Gas prices are the highest they’ve been in a long time. I hear a lot of complaining about this. And then I think, “If you were an alcoholic complaining about the high price of alcohol, I would tell you that now is the time to quit.” We’ve known about the ruinous effects of fossil fuel use for a long time now. We’ve postponed doing anything about it. We’ve abused it to the point it’s threatening to kill us and many of the things around us – any living thing, plant or animal, that’s fragile enough to need the planet to remain the temperature it’s been for the last several million years. And now it’s expensive. What will it take to get us to give it up?

The active addict thinks they can’t live without their substance of choice. They literally can’t picture life any other way, until the negative effects are impossible to brush aside. The rock-bottom addict finally realizes there is no choice – sometimes after losing their livelihood, their home, and everyone they love. Think about what that means on a planetary scale. Climate change threatens to take away our economic stability, leave us with an uninhabitable planet, and destroy the beautiful places and living things we enjoy today. And for some addicts, the realization comes too late. Addicts don’t always make it. 

Giving up an addiction is hard. Poke a recovering addict, and they will agree: It was hard. They will also tell you in the next breath that it was so, so worth it, and they wished they had done it years before – it would have saved them a lot of suffering and left less of a hole to dig out of. Now that they’re out from under the slavery of addiction, they experience a life built on sustainable joys, like spirituality, nature, and personal growth. Out from under addiction, the addict learns that life without substances is not just possible, it’s miles better.

There are some inconvincible flat-Earth climate deniers who literally think the world’s climate scientists are perpetuating a China-backed hoax to impoverish the American people. Such people are out of reach, totally unavailable to reason. But there is a much larger swath of people who agree that there is a problem (how much of a problem is a source of debate). A lot of these people who agree that there is a problem are simply undecided about what to do about it. Giving up fossil fuels sounds too hard. Expensive, difficult, and resulting in feelings of deprivation. You know, withdrawal.

Any recovering addict will tell you: During active withdrawal, you will feel deprived. You will be jealous of other users who haven’t quit (like the U.S. having to pout, glum and sober, while India and China continue to puff away on coal and oil – for a little while, at least). You will tell yourself maybe your problem wasn’t that bad, and this will tempt you to use again. Hard days will come, and you will tell yourself you would do anything for another sip of that sweet sweet nectar. Those days will be difficult. Things worth doing are often difficult. That doesn’t make them any less worth doing. 

Much has been written about the real costs of climate change compared to the heavily subsidized cost of fossil fuel use. If the price of fossil fuels included the very real costs of rebuilding communities savaged by hurricanes and wildfires, fossil fuels would be obviously the least economical way of getting our energy needs met. Climate scientists have predicted for a long time that water shortages and sea level rise will be ruinous for tens of millions of Americans and eviscerate whole states. Is the value of a dollar the same if it’s spent on a wind turbine, versus being lost by a homeowner who has to abandon their home and its value in Phoenix or Miami? The latter comes with a long story of human suffering along with it. You can build a lot of wind turbines and solar arrays for the cost of all the soon-to-be-uninhabitable real estate in Arizona or Florida.

Addicts, even those who pay out of pocket for treatment, find that the cure was more economical than the disease ever was. Right off the bat, you save a lot of money not buying alcohol any more. Money keeps coming in if you retain your job and your house because you quit. It’s hard to put a price tag on not creating more human suffering, but if you value that, withdrawal from addiction has plenty of that to offer too. 

So why do we persist in an addiction that costs us a fortune, and offers economic ruin, untold human suffering, and the increasingly likely outcome of the death of life as we know it? Because, like all addicts, we are afraid of what withdrawal will feel like. Listen to a recovering addict on this: It’s hard. It will be painful and difficult. It will be 100% worth it. I guarantee you: You will wish you had quit sooner.