[jonathlee]

That sense is just as nonsensical. Would you also say that people in the 19th century were "addicted to coal" and "addicted to whale oil" and that people before that were "addicted to wood fires"? Oil is just the latest, most economical energy source in an entire series of sources. In a few years modern-day Luddites will change to "addicted to natural gas" or "addicted to nuclear fission", "addicted to fusion" or whatever the most popular portable energy source is then. Whenever there is more of something (food, energy, comfort, luxury, pr0n) than someone approves of (Puritans, Luddites, environmental extremists, religionists, etc.), they demonize it by saying people are addicted to it. It's called propaganda.

[mistercow]

Eh, I would say that in some ways the analogy to an addiction makes sense for oil. The point is to illustrate a bad cycle that we have. Oil is our cheapest portable energy solution, so we use it in most of our existing technology that needs lots of portable energy. That has a negative impact on research into new portable energy solutions because it is unlikely that any can be backwards compatible with old technology. As a result, oil continues to be the cheapest portable energy solution even as it gets more and more expensive. The analogy isn't perfect, of course, but no analogy is.

What makes no sense to me whatsoever is to try to extend this analogy to sugar.