Everyone admits that one of the hardest things an addict must do is actually admit to being an addict. If they do that then the road to being rid of their addiction will be easier. However history is littered with the names of people who have refused to acknowledge their addiction to drinks, cigarettes, drugs or gambling and have paid a terrible price for their failure in return.

For years people have been warning that the world’s addiction to oil is having desperate and dire consequences from fuelling wars to causing climate change. We have behaved like a drug addict who knows that their daily cocktail of drugs causes short-term relief but long term pain. We know our actions are causing problems but we cannot stop – we convince ourselves that we have to drive, and we have to consume. We may feel guilty but advertisers reassure us not to be. We are repeatedly told by them that we need cheap holidays abroad; we need a new car and we need to consume more. So we do so willingly. We are addicted to oil.

But the biggest addict of them all is America. It consumes 25 per cent of the world’s oil and gas, yet it has only 4.5 per cent of the population. In America everything is bigger, including their gas guzzling vehicles. As one oil executive once said: “The average size of a car in America is a truck”.

Like any addict, America has been in a state of denial. And President Bush has been in denial more than most. He has denied that America’s reliance on Middle Eastern oil has caused wars, most recently in Iraq. He has denied the existence of climate change or the urgency of the problem. But then Bush is an oilman. This is a man who has oil in his veins and who the oil industry put in the White House.

But as the reality has sunk in that his Middle East policies are in a mess and the war in Iraq could be a war without end, something had to give. Even for a hard-headed oilman. As the scientific evidence of climate change has become so overwhelming and compelling Bush has finally acted.

In his annual State of the Union address in January, Bush came clean. “America is addicted to oil,” he told his nation and the wider world. To make matters worse this oil “is often imported from unstable parts of the world,” he said. There is no point in admitting your addiction without a plan to beat it and so it came: “The best way to break this addiction is through technology” argued Bush, who said that American could “replace more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025” through a mixture of “cleaner, cheaper, and more reliable alternative energy sources”.

Bush’s big idea is a mix of “alternative” energy sources as well as clean coal and nuclear energy was the way forward. He stressed how “we must also change how we power our automobiles”, by advocating a mix of pollution-free hydrogen and cars that run on ethanol. These kinds of technologies will make “our dependence on Middle Eastern oil a thing of the past” said Bush to a standing ovation from both Republicans and Democrats alike.

So are we witnessing the beginning of a massive shift in the geo-politics of the Middle East with the beginning of the end of American dependence on the region’s oil? Is the Middle East looking at a new dawn where there will be no US intervention? There will be many people who thought they would never see the day that Bush talked about oil addiction. However, beyond the rhetoric, the signs are not good.

Firstly, Bush is not the first US President who has said he wants to wean his addicted nation of Middle Eastern oil and he probably will not be the last. “When President Bush vowed on Tuesday to reduce drastically American dependence on oil from the Middle East, he had plenty of company” wrote the New York Times, “President Richard M. Nixon promised in 1971 to make the United States self-sufficient in energy by 1980. President Jimmy Carter promised in 1979 that the nation would 'never again use more foreign oil than we did in 1977.' And Mr. Bush has called in each of his past four State of the Union addresses for a reduction in the dependence on foreign oil.”

Not surprisingly the President’s pledge was met with some scepticism from Democrats. They pointed out some of the hypocricy of his words versus the recent actions of Republicans: The Democrat Senator from Nevada and Minority House Leader Harry Reid told reporters that when the Democrats had introduced an energy bill last year that would have required Bush to take action to reduce oil consumption by 40 per cent by 2025, the Republicans voted against it. “This is Bush double speak,” said Reid. “Whatever he says, think the opposite.”

As with most initiatives from politicians it is the details that really matter not the words. Another part of Bush’s “big idea” was something called the “Advanced Energy Initiative” that Bush signalled would be a 22-per cent increase in research into clean energy. Whilst this is just a proposal for more research, Bush’s critics argue that a much simpler and quicker solution would be to improve the fuel efficiency of America’s huge inefficient transport fleet.

Analysts from the American Rocky Mountain Institute believe that America could reduce its consumption of oil by four to five million barrels a day just by improving the efficiency of its vehicles and switching to smaller, lighter cars.  Until this happens, what Bush said “is a step in the right direction, but I'm not sure it's a step of the right magnitude," argues Odd-Even Bustnes, an analyst from the Institute. 

Others point out that rather than assist energy efficiency, Bush and the Republicans have been hindering energy efficiency research and development efforts. The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) is a non-profit organisation dedicated to promoting energy efficiency. “The President's call for reduced oil dependence and new energy technologies is laudable, but to be credible, the Administration must reverse its record of cutting overall funding for energy efficiency and other clean energy technologies," argues ACEEE Executive Director Steven Nadel.

ACEEE point out that, adjusting for inflation, there had been a 14% decline in energy efficiency funding research and development since 2002 in the US. Likewise there had been a $3 billion, or 60% drop in clean energy tax incentives in the final Energy Policy Act of 2005. 

To make matters worse, the Energy Policy Act not only reduced the funding to clean energy incentives, but gave an estimated $4 billion dollars to oil and gas companies in tax breaks and other tax exemptions.  So just as Bush says he wants to reduce oil dependence his Administration gives billions to keep the oil companies happy.

To many seasoned campaigners on energy it does not add up. There is a general consensus from those who work in the field that by admitting to being addicted to oil Bush took a good first step, but then walked into a brick wall. “Bush’s rhetoric was great, but little else. President Bush has taken the first step towards ending America's oil addiction by simply acknowledging we have a problem” argues Steve Kretzmann from Oil Change, an organisation that campaigns for an environmentally and socially sustainable energy future.  “But like many addicts at the beginning of the road to recovery, he doesn't seem to understand the true problem well”. 

Kretzmann points to a further flaw in Bush’s argument. The “Persian Gulf oil is currently only 11.2% of total US consumption” he says, meaning that in reality despite the big promises Bush is only talking about replacing some 8.4 % of US oil supply with other sources.  But even replacing that will be unlikely in the longer term, as the Middle East is where the majority of the reserves of oil and gas are.

So despite the fine words, the reality is that Bush and America will carry on being addicted to oil and Middle Eastern oil too. And that can only be bad for all of us. But it is especially bad news for the people of the Middle East. Because it will be they who pay the price of America’s  oil addiction through further US intervention in the region.