Below is a re-post of the article, When we demand cheap gasoline, we are demanding disaster, by The Independent's, Johann Hari. (All links are from original article.  Bold added for emphasis by ecoSanity, as well as additional links at end of post.)

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My name is Johann Hari, and I am an addict. If you restrict the supply of my drug -- as has happened over the past month -- I become panicky and angry. If you cut it off entirely, my life will fall apart. I want my fix, I want it cheap, and I want it now. My drug is called gasoline. I eat it: My food is driven to me. I wear it: My clothing is shipped and flown to me. I travel with it: on every bus, train and plane. But if I don't go to rehab soon, this addiction is going to ruin me. This is the inaugural meeting of Petroleum Anonymous. We're all going to need it now.

There are four major symptoms to my addiction and yours, and in 2011 they are all getting worse.

Below is a slightly abbreviated version of an important article, The Climate Catastrophe Has Begun, by The Independent's, Johann Hari.

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Thank god man-made global warming was proven to be a hoax. Just imagine what the world might have looked like now if those conspiring scientists had been telling the truth. No doubt NASA would be telling us that this year is now, so far, the hottest since humans began keeping records. The weather satellites would show that even when heat from the sun significantly dipped earlier this year, the world still got hotter. Russia’s vast forests would be burning to the ground in the fiercest drought they have ever seen, turning the air black in Moscow, killing 15,000 people, and forcing foreign embassies to evacuate. Because warm air holds more water vapour, the world’s storms would be hugely increasing in intensity and violence – drowning one fifth of Pakistan, and causing giant mudslides in China.

The world’s ice sheets would be sloughing off massive melting chunks four times the size of Manhattan. The cost of bread would be soaring across the world as heat shriveled the wheat crops. The increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would be fizzing into the oceans, making them more acidic and so killing 40% of the phytoplankton that make up the irreplaceable base of the oceanic food chain. The denialists would be conceding at last that everything the climate scientists said would happen – with their pesky graphs and studies and computers – came to pass.

This is all happening today, except for that final stubborn step.