Obama on U.S. Oil Addiction: 'We go from shock to trance'

by Emily Gertz

Published November 17, 2008 @ 05:15PM PST

President-Elect Barack Obama talked transition to the White House last night on 60 Minutes. He and interviewer Steve Kroft touched on energy. Here's the video; transcript after the jump.

Kroft: When the price of oil was at $147 a barrel, there were a lot of spirited and profitable discussions that were held on energy independence. Now you've got the price of oil under $60.

Obama: Right.

Kroft: Does doing something about energy -- is it less important now than --

Obama: It's more important. It may be a little harder politically, but it's more important.

Kroft: Why?

Obama: Well, because this has been our pattern. We go from shock to trance. You know, oil prices go up, gas prices at the pump go up, everybody goes into a flurry of activity. And then the prices go back down and suddenly we act like it's not important, and we start, you know, filling up our S.U.V.'s again. And, as a consequence, we never make any progress. It's part of the addiction, all right. That has to be broken. Now is the time to break it.

Update, 8:59 pm ET: At DotEarth, Andrew Revkin quotes this same passage from last night's 60 minutes, then notes:

There are signs aplenty in Mr. Obama’s transition work that energy and climate will remain priorities. One pick for the transition at the Office of Science and Technology Policy, according to Darren Samuelsohn at Greenwire and EarthNews, is Mario Molina, a winner of the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work on harm to the ozone layer and an outspoken advocate for action to limit greenhouse gases (as well as to clean up conventional air pollution in developing countries)