Now that sounds like serious business that should mandate emergency action, not band-aids. If we have any conscience or sense of responsibility, you would think that finding an alternative clean source of energy would be primary. What’s the point of religion or spirituality — or anything, for that matter — if we can’t wake up to the reality of our destructive ways and make the integrity of the environment No. 1 on our agenda?

Imagine you suddenly discovered that you had a catastrophic illness that was treatable — perhaps even curable — but the cure would require giving it all your attention. What would you do? Would you return to business as usual while you argued that maybe it’s not that bad? Does that question even have to be asked? Why can’t we see a global catastrophe in the same way?

A new mantra has emerged that everyone is chanting: “Our addiction to oil is the problem.” Well, folks, I’ve got some good news to counter the deluge of terrible news about fossil fuel. Oil consumption is not an addiction. We need oil every day of our lives and can’t live without it. In that sense, it bears some similarity to addiction — but that’s where the analogy ends. For an addiction the only effective treatment is to get off your poison of choice — you have to stop drinking, stop shooting up, etc. As every addict knows, just cutting down your dosage won’t work. No one needs alcohol or dope until it becomes an addiction. But we do need oil. We need it to get us to work, to school, for heating our homes, offices and factories, for shopping, to take the kids to activities, to get people to medical facilities, for travel, and the list of essentials goes on. Our economy and the economies of the world would come to a halt without oil. That clearly confirms: It’s not an addiction. I don’t know of anyone who gets up in the morning and says, “I don’t have to go anywhere today. I’m not going to use my car, even though my tank is full. But I must get some gasoline because I’m a gasoline addict.” Provide a cost-effective clean energy source, and everyone will drop oil in a breath. That’s not the way addiction works.

And unlike real addiction, which requires abstinence, we can successfully trim down excessive use and find other ways to conserve oil use — but that won’t solve the problem. In fact, it will barely make a dent. Our lives depend on gasoline and we can’t change that. Working ominously against the conservation strategy are the bustling economies of the combined 2 billion people-plus nations of China and India. Hundreds of millions of autos will enter Indian and Chinese two-car garages in the coming decades, as these societies seek the same perks the rest of the industrialized world already has for leading “the good life.” The planet simply cannot sustain that prospect.

When the problem is fully grasped and we get off ridiculous diversions like the “addiction” diagnosis, implying a disease that needs to be stopped, only one answer stands out: We must find an alternative clean source of energy to keep the planet, our lives and our economies in orbit. And let’s get rid of the term “addiction” in energy discussions — it masks the depth of the crisis and focuses on blame to take some of the attention away from the true problem — our refusal to do what screams out to anyone who is willing to hear the call. We need a Marshall Plan to make us independent of oil in a way that will allow the planet to live.

That’s why I must take issue with New York Times op-ed writer Tom Friedman in his Jan.19 piece telling us to throw in the towel for now on developing a clean alternative fuel source in favor of conservation, or what he calls a “green new deal.” No magic bullet but a combination of belt-tightening, raising oil prices to bleed people into conservation and the expanded use of less pernicious fuel sources — the 80 proof solution rather than the 100 proof one, when we need zero proof. I love Tom Friedman, but I think he got this one wrong. Is the magic bullet unrealistic?

On May 5, 1954, a 25-year-old British medical student, Roger Bannister, ran the first ever mile under four minutes. It was thought to be unrealistic — humanly impossible. Bannister and his coach didn’t accept that. They trained for it and did it. Today the losers in mile races run in under four minutes.

John F. Kennedy went before a special joint session of Congress on May 25, 1961, to make a startling announcement: America will land an American on the moon within a decade, he declared. It seemed unrealistic. To put Kennedy’s vision in perspective, we know more about fossil fuel and alternatives today than we knew about getting to the moon then. Yet, on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong opened the hatch of Apollo 11 and stepped on the moon.

Many said it was unrealistic for scientists to expect to discover and map the entire human genome — the estimated 20,000 to 25,000 human genes. Challenging that discoursing belief, an international team of scientists initiated the genome project in 1990. It was completed in 2003 — a few years earlier than expected.

The list of these “miracles” goes on. How can we explain them?

The Buddha said, “You are what you think.” Think with limitations and you will live limitations. Reach for the stars and you may get there.

Politicians: The oil rigs are in your court. Don’t let this chance for a new vision slip away. Do you have the courage to embrace the dream?

(Reproduced from ReligionAndSpirituality.com)