The 12 Suggested Steps of Oilaholics Anonymous

Friday, October 06, 2006

Terry Carpenter, an activist in many conservation causes, provided the following program for all of us oil addicts:

1. We admitted we were powerless over Oil Consumption -- that our lives had become Unsustainable.
2. Came to believe that preparing for Powerdown could restore us to Sustainability.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of the Relocalization Network and give up the false hope that Technology would rescue us.
4. Made a searching and fearless inventory of our Ecological Footprints.
5. Admitted to the Planet, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our Unsustainable Lifestyle.
6. Were entirely ready to have the Universe remove all the defects of Consumerism.
7. Humbly asked the Natural World to help us see that Less is More and to redirect our life energy toward our Dreams.
8. Made a list of how we harmed Future Generations, and became willing to make amends to them.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, by Living Within Our Ecological Limits.
10. Continued to take an Energy Inventory and when we were Over-consuming, promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with the Universe, praying only for knowledge and acceptance of the Oil Depletion Protocol and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we resolved to carry the message to Oilaholics, and to practice the Plan C principles in all our affairs.


The Simplicity Prayer -- Please grant me the strength to reject over-consumption, the courage to live a simpler life and the wisdom to cherish community.

2 comments:

Rich Eggleston said...

First you have to recognize you're an oilaholic. If you're still able to function with your car, you're not there yet. Only when your marriage breaks up because of your car, you lose your job because of your car and you find yourself driving around aimlessly in the middle of the night just to be behind the wheel are you ready for oilaholics anonymous.

My V8 Dodge Ram pickup truck gets an impressive 14 and a half miles per gallon, so I don't think I'm there yet. I like to intimidate other drivers and look above the traffice. It's a guy thing.

Besides, my household owns a total of only 12 cylinders in our motor vehicle fleet, and the two vehicles combined get 27 miles per gallon, so our fleet average isn't so bad. The federal government would probably pass us with flying colors. And there lies the rub.

Society has to take the pledge en masse and the minority of us who have bothered to vote in the recent past, and whose votes the Republicans have agreed to count, have elected the patron saint of the oil industry, with a little bit of help from the U.S. Supreme Court.

So obviously the government can't help us. The churches can't help us. Except for the First United Methodist Church of Madison, they all want to build bigger parking lots. They have magazines that tell churches that in order to be successful, they have to have bigger parking lots, even if they fill up only once a week.

Who's left? The Pope? He flew from Rome to Naples today in a helicopter, which gets lousy mileage. The Dali Lama? He flies all over the place in an airplane that gets awful mileage too.

Al Gore, the closest person to a saint on global warming that I can think of? Didn't he get into trouble for buying a Cadillac Escalade?

Oilaholics all.

Unknown said...

Who's left... well it's simple: people of good will and skills.
Being from canada here is an example of such person who co-founded the Green party here and won't give up after 30 years:
http://bit.ly/Vezina2010Feature

The Greenergies Foundation will provide support to innovators in order to certifiy the performances and replicability of their technologies. The Greenergies Foundation will also collect realtime data on avoided GHG so the associated wealth of credits can be managed by an online community of interest to further speedup the deployment of sustainable and fair energy technologies and processes. One of the by products is an augmented reality app that will dispaly Greenergies friendly Vehicles and Points of Support. Here is an example of a similar app voicing an opposite message on BP related content in the images:-)
http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/2010/06/augmented-reality-bp-logo-hack/

"Remember, the doors swings both ways." .-)