"oil addiction"

They have these signs up around downtown DC - "It took us 125 years to use the first trillion barrels of oil. We'll use the next trillion in thirty." Every time I see it, I think, my god, the failure of leadership! How can we know this and the administration is just accelerating oil use? SUBSIDIZING it?! Existing to help it... And I look at the changes in the environment over just my lifetime, and think, "Double this? We'll all die!" People act like I'm crazy when I say things like, "We're so lucky to be able to go anywhere in the world, I should really travel now, while there's still jet fuel." But, really... Like any "addiction," it's easier to indulge than count consequences. Consequences don't enter the addict's equation.

http://us.oneworld.net/external/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.globalexchange.org%2Fupdate%2Fpublications%2F3884.html
(About alternative energy.)
http://www.bushgreenwatch.org/mt_archives/000309.php

See the recent New Yorker article that focused mainly on homelessness, but the point was that some problems don't fall on a bell curve; in police brutality, homelessness and auto emissions pollution, a tiny percentage of the worst culprits are the vast majority of the problem and cost. But our policies and legal responses don't account for this and treat it like a general problem, thereby letting the real offenders fall through the cracks.