Our hundred year relationship with oil is at a crossroads. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill has shone a light on the far reaching consequences that our addiction to oil is having on the natural world and on the climate.

At the moment, oil is being used to power most of our vehicles, making us all dependent on it in some way - to get our food, to see our loved ones. There are millions of cars, buses, trucks, ships and planes moving around our cities, countryside, oceans and skies, connecting people and moving stuff around the world. But all of these vehicles need millions of gallons of oil to keep them going every day. And that’s taking a toll on the air we breathe, on our security, our economy, the environment and our climate.

The easy-to-reach oil has now virtually run out. Oil companies are going to greater and greater extremes to squeeze the last drops of oil from the earth - scraping the barrel in the tar sands of Canada, risking lives and marine life in ultra-deep water, and potentially violating the pristine and fragile Arctic.

If these places are exploited, and the oil burnt, we will be on track for a six degree rise in global average temperatures. Two degrees is generally accepted by scientists and governments as the tipping point of dangerous climate change. Scientists say a rise of six degrees in average global temperatures would have cataclysmic and irreversible consequences for the planet and threaten the basis of human civilization. This is the path we are on right now. But if we transform our transport system, this doesn’t have to be the pathway we follow.

At the moment, billions of our money is going into risky oil, and keeping us stuck in the oil age. Our governments are propping up the oil companies with tax breaks and subsidies, and they’re allowing oil companies to exploit our natural world. In the long run, our addiction to oil will cost us far more.

If we do nothing, climate change will cost us around 20% of total gross domestic product (GDP) over the next half century. That's more than the cost of both world wars and the great depression put together. But if we act now to mitigate it, the cost would only be about one per cent of total economic growth. That's the same amount of money we spend on global advertising. Surely saving the planet is more important than billboards and TV adverts.

If we don’t start moving beyond oil now, the world and the costs we pass on to our children will be unbearable. It won't happen overnight – oil is too deeply engrained in the way our world works for it to be a quick change – but there's no need for this race to reach the oil hidden in extreme, remote and dangerous places.

The good news is that many of the solutions we need to move beyond oil already exist. And together we can begin to remove the barriers to the mass production of clean energy and clean transport.

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Frontier oil | Our investments and oil | Government support for oil