This week, a battalion of angry addicts brought London to a standstill. They snarled up the traffic, then marched on 10 Downing Street to demand their fix at prices they can afford. Across the world, in countries as different as the US and Iran, fellow junkies are rising up in rage. Their addiction is to a gloopy black drug called petrol – and we are all about to go cold turkey.

In the past seven years, the price of oil has soared from $30 (£15) a barrel to $140. By the end of next year it could be at $200. No matter how much we plead or howl at our governments, it will never go back: the final act of the Age of Oil has begun.

The era that is ending began at 10.30am on 10 January 1901, on a high hill called Spindletop in south-eastern Texas. A pair of pioneer brothers managed to drill down into the biggest oilfield ever found. Until then, the dribbles of oil that had been discovered were used only for kerosene lamps – but within a decade, this vast gushing supply was driving the entire global economy. It made the 20th century – its glories, and its gutters – possible. Humans were suddenly able to use in one frenetic burst an energy supply that had taken 150 million years to build up. A species that died before the age of 40 after a life of boring, back-breaking labour spurted forward so far and so fast that today billions live into their eighties after a life of leisure and plenty.

Oil now drives everything we do. It shuttles us across the globe, we fight wars for it, and we even eat it: to farm a single cow and deliver it to slaughter burns up six barrels of oil – enough to drive from New York to LA. That's why food becomes expensive when oil becomes expensive.

It is totally understandable that most of us want to live forever in that sweet niche in history when we had seemingly infinite reservoirs of oil, and no awareness that burning it would, in time, burn us too. But, alas, we need to wake up and smell the fumes. There are three reasons why the placebos demanded by the petrol protesters and the politicians cowering from them across the world – lower taxes! find more oil! dig! burn! – are a delusion.

Reality Check One: Petrol is finite. There is a limited amount of oil in the world, and we have already burned more than 900 billion barrels of it. There is a complex scientific debate about when we will reach the point of "peak oil", when we will have used up more than half of all the supplies on earth. Some geologists think this moment has already passed. Others – mostly oil industry flunkies – think we have as long as 30 years to go. But all agree the remaining oil is harder to reach, and much of it can never be accessed.

The facts are stark. All the biggest oilfields on earth were discovered before my parents were born. The discovery of new oilfields peaked in 1965, and has been falling ever since. The last year in which humans found more oil than we burned was the year I was born: 1979.

So we have a diminishing supply – at the very moment when billions more people want access to it. Car ownership in India has trebled in the past decade, and it will treble again by 2020. In China, three-quarters of urban Chinese say they plan to buy a car in the next five years. These factors mean we are unquestionably moving from having a world with growing pools of cheap oil to dwindling supplies of expensive oil.

Reality Check Two: Even if we had infinite supplies of free petrol, we couldn't afford to use it without dramatically destabilising the climate. To use just a few examples: Spain and Australia are currently suffering their worst droughts since records began, and several cities are on the brink of running out of drinking water. The oceans are rapidly turning more acidic, to levels scientists didn't expect to see until 2050. The Arctic is now almost free of sea ice in the summer.

This is all with just one degree of global warming. The world's climatologists agree that if we burn up most of the remaining dribbles of oil on earth, we could be on course for six degrees this century. The last time the world warmed so quickly was 251 million years ago – and 95 per cent of everything on earth died.

Reality Check Three: Our addiction to oil means we can never undermine the Islamic fundamentalists who want to kill us – and often actually help them.

Most of the world's remaining oil is in the Middle East. In order to access it, we have a twin-track policy. To start with, we support the most repressive dictatorship in the region – the torturing, sharia-law enforcing House of Saud – because they keep the supply running nicely. The Saudi state then uses the money we pay at the pump to fund a vast network of extreme madrasahs and mosques across the world – including within the US and Europe – preaching that democracy is "evil", women should be subordinated, Jews are "pigs and apes", and gays should be killed. We do not query this because, as the writer Thomas Friedman put it, "junkies don't tell the truth to their dealers".

Where we cannot find a friendly local tyrant, we invade the country in order to control the oil ourselves. Even John McCain admitted this month that Iraq was about oil, arguing that energy independence would "prevent us from having ever to send our young men and women into conflict again in the Middle East." (He later claimed with a red face he was talking exclusively about the first Iraq war.)

On their own, each of these inconvenient truths would be enough to require us to begin an urgent transition away from petrol. Together, they are unanswerable.

Of course it's tempting to draw the oily covers over our head and cry for tiny little steps like cutting a few pence off petrol taxes, or squeezing out a few more barrels as Gordon Brown begged yesterday. But these measures would be at best a local anaesthetic, putting off the moment when the rapid transition to a global economy run on carbon-free energy sources must start.

The longer we delay, the harder it will be. As Paul Roberts puts in his book The End of Oil: "The real question is not whether change is going to come, but whether the shift will be peaceful and orderly or chaotic and violent because we waited too long to begin planning for it."

Every penny now should be spent not on perpetuating petrol, but on developing and disseminating alternative fuels. The addiction that began a century ago on a hill in Texas is ending – and we have no choice but to check en masse into petro-rehab

How the Next President Can End Our Oil Addiction

By Chuck Squatriglia 01.09.08

David Sandalow argues in Freedom from Oil that the United States could have an oil-free economy within a generation.
Photo: Courtesy of the Brookings Institution

Every president since Richard Nixon has said the United States must end its reliance on foreign oil. Yet today we import more petroleum than ever, and oil provides 96 percent of the fuel for our cars and trucks.

David Sandalow, former assistant secretary of state and member of the National Security Council under President Bill Clinton, says the next president can succeed where others have failed. The trifecta of mounting concern about petroleum's impact on national security, the environment and the economy provides an unprecedented opportunity to radically reshape national energy policy, says Sandalow, who is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

His new book, Freedom From Oil: How the Next President Can End the United States' Oil Addiction, offers a detailed plan for weaning us from oil within a generation.

"Oil dependence is a problem we can solve," he said in a telephone interview. "We have the political consensus and the technological opportunity. This is a moment to seize."

Sandalow drew upon his government experience, dozens of interviews and reams of documents -- the 272-page book includes 42 pages of footnotes -- in crafting a six-point plan for our next leader:

1. The country should begin transforming the transportation fleet to alternative fuels. How? The government should begin converting its fleet to plug-in electric hybrid and flex-fuel vehicles. The government should also provide Detroit with the capital to develop such vehicles by paying automakers' retiree health care costs and backing battery warranties. Consumers would receive tax credits of up to $8,000 for buying a plug-in hybrid. These proposals would cost $13.5 billion over 10 years; the health care plan would cost $500 million annually.

2. The fuel supply should also be transformed by requiring all major fuel suppliers to retrofit half their pumps for E85 (cost to suppliers: $300 million), extending the ethanol tax credit for 10 years (cost to the government: $15 billion) and requiring refiners to produce low-carbon gasoline.

3. Federal funding should also go towards mass transit and promotion of telecommuting rather than highway construction.

4. Research into all forms of renewable energy should receive $1 billion annually from the government.

5. The government should increase the gasoline tax by 10 cents a gallon each year for five years, generating $65 billion. Most of that money would be returned to taxpayers in annual rebates; the rest would finance programs to ease our dependence on oil.

6. Make clean fuels and energy efficiency a top diplomatic priority by encouraging America's allies and trade partners -- particularly China, where fuel needs are expected to quadruple by 2030 -- to adopt similar efforts to wean themselves from petroleum.

Sandalow realizes some of his proposals are controversial, and he says they aren't the only way to address a problem policymakers increasingly agree must be solved. He defended his plan in a phone interview with Wired News.

WN: What you propose will require a Manhattan Project or Apollo program level of commitment.

Sandalow: I call it the Reynolds Project. I got the name from the town of Reynolds, Indiana. It's a town of 574 people, and they have decided they will use only renewable energy, nothing else. The president of the town council, Charles van Voorst, told me, "It's hard to get someone to believe in something that's never happened before," and I think that's the basic problem with this challenge. We all grew up with cars that relied on oil, so we think it's the way of the world. It doesn't have to be that way.

WN: You place tremendous emphasis on converting our transportation fleet to electric plug-in hybrids. Why?

Sandalow: I believe electric plug-in hybrids are the most important part of the solution, but they're only one part of the solution. Oil provides 96 percent of the energy for our vehicles but only 3 percent of the energy for electric power generation. If we could connect our cars and trucks to this infrastructure, the potential for reducing oil dependence dramatically, and in a short period of time, would be incredible.

WN: What about the argument that cars fueled by electricity from a coal-fired power plant ultimately are as polluting as cars using fossil fuels?

Sandalow: If you plug a first-generation into a coal-fired plant, you would still be producing fewer heat-trapping gases than you would driving the average car powered by oil. But the real win is to plug these cars into renewable energy sources like wind and solar.

WN: Why not call for electric vehicles?

Sandalow: We should experiment with both. My opinion is we'll start with plug-in electric hybrids and work our way to full electric vehicles. The leading example of the full electric car is the Tesla. They have a great product. But it's a $98,000 car.

WN: Every president since Richard Nixon has said we need to address this issue. Why haven't we made more progress?

Sandalow: First, we have allowed ourselves to be whipsawed by trends in the oil market. When prices dropped in the mid to late 1980s and '90s, we stopped paying attention to this issue. Second, we've focused on just a narrow part of the problem. Our political dialog focuses much too much on imported oil as opposed to the problem of oil dependence. The fundamental problem is 96 percent of the energy our cars and trucks use comes from oil. We need to find other energy sources for our transportation fleet.

WN:: You drive an electric plug-in hybrid?

WN: You've suggested in the book that we need much tighter fuel-economy standards. Do the standards President Bush recently signed into law go far enough?

Sandalow: I think it was a good step forward and a historic advance. But we can do more. Unfortunately, the day after President Bush signed that legislation, the administrator of the EPA denied the application from California and more than a dozen other states to impose an even more visionary rule. I have every hope that the next president will reverse that decision and we will soon see even stronger rules.

WN: In calling for a transformation of our fuel supply, you emphasize ethanol, biofuels and low-carbon gasoline. Why don't you include hydrogen?

I'm not optimistic about the chance of hydrogen to make a difference in the short or medium term. I'm not opposed to it, but there are two challenges when it comes to hydrogen. The first is producing it. It takes lots of energy and money to do that. And then once we've got the hydrogen, what do we do with it? We have no infrastructure for distributing hydrogen, and building one would be a gargantuan task and expense. I think the biggest advances will come in ethanol and other biofuels.

WN: We're in the midst of an era of tremendous research into alternative fuels, from cellulosic ethanol to algae. Should our efforts be more focused?

Sandalow: We should be pursuing a wide range of possibilities with a combination of private sector and government funding. Government funding should go into basic science and technologies that are furthest away from market applications. No one can predict where the breakthroughs will come, and we need to be pursuing several options.

WN: You call for a significant shift in funding away from highways and toward mass transit. How likely is that to happen, given current growth patterns toward suburbs and exurbs?

Sandalow: We do not have a level playing field for mass transit in this country. If you're a local government or a state government and you want money for a road, you have to prove less (with regard to the project's benefits) and you get a higher percentage (of the project's cost) in reimbursement from the federal government than if you want money for a mass-transit project. That's nuts, and we need to change that. Our political system is used to dispensing money for roads, so it will take some changes in mindset.

WN: You suggest increasing the gas tax 10 cents a gallon a year for five years. Four presidents have tried, and largely failed, to increase the gas tax.

Sandalow: I've been around politics long enough to know that any tax proposal will immediately be met with widespread opposition. One suggestion I have is to rebate some proceeds from the tax to middle- and low-income families. The checks could be delivered during the summer, when families are taking vacations. The remainder would be dedicated to programs that reduce our oil dependence.

WN: What's the point of taxing consumers for gasoline, then returning the money to them?

Sandalow: It would change what people spend money on. If people and the automakers knew gasoline taxes would rise, people would demand, and automakers would produce, more fuel-efficient vehicles. It would encourage people to move away from gasoline. The tax also would provide tax rebates on plug-in hybrid cars.

WN: Critics will consider your proposal an example of big government run amok.

Sandalow: Our dependence on petroleum is the result of decades of support by big government. There have been subsidies for the production of oil in the U.S., preferential rates for the production of oil on public land, subsidies for road building. But the fundamental role the government has played has been ensuring the oil flows and promoting its safe transit around the world. Big government already plays a central role. The only question is are we going to use big government to move away from oil, or to continue its dominance.

WN: What about the argument that the market should decide the best course and government should stay out of the way?

Sandalow: If you are a free-market purist and believe big government shouldn't be involved, then you would support withdrawing U.S. forces from the Persian Gulf, revoking the Carter Doctrine, adjusting the mission of CENTCOM, redefining our relationship with Saudi Arabia, eliminating all the preferences for domestic production and a whole lot of other things the government does to support oil. Some people may support those things, but most people I've talked to think they would be a bad idea.

WN: How hopeful are you that the next president will take at least some steps toward moving us beyond oil?

Sandalow: Very hopeful. I think a president from either party has a huge opportunity to hit the ball out of the park, particularly if the American people stand up and say this is something they care deeply about. We're hearing that. This is a challenge the next president can, and I believe will, address.

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Posted by: MATT9501

479 days ago1 Point

Sandalow's bandaid equates to nicotine patches. They're available over-the-counter, but they're more expensive than cigarettes, you don't get the same effect as cigarettes, and the user has to WANT to change. The government isn't going to spend billi...

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Posted by: MATT9501

479 days ago1 Point

Idealism at its finest.

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Posted by: kevinkelly262

593 days ago1 Point

The new cars like the Chevy Volt do make this increasingly realistic (the plug-in hybrid cars). Plug-in hybrids with domestically produced bio-diesel seems pretty realistic, without a massive rebuilding of the national infrastructure. I'm all for n...

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Posted by: Steamboat

594 days ago1 Point

Um, Sandalow needs to check his math. There are 176,000 gas stations in the USA (and most have more than one pump), even if half of them (88,000) were converted to E85, at a cost of at least $20,000 per station) that would cost more like $1.8 billion...

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Posted by: eliatic

594 days ago1 Point

The next president can implement policy. If the policy is to end oil dependence, he can do it. But do Americans show any sign of wanting to end oil dependence? What's the plan? What kind of future are we willing to live? How long is the cold war men...

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Posted by: WiredChuck

594 days ago1 Point

ETZeppelin - you raise a good point - oil (domestic and imported) provides 96 percent of the fuel for our cars and trucks. I will see about getting the introductory paragraph amended. Droopy - the Toyota Prius plug-in hybrid Mr. Sandalow is driving ...

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Posted by: billmosby

594 days ago1 Point

So the technology is available right now, but we still need to focus our research efforts and develop biofuels? It looks like the available technology he is talking about is electricity to power the plug-in hybrids. That would imply a large increase ...

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Posted by: Cmon

595 days ago1 Point

Tax the problem- always a winning strategy. And then provide the wealth transfer the needy. All of these oil, global warming strategies, etc. all seem to have socialistic motives hiding in the shadows- completely undermining any positive points- but ...

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Posted by: itallrocks

594 days ago1 Point

Hi Cmon, Taxing problems (to encourage alternatives) and using the money for other things (though not necessarily direct "wealth transfer [to] the needy") is a legitimate role for any government, not just socialist ones. Yes it can be overdone, and...

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Posted by: bblakeney

595 days ago1 Point

I just hope he's telling the truth and not trying to sell books. @ETZepplin: it's not misleading at all - got it the first time. He's saying that people are focusing too much on where the oil's coming from, when in reality we should be worried by the...

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