Junkies, All of Us

When can we stop living like this? When can we just get off this addiction? We need a twelve step program for oil. We go cold turkey and tough out the gut-crushing nausea and cold sweats and come out the other side in a bright green energy economy.

We’re hostage to the petroleum economy. When can we get free? When can we evolve? When can we stop having to weigh in our minds how much we care about sludged birds and suffocated fish? When can we stop having to consider the loss of profit or the waste of nature's bounty? When can we just stop having to think about these things?

Just for a moment imagine that we were not asked to have this burden, because we had the wisdom and strength to build a flourishing energy economy on things that don't get used up or burn dirty.

Wouldn’t it be a much better place if our bristling presence in faraway lands was actually motivated by our humanity rather than our addiction to petroleum? No more sending youth to some dusty place to be targets and throwing rhetoric about democracy around it all, just to get our trembling paws on their oil, all so we can drive our air conditioned living rooms to the mall for far less than the cost of a cup of coffee. It’s kind of sick. Addiction is a disease after all.