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“For these types of reasons I will argue that there is no ‘optimal’ price  for oil in much the same way as there is no ‘optimal’ price for heroin.  This analogy between oil and heroin may appear like a polemical exaggeration, but I hope to show that it is, in fact, worryingly apt. When heroin is expensive, addicts cannot afford what they desperately need, or feel they need, and suffer accordingly. Expenditure on more worthwhile things is cut back in order to fund the increasingly expensive and debilitating addiction. But when heroin is cheap and readily available, the negative effects of addiction become even more pronounced through overconsumption, and the addiction only deepens as hopes of rehabilitation fade. Oil acts as industrial civilisation’s own form of heroin, and whether it is cheap or expensive, addicts today are in as much trouble as ever.”

From The Paradox of Oil: The Cheaper it is, the More it Costs
by Samuel Alexander, originally published by Simplicity Institute | Mar
5, 2015.  Via