BREAKING THE ADDICTION

Some people will argue the war in Iraq is about protecting cheap oil. Whether or not you agree, the discouraging news is that regardless of the outcome of five-plus years there, we haven’t done anything over here to break our addiction. It is an extraordinary consideration: even if we lived in a world in which the main sources of oil weren’t politically dicey places, we’d be in trouble. That’s the argument of Robert Steuteville’s article in a recent issue of New Urban News: ”The Writing on the Sprawl.”

Cheap oil has created commercial and residential patterns that are simply unsustainable, economically and environmentally. Throw in the geopolitics of the Middle East, and it seems to me to be clear as day that we have to do more to break the addiction. As with any addiction, easier said than done; and yet, as with any addiction, urgently needed.