Yeah I am sick of the expression "addiction to oil". As noted previously, I happen to have an "addiction to modern medicine", an "addiction to dry, warm shelter" an "addiction to inexpensive, quality food". The list goes on and on. Oil is inextricably linked to all of these things. What bothers me most about that banal admonition is that it implies there is some sort of reasonable alternative that we would be embracing right now, were it not for our thickheaded "addiction" getting in the way. What alternative? The only one that could possibly be a viable alternative is nuclear, and we know the fits of apoplexy that sends them into.
This business about an "addiction to oil" is, like its twin bogey man "global warming", just a canard for the complete upending of our economic and political structures. They want to force the population into dense, controlled housing. Individual liberty and rights are an impediment to the Left's goal of control, so they chip away at them by making energy artificially scarce and expensive, installing "Smart Grid" electrical infrastructure (you can't be trusted with the freedom to control your own thermostat, because you'll set it according to your own desires), and so on. Complaints about the loss of freedom and wealth are at first ridiculed as some anachronistic fetish that is a "danger" to the environment, "unfair" to other people.