The images document deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, hydraulic fracturing and mountaintop mining in eastern Appalachia, oil sands extraction in Canada and others. Together they constitute a bizarrely vivid spectrum of landscapes that the New York Times art critic Roberta Smith calls “a kind of toxic sublime” that brings to mind “slick, printed versions of Abstract Expressionist painting.”

Yet this reading quickly becomes as reductive as many of Mr. Fair’s images. In both of Ms. Smith’s references and Mr. Fair’s lack of criticality towards the representational traditions that his images evoke, these landscapes are framed as much by long-established compositional tropes as by the naive perception that they are discrete and spectacular ‘elsewheres’ in the North American landscape.

In the Romantic tradition, the sublime was the unknowable elsewhere; the spectacle encountered as man looked precariously across the threshold into the ‘abyss’. Ultimately what Mr. Fair’s images fail to capture is the difference between looking into the abyss versus the view up from the bottom. In this sense the viewer is left to question how to contextualize these techno-baroque landscapes as an abyss of environmental destruction that each of us pulls a lever on.

Landscapes of Extraction: The Collateral Damage of the Fossil Fuels Industries runs through February 26, 2011 at the Cooper Union Arthur A. Houghton, Jr. Gallery, 7 East 7th Street, 2nd Floor, New York, NY

In mainstream media outlets, oil sands mining has drawn relatively scant attention within U.S. This may stem, in part, from a greater focus on the ongoing financial crisis or other, more immediate U.S. interests. But perhaps it also reflects the remoteness of the Oil Sands and the vast distances between our most populous centers and the 175 billion barrels of proven reserves in the Canadian north.

Recently, this situation has shifted in the context of an increasingly contentious debate over whether the Obama administration should approve a huge pipeline expansion called the Keystone XL. The proposed pipeline would establish a sprawling link between these far northern reaches and southward, across the entire breadth of the U.S., reaching Texas and the Gulf coast refineries.

The Keystone XL would serve to deliver an additional 1.1 million barrels of Canadian crude oil from Alberta. This would be in addition to the 1.9 million barrels that the U.S. currently imports from Canada. With this added volume, oil sands from the Alberta mining operations are expected to be America’s most important source for imported oil this year. Currently the U.S. is the primary customer for oil sands.

While Canadian oil represents fossil fuel from a stable and friendly neighbor, oil sands opponents such as the NRDC point out the external environmental costs. With 3-5 times the amount of greenhouse gas emissions than conventional oil and vast quantities of water required for extraction and processing, these costs may outweigh the economic and political benefits of a U.S. and Canada energy trade.

Last Friday the period for public comments closed and the administration will spend the next few months reviewing the flood of statements submitted by Congress, conservationists and landowners concerned with the physical footprint and environmental risks associated with the expanded pipeline network.

An official decision will be presented at the end of the year. In the meantime, the most important question for the Obama administration will be whether or not Canadian oil is consistent with the agenda for a 21st century clean energy economy and how such a debate may allow us to critically assess the practical limits of energy independence.