Everyone was a bit surprised to hear George Bush–in the State of the Union speech–refer to America’s “addiction to oil.” Bush’s friends and family have strong ties to the oil industry. His administration has been marked by close relationships with “Big Oil,” and endless government aid. Bush has been accused of putting oil nterests ahread of American interests, and it’s hard to explain our misadventures in Iraq except by reference to oil. In response to Bush’s remark, Stuart McGil, a senior VP at ExxonMobil, said that “the United States will always rely on foreign imports of oil to feed its energy needs and should stop trying to become energy independent.” OPEC issued a warning: “George W. Bush’s proposal to reduce US dependence on Middle Eastern oil could badly jeopardise needed investment in Gulf oil production and refining capacity.” Why the sudden–pardon my indulgence–”flip-flop”?

David Roberts at Gristmill understands Bush’s words in terms of his personal history:

When Bush talks about “addiction,” the subtext is always his own carefully constructed personal narrative: The youthful alcohol problems and the redeeming power of Jesus and the love of a good woman. In Bush’s campaign story, he was spiritually redeemed; he shook off addiction by improving his character. The subtext of America being “addicted” is that the American people are somehow fallen and weak. …

The addiction meme also seems to imply that individual Americans need to break their own addiction — that reducing oil use will be a matter of individuals cutting their own consumption. But while it’s certainly true that individuals can reduce their oil use at the margins, real, substantial cuts will arise from public policy and corporate commitments.

What’s stopping that public policy and those corporate commitments? It’s not “America.” It’s a finite, identifiable set of financial interests and the politicians that serve them.

As Roberts describes it, and as the conversation continued at the Oil Drum, the argument was put, “When one is addicted, the solution is not to find alternative/better/cheaper ways to feed the addiction. The solution is to cure the addiction. Curing any addiction—from alcohol to heroin to oil—necessarily means eradicating the need for the substance.”

Of course, such an alternative is necessary so that we could sustain our unsustainable level of complexity just a little bit longer–so perhaps it is not oil we’re addicted to at all, but the complexity that oil allows?

It took less than 24 hours for the Bush administration to backpedal, claiming that the president’s remarks shouldn’t be taken “literally.”

But even so, Bush’s plan is more of the same. Research, rather than implementation. John Gartner quoted Toby Chaudhuri, communications director of Apollo Alliance:

It was one small step for President Bush, and one giant missed opportunity for America. The president’s proposals focus primarily on research. His energy program won’t help lower gas prices or slow the global warming that the president still does not admit is happening. …

The president made the same promise last year and then cut funding for the program.

Invoking the savior that is modern technology to solve all ills, even the techno-salvationists can see that Bush’s plan isn’t ambitious enough:

Other analysts say the biggest oil savings could be done with a stroke of Bush’s pen, saving more oil than his research proposals far more quickly. Boosting fuel-mileage standards for automobiles saved the lion’s share of US oil savings during the 1970s.

The president’s proposals were “a repackaging of the same old wish list for corporate lobbyists” that did little to cut near-term US dependence on foreign oil, says Carl Pope, president of the Sierra Club, in a statement.

So, in the end, it looks like Bush’s approach hasn’t changed at all. His plan is more lip service to oil alternatives than actual action, and even with that, it does absolutely nothing to address the real, underlying problem: the diminishing returns of complexity itself.

The United States–all of civilization–is most certainly addicted, but not to any one energy source. Rather, we’re addicted to that complexity that energy provides. Bush’s isn’t helping us kick our habit–he’s replacing our mirrors and razors with crack pipes instead, and not even doing a very good job of that.