Physical addiction

We are hooked on fossil fuels in such a huge way. We not only built personal habits around them, we built our physical infrastructure around them.

We used to be able to walk to the local neighborhood grocery store. Now we drive to a big box supermarket. Big box stores are located on big new sites where there are no sidewalks or bike trails.
We used to be able to walk to school. Now schools serve a 20 mile radius, and new schools are often located in the country, where nobody can walk to them.

It will be very difficult to change our infrastructure to again make it easy to live without constant dependency on cars.

This is a good analogy to what goes on in our bodies when we get hooked into a strong habit. Our brain physically changes as habits get ingrained. To change that habit can be as personally painful and difficult as it will be for our country to change its physical layout to reduce fossil fuel consumption.