The addiction metaphor is useful, but the author has it a bit wrong. It is not so much that we, the people, are addicted to oil, but that the ruling class is addicted to profits--environments be damned!--and that requires ever increasing amounts of cheaper energy.
The prudent course for the previously discussed cancer patient would be to attend smoking cessation classes and learn to live without. For us as a society when it comes to oil, there will be no going cold turkey; nor would it be advisable to do so. Too many critical functions would collapse. But as regulators and the U. S. Congress look for ways to avoid a similar calamity in the future, we can, as Wendell Berry suggests, begin to solve the problem of oil addiction without them. We can change our habits in ways so often listed across the Internet and in books, magazines and newspapers: walking, bicycling, riding public transportation, buying and growing food locally, keeping our bodies warm instead of the entire house, and so on.Some of us will change our habits, but most of us under the influence of the system's leaders and media will continue to consume to feed the profit monster.
It's the social-economic system, stupid!
