Petroleum addiction and resistance to change

During my little experiment last week, in which I went without internet for five full days, I came to realize that the experiment had many parallels to industrial society's addiction to petroleum. The internet is a relatively unimportant thing to remove from your life (well, it didn't seem that way when it was for a class assignment, but in the scheme of things, from a survivalist standpoint, it obviously is), yet I was totally resistant to it when it seemed like there was no actual reason for it. Society at large is ignorant of, or at the very least in denial of, the fact that in order to genuinely reduce our depletion of natural resources, as well as our emissions of harmful toxins/greenhouse gases, we must make changes that will inevitably affect our lifestyles in big ways. With this in mind, it makes sense that people are so resistant to make these changes. It's human nature: if someone doesn't have a personal motivation for changing things around them, they simply won't be willing to. The veil of unlimited resources that has been pulled over civilization's eyes removes all motivation from the populace. This veil is created by people's easy, constant, mostly nonfluctuating access to resources that we are in danger of depleting, as well as by the misleading notion that some scientists disagree with the general consensus that humans are affecting global warming and depleting resources at an unsustainable rate (which is only true if by "some" you mean "a very small minority"). The idea that Hubbert's peak exists even on a global scale is frightening, but is foreign to most of society.

The illusion that the resources that power all of modern civilization cannot be depleted is very comfortable. It is also very easy to believe when you have not been presented with the information necessary to reach the conclusion that such is not the case, by any stretch of the imagination. I also think that some people really just don't consider these issues, and don't care at all. They believe that it's a problem that future generations will have to cope with, and they probably think that by then... we'll have some miracle cure or some such. I believe that the luxury afforded to richer nations by their unprecedented abuse of natural resources is what fuels this disdain of change. Using less resources means cutting out some aspects of what makes life so wonderful for these people. And in fact, it will take a massive reconfiguration of resource allocation in order for the changes to be effective. Sustainable local economies must be created, which is a gigantic undertaking considering our huge reliance on goods being shipped from all over the world. It is probable that the only way change will ever actually occur is by extreme measures on the part of governments the world over. Infrastructure must be created, and policies must be enforced that are conducive to reducing our dependence on these resources. But, politicians, as smart as they are in all the wrong ways, know that the constituency of people who will vote for someone promising "intrusive policies to evade a devastating worldwide crisis of global warming and resource depletion" is limited, to say the least. Hopefully someone will reconcile this, and Obama has definitely been a step in the right direction, but my feelings on the subject are admittedly rather grim at the moment. I don't always feel this way, though. There are people all over the world who care about this, and I myself have a long life ahead of me during which this issue will continuously by contemplated. There's no doubt in my mind that humans can avert this crisis. It is a matter of whether or not we will.