History is full of bad ideas: The Pogroms, The New Kids on The Block reunion, my ordering of Hawaiian pizza last night. But the prize for worst idea ever unquestionably goes to the bloke who decided to drill for oil.

In it’s natural state, oil is underground, which seems like a sensible place for a sticky, smelly, combustible, generally ill-disposed substance to stay. Getting it out of the earth is a huge undertaking, and one that involves huge machines tearing up the ground until the surrounding landscape looks like something that you would find on a Radiohead album cover:

Oil is a bit like heroin in a lot of ways. To the non-addict, the use of oil or heroin seems completely insane. Start a war for some black goop? Stick this needle in my arm? No thank you. And, like heroin, oil never gets any cheaper.

With oil going for nearly $150 a barrel, you would think people would stop using it, just as you would think a junkie would stop shooting up when he lost his apartment because he used his last twenty to score. Nope. Every time the price of oil reaches yet another record high, people moan about it, then do absolutely nothing. Or, like some Americans recently polled, they decide that the answer is do drill for more oil. Classic junkie logic: the stuff is getting more expensive, so the only thing that can save us is to do more.        

We need to stop, really stop. Cold turkey. I don’t mean buy a hybrid car. I mean don’t fucking drive, ever. Pregnant wife needs to get to the hospital? City buses run more frequently than ever before. Want to visit your friend in Chicago? Fuck him, he’s not really your friend. Want to see your favorite band live at a festival miles away? Hmmm, in that case I don’t have an answer for you, actually.