Here's an article by Bob Burnett in the Berkeley Daily Planet paralleling responses to the "peak oil" concept with the five stages of grief. (hat tip: sustainablog and peak oil news)

Money quotes:

"America is teetering on the edge of recession. We've run up a huge debt and, as a result, have developed startling vulnerabilities. While there are many explanations for our precarious situation—ill-advised tax cuts and wrong-headed administration priorities, for example—the root problem is our dependency on oil. Although we are barely 5 percent of the world's population, we consume 25 percent of the annual oil production. We produce 6 million barrels of oil per day yet devour 20 million.

We are oil junkies, physically dependent upon our daily fix of petroleum. To wean ourselves from our slavish dependency on carbon-based fuels, we will have to go through a harrowing withdrawal process. The sooner we do this the better, as many experts are predicting that 2005 will be the peak oil production year for the planet.

Americans are at various stages of awareness and acceptance of our addiction. Viewed from afar, the range of public attitudes seems remarkably similar to the five stages of grief famously described by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, or acceptance."

When it all comes down to it, it looks something like this:

It's not just ANWR folks, it's a state of mind. Because of our dependency, the United States will behave like a crackwhore sooner or later...rational courses of action are not taken by crackwhores, last I checked.  

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