselves fight to survive the climate crisis exacerbated by our dependence on it.