Energy policy expert Lisa Margonelli is the author of a book about the oil supply chain, “Oil On the Brain: Petroleum’s Long Strange Trip to Your Tank.” In this interview, Alison Stewart speaks to Margonelli about U.S. energy policy in the wake of the BP spill. Is Obama’s goal of reducing foreign oil dependence by one-third in the next 15 years a realistic one? Margonelli offers real-life examples of what kinds of changes – in both behavior and policy – we could make in order to attain this goal.

“The oil problem is so huge and so multi-tentacled and so involved in our lives,” said Margonelli. “People are hungering for sort of bigger, more technological fixes… But I think we’ve overlooked the social engineering. Which is that we can really change our behaviors quite quickly – and we often times do change our behaviors.”

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