The 12 Steps of Oil Anon

(With a tip o’ the hat to Alcoholics Anonymous)

Here are the steps we took, which are suggested as a program of recovery:


1. We admitted we were powerless over our addiction to oil - that our lives had become unsustainable.

2. Came to believe that a dedication to the facts about peak oil could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to dedicate our will and our lives to the creation of a new and better way of living.

4. Made a searching and fearless inventory of the ways we have become dependent on cheap oil for our livelihood and lifestyle.

5. Admitted to ourselves and to others in the peak oil community that we hadn’t a clue about what to do next, and crashed.

6. Became entirely ready to listen to wisdom from others who have found solutions to fossil-fuel dependency.

7. Humbly asked them to invite us to their homes, meetings and ecovillages.

8. Made a list of our actual real-world options, and became willing to pursue them all.

9. Took direct action to develop a Plan B for our lives, making sure that this plan would involve helping the broader community, so that we would be of service to others.

10. Continued to take inventory of our on-going oil dependency, slowly weaning ourselves off a consumerist lifestyle.

11. Sought through research and connection with others to further improve our peak oil awareness, so that through knowledge and community we can carry out the goals of Relocalization.

12. Having had a mental and spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we sought to offer our knowledge and resources to those who remain unaware, and to practice the principles of sustainable living in all our affairs.

Go to How to Boil a Frog's Peak Oil Page

The Blitz

Ever feel like this?

















Does it seem like the news is becoming an all-out assault? If it’s not an actual war story about “6 killed in US air strike”, it’s “Man stabs 8 at mall”. And why are all these people killing numbers? Are they anti-math?



He’s afraid for his life. And not just because he ate Nine.



Then there was the fire sale of teetering Bear Stearns to the JP Morgan Bank . If you’re a US taxpayer, you tried to take comfort in the fact that the bailout postponed the collapse of the US economy for another week or so, until you found out that you paid for the bailout. And the people running Bear Stearns suffered too – many were reduced from billionaires to mere millionaires.






“But it’s more than money. It’s the shame and embarrassment. Now the question is, can you pay for the house and do you give up the second car?” [actual quote]











Meanwhile, oil prices are still over $100 even after the “collapse”, inflation is rising from Singapore to China to Europe to America, the Brits are up to £1.4 trillion in personal debt, the UN admits it’s losing the fight against hunger, Bangalore -- the capital of out-sourcing & stress -- takes the crown as world leader in suicides, and Canadians are feeling worse about balancing the budget with “the most destructive project on earth”.






We’re #1!







And amid this barrage of bad news bombs, the holier-than-thou do-gooders tell us we’re supposed to change our way of life? We’re supposed to drive less? Buy less stuff? Eat organic, locally-grown, non-genetically-modified low-carbon hormone-free-range food?

Are any of these people from Earth?








Al Gore is from the Whirlpool Galaxy. David Suzuki is from the smaller galaxy next door.







Not only that, they say we can do all that stuff and be happy. Right. OK, we believed George about the WMD, but fool me once, shame on…shame on you…fool me can’t get fooled again! [actual video] Just name a time when people were doing all that and felt good about their lives!

Fair enough. Let’s bring in my uncle, esteemed journalist Edward R. Frog.






This…is London.













The Allied Forces are still holding a beachhead of good cheer against pressure from the Axis of Fear. Petrol is a bit limited, so people have parked their cars and started to get their exercise from biking and walking.









Finally, we can take time to enjoy the scenery!










With everyone staying close to home, families have started to spend time together again. Many have been surprised to find they have more children than they remembered, and that they can actually spend time just talking or playing music. Some of these families are getting together with other families, forming something they call “communities”.







Slumber party! (Jacket and tie required.)









The teenagers don’t want to stay in with the old fogies, of course. Fortunately, they’ve rediscovered the joy of dancing to live music – and it’s the best dance music there ever was or will be. Swing!







The most fun you can have without getting pregnant!







There are shortages of course. The ladies are missing their nylons (cleverly replaced with a well-drawn line up the back of a shapely gam), but sugar and meat can be had on the black market if you’ve got something to trade – in a time when money is just paper, real goods, tools and skills are what count. But when it comes to food, most people are turning to their own backyards!








Another hoe for self-sufficiency.











But people are discovering there’s another place they can go for the things they need: their neighbors. Everyone is quick with an offer of the spare room if your house took a hit in the middle of the night, but fashion is also getting served. With no new clothes around, people are finding used treasure in other people’s closets!







We’ll just take in the high heels a little and she’ll be ready for Little Miss Sunshine!






And of course, despite the daily hardships, the uncertainty about the future, the worry about our ability even to get safely home at the end of the day…one thing remains constant: the resilience of the human heart. The more difficult things become, the more we’re reminded that we need each other, and the more we reach out. Together again, present in our towns and villages in a way we haven’t been for years, we happen to glance across the square and see that familiar stranger. And all in a moment…








...romance.











So never forget that there was a time like ours, when life got better even as things got worse, because everyone pitched in and decided to make the best of what there was, and remembered what was important. And as for when this particular Blitz of ours will end, well…








…the future is full of possibilities.











Good night and good luck.

The Road to Shangri-La

Ever notice how the solution to all our problems is always just over the next hill?







No, no, on the other side of the castle. They have a buffet and cable TV!









One solution you may have heard of is called “carbon capture and sequestration”, or CCS. This means grabbing CO2 on the way out of the smokestack or gas well or whatever it’s pumping out of, liquefying it, pumping that liquid to somewhere else, and putting billions of tons of it back into the ground in such a way that it will never come back up or poison ground water or cause earthquakes or explosions or any of the other things that could happen. Simple!






Next JJ Abrams movie: “The Day the Earth Burped”









Unfortunately, the test project for how CCS would work on a large scale, called “FutureGen”, just got cancelled by the DOE, after the Bush Administration spent 7 years promoting it as the answer to global warming. It’s the old Chinese proverb at work: “A lame duck needs no political cover when he is building his presidential library.”







I got two books saved up already. And Laura can be my librarian!











But don’t worry! The good news is, the next solution is already lined up! It’s nuclear power, that good old Cold War power source that’s going to make electricity too cheap to meter any day now. Don’t worry about terrorists flying planes into the containment buildings, or the fact that there isn’t enough uranium left to make it through the 21st century even at current rates of use, or the fact that it takes over a million tons of cement to build a nuclear reactor…and manufacturing each ton of cement puts out over a ton of CO2. It’s all going to be fine. In fact the shining city over the next hill looks so good they’re calling it a “Nuclear Renaissance”.






Yeah, right.













Well, okay, it’s a bit of a problem that we don’t have anywhere to store the radioactive waste already lying around, and probably never will. But don’t worry! There’s corn ethanol! You say it’s driving up food prices and puts out up to 420 times as much CO2 as gasoline? Don’t worry! We’ll use soybeans! You say that causes deforestation and increases the output of CO2 while displacing indigenous people? Don’t worry! We’ll use switchgrass! Algae! Leprechauns!







You’ll be havin’ to fight to put me in your gas tank, laddie.










Okay, so there is the problem that we’re either already eating the stuff we want to turn into fuel, or Nature is already using it for something else, like regenerating soil fertility, feeding friendly bacteria, or bringing pots of gold to Irish lumpkins who haven’t heard the phrase “be careful what you wish for”. But don’t worry! There’s probably some technological fix right around the corner! Something will be invented that will allow all 6.7 billion of us to live in big houses and drive our cars everywhere and not turn the planet into one big Earth-flavored Pop Tart!




















Oh, hell. Okay. Worry.

You are anyway. It has a name, y’know. “Eco-anxiety.” The feeling that you really should’ve taken the train to Wal-Mart instead of driving, that your vacation to France probably drowned 27 people in Bangladesh, that the frigging compact fluorescents you bought to save energy are probably going to end up in a landfill leaking mercury that will turn your future grandchildren into hideous misshapen freaks.






For God’s sake, people, take those bulbs to the recycling center!







Everybody worries in their own way, of course. The so-called “millennials” are practicing their fatalism. Why move out of the basement and get a job in a cubicle when you can lie on the couch rent-free and play Wii all day while waiting for society to collapse? An increasing number of those in middle age are taking much more decisive action – by killing themselves. Old people, meanwhile, are just having a lot more sex.










We’re outta here. Good luck with the planet!









Of course, there are many things Society could be doing about this. Therapists could be revising DSM-IV and recognizing that many of their patients’ symptoms might have something to do with the fact that the newspaper is filled with terrifying articles about how the Artic is melting and Australia is drying up and penguins are imploding, or whatever. Government leaders could be acknowledging their own feelings of fear and confusion about how to balance caring for the earth and caring for their citizens’ well-being. Schools could be changing their curricula to prepare children to grow their own food, make stuff, and generally get ready to live in a localized, low-carbon future – the only future that’s possible at this point. But, well, we have to prioritize.





Oh my God! He’s right outside! Red alert! He’s….oh. Well, he’ll probably be outside tomorrow.





So if Society isn’t gonna take care of this, what are you gonna do? You may have already thoroughly explored the “think about it a lot and resolve to do something later” option, and found that it doesn’t actually have any effect in the real world. The real problem with changing your life is that you have to change your life. And frankly, you’re too busy trying to hold your present life together to even think about changing it to something else. And what the hell would you do anyway, that could possibly make any difference?



















That’s a good question. And don’t let anybody tell you it isn’t.

What you’re going to do is learn about the big picture. Global warming isn’t the problem. Peak oil isn’t the problem. Overpopulation, extinctions, dead zones, warming oceans, starving people, the imminent collapse of the credit default swap market, China painting mountains green to make their country pretty for the Olympics – none of these things are the problem. They’re all symptoms.








And I don’t even have health insurance!












The real problem is, very simply, overshoot. Too many people using up too little planet. And the solution to that has to be either fewer people, or less using. Because there’s only one planet.

So any solution you hear about that doesn’t fit into that, isn’t going to help, and in fact, sooner or later, will turn out to make things worse. But anything you do that does, is a solution. A real one.

Will doing something that fits into that, any small thing, change the world? Yes. Because the only thing that ever really changes the world is somebody actually doing something, and then somebody else asking them why they’re doing it. That’s it.

Where do you start? Start with How to Boil a Frog. Watch the interviews and movies you haven’t seen, read the books and articles you haven’t read. Those things will lead you other places, and something wonderful will happen. The world will stop being just a crazy bunch of random stuff, and start making sense. But before you do anything else, find yourself a video camera, a webcam, a cell phone cam, or, if you live in the UK, just walk outside and you’ll be on one of the 4 million surveillance cameras they’ve installed to keep an eye on you. Introduce yourself (first name only), say what city you’re in, and then talk about how you feel about everything that’s happening.






Our patron saint.








If you’re mad as hell and you’re not gonna take it anymore, say that. If you feel like this is all a bunch of hooey foisted upon us by eco-aliens from Niburu, say that. If you feel despair, say that. If you feel energized and joyful, it could be your medication, but say it anyway. Then put it up on youtube per the directions on our site, and send us the link. We’ll put your link up, and you’ll become part of the People’s Video Project.

Because the biggest solution of all is for us to form one great big community, and to do that we have to talk to each other. There is a Shangri-La, and it’s us. Get to work.

11 Great Ways to do Nothing (While the World Goes to Hell)

1. Compromise

You’d like to change – you really would. But you have a significant other who’s not on board for any radical changes, or perhaps any scientific advancements since the discovery that the earth orbits the sun.








Fluffy is not green.










2. Justify

What am I supposed to do? Buy a Smart car? How am I going to move my four kids/hockey equipment/furniture when I move every six years/dead bodies? I can’t live without my SUV!

Guess what? You will.






SUV of the future. Note four-hoof drive.







3. Theorize

Global warming is caused by clouds and cosmic rays. Gas prices are high because the oil companies are ripping us off. People born in North America instead of Bangladesh deserved it because they’re morally good. Greenpeace is killing the polar bears to make a point!



These air-breathers could crawl right out of the ocean and swallow us whole! Thank God they’ll all be dead soon.




4. Generalize

Republicans don’t care about global warming. Tax-and-spend liberals are going to bankrupt our country. Environmentalists hate civilization and won’t be happy till we’re all living in mud huts.







Everybody from the Sixties is still stoned. (OK, some stereotypes are true.)








5. Recycle

Don’t get me wrong. Recycling is a great solution for 1942. The scrap drives will also really help the Allied/Axis war effort (depending on where you live). But not only won’t this stop the world’s resources from running out, it’s not quite enough to save your butt in the 21st century.








This is used up, but I can’t fit it in the bucket.









6. Think Positive

Also popularly known as wishing upon a star. Let a smile be your umbrella when the monsoon comes. A happy thought will keep you toasty warm when the power lines fall. Buy and hold is a good strategy – the market always goes back up.









Hey kids! This also works great for relationships and winning the lottery!








7. Think Negative

It’s too late anyway. I mean, we’ve been hearing “we’ve only got 10 years left” for 15 years now. James Lovelock says we’re all doomed. What’s the point of me even going to college/having kids/getting a three year subscription to Vanity Fair?







I’m gonna kill myself as soon as I take out Jiminy Cricket.







8. Delegate

We put politicians in office to take care of this stuff, right? They’ll handle it. And I gave a hundred bucks to the friggin’ World Wildlife Fund last year to take care of the pandas or whatever. I can’t do everything.








This guy’s on top of it. Why worry?











9. Anesthetize

Yeah, the writer’s strike took out Grey’s Anatomy, but I’ve still got sex and heroin.







Hey, I’m honing my math skills!








10. Look out for #1

This is in the best American hero tradition, and can include taking care of your family first, if you’re not divorced yet. (Things get more complicated with remarriage, blended families, stepchildren and pregnancy through rape and incest, but we’re expecting a constitutional amendment.) Who says it takes a village?






Screw these guys. I can sail this baby by myself.








11. Keep busy

It’s not your fault it takes 60 hours a week to do your job since they downsized half the staff. And the only house you could afford was way out of town, so that added two hours of commuting to your day. And the kids have to be driven everywhere these days, God forbid they should walk (although, you know, there are those kidnappers out there – maybe it wouldn’t be safe). And emails – it takes the whole day just to get through them. Not to mention keeping up with all the blogs!





Leave me alone. I’m just trying to keep my head above water.





Anybody want to make it an even dozen? I’m too busy.

The Island

As we all wait for the last American homeowners to lose their houses and crowd in together under a bridge in Milwaukee, this question comes up more and more among people who are deeply concerned: Where’s the best place to invest my money?








Up, up and away!











Given the increasing scarcity of oil and the rising price, you might think oil was the best place to park your millions. In the long run that’ll probably pay off, sure, but in the short run, other things can interfere with really juicy profits. For example, if all those Americans under the bridge in Milwaukee have to trade their cars for food, oil prices might go down temporarily.







Fabulous Americans revisit ‘70’s bathhouse memories before trading 4x4 for beef jerky.






So what’s a billionaire to do? Invest in coal? Shale oil? Tar sands? Nuclear? The prices are bound to rise as oil depletes, but there is the dreary moral aspect, which brings out the protestors, lawsuits, and so on. So what about green power? Perhaps a solar array? A wind farm? Clear a little forest in Sumatra to grow palm for biodiesel?





Plant me a pound of that great coffee while you’re at it!







No. According to Naomi Klein, the next big investment opportunity is in helping the rich prepare for Armageddon. Yup, Homeland Security is no longer just a river in Egypt, it’s a market sector all its own! Your Malibu mansion about to go up in flames? Just call Firebreak Spray Systems and stay snug in your library while the homes around you go up like matchsticks!






Hey Geffen! Guess you shoulda filled the moat!









Worried that the latest hurricane could have you huddling in the Superdome with the hoi polloi? Just call HelpJet and get whisked away to a five-star hotel room before the winds even start whistling through the bougainvillea.






Barbara Bush better not show her face round here or I will whip her sorry white ass.








But why even stick around to see how well the free market is going to solve the upcoming global environmental catastrophe? Follow the lead of the Bush clan, who recently bought a 98,840 acre parcel in Paraguay that came complete with immunity from prosecution for things done while not on vacation.






I thought waterboarding was what we used to do on the beach at Kennebunkport!













Fair enough, you’ve got the cash, but what about the whole image thing? Everybody still egged your Hummer, even after the HOPE campaign made it clear you were just trying to be prepared. Nobody eggs Boy Scouts for that! Can’t they see you’re just being rational? After all, if you don’t make a few last million off the end of civilization, your buddies at the club will – so there’s no stopping it.




C’mon boys! We can buy up Citigroup and be home in time for cocktails!





And it’s not like there’s cause for optimism. Even the greenies’ patron saint, James Lovelock, is predicting that global warming will result in the human race ending up as a handful of survivors nibbling roast harp seal at the North Pole. And the average peak oiler is just as gloomy, plotting in secret how to move the family to that eco-village or farm community in the wilderness before hoarding, panic and starvation set in upon the unsuspecting mass of city-dwellers.







Life in the 2030’s. That iPhone makes excellent bait.







But wait. What’s that twinge you’re feeling in your gut? It can’t be conscience – you had that surgically removed when they went in for the gall bladder. So what’s that tugging at you? I’m guessing it’s John Donne.






Dude, I had a goatee centuries before they were in.







Here’s what he said: “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”






For reference, this is a promontory. Donne really liked pasta.







Here’s my question: Have we given up so easily on civilization? Have we given up on the “others”, the ones who don’t know or don’t believe what’s coming? Will we build a wall or move to Paraguay or flee the city, and just leave them to get what they deserve?

Do we really believe we can survive if they don’t?

As one little frog on the island, I say: I won’t forget about you, if you won’t forget about me.

Happy HannuKwanzMas

We've been working hard to get our new Peak Oil page together, but it looks like that won't be ready till after the beginning of the new year. So we're devoting the week before Christmas to solutions in our new video, links, books, movies and funny web shorts on the site. Here's a great solution right on youtube -- passive houses.



They don't leak heat -- and they come in psychedelic colors!





2007 has been a banner year for problems -- the news has been pretty dreadful -- and we here at How to Boil a Frog wanted to take a moment out to say: You're not crazy.




Watching the evening news.






Everybody tells you, nowadays, that it's okay to be depressed during the holidays, just because everybody except you is having a wonderful time maxing out their credit cards on stuff that other people will be returning on Boxing Day. But nobody tells you it's okay to feel depressed that the Arctic is going to be ice water before you pay off your student loan, or that it's okay to be feeling anxiety about the fact that it may soon be cheaper to run your car on that $216,000 a bottle Cognac than gasoline.




Another growth industry - just purchased by China!






Well, we're here to tell you it's perfectly normal to feel like running off screaming, and recommend a warm mulled cider and an even warmer hug. Also, taking a small action doesn't hurt. For instance, if you live in Vancouver, or love someone who does, you can sign the Vancouver Peak Oil petition to start a task force and get our city prepared for that part of what's coming our way. And instead of buying someone an iPod for Christmas, try a water buffalo at Heifer International. Even a small change is a way to start other changes tumbling.





Social change, Canadian style. But we always apologize afterward.








So make a small start on changing the world, take care of yourself, and check back with us in January. 2008 is going to be a great year. We look forward to seeing it with you.






And a non-denominational wish for good cheer from Lou!

(For an excellent holiday activity, he recommends hopping naked around the lily pad.)

The Price of Everything

This is how we value things in our society – with money.





This is US dollars! So they're practically free!






That works out to about $2.63 per frog leg. Of course, nobody ever asked the frogs how much those legs were worth to them. Trust me – it was a lot. Ever tried to do the breast stroke off a lily pad? But this problem isn’t restricted to frogs. Our whole system of valuing stuff is deeply flawed. Take the case of Melvin.




Buy the whole neighborhood! This subprime thing is like an after-Thanksgiving sale!





Melvin gets so excited by his killing in real estate that he crosses the divider and makes an actual killing in on-coming traffic, heading into the afterlife with a busload of gay Anglicans seeking a new life in Iqaluit, which they’ve heard is the Canadian San Francisco.






Log Cabin Republicans become Ice Igloo Democrats!







Unfortunately, the crash happens in Malibu, and sends out a single spark which ignites Jeffrey Katzenberg’s house and sets fire to the whole colony. Minutes later, the entire drought-stricken Southeastern US is aflame.




Can we blame this on the writers’ strike?





The Russians, who are still using Sputnik as a spy satellite (“Waste not, want not” being an old Russian proverb) get a blurry image of the smoke wafting across the US, and assume it’s a clever new missile defense shield developed by the crack scientists who have been keeping Dick Cheney’s brain alive in an old soup pot in an undisclosed location.




Oh, wait these belong to Colin Powell. Can someone return them and change the city to “Tehran”?





Following the Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive war, Putin pulls the plug on natural gas to Europe and launches the 5,000 MIRV’d missiles he bought at a garage sale in Kazakhstan last weekend at every major city in America. Fortunately, Washington D.C. has such a high poverty rate that it doesn’t qualify as a major city, and survives the attack. It’s several hours before Bush becomes aware of the vaporization of the free world, because he’s eating some really tasty soup he found in the basement. But this is a catastrophe! Let’s take a look at how it effects the GNP, which measures the growth of the US economy:




We are smokin’.






What’s going on here? Didn’t somebody get the news that all the stuff Melvin caused is bad? Just the opposite! After Melvin crashed, his cell phone stayed on, racking up lots of roaming minutes and creating bigger revenue for his phone service provider. Then there was the overtime for the EMT’s to bag all those dead Anglicans, and the coffins not only for the car crash victims but the 43,735 people who got roasted in the resulting fire. All three Dreamworks founders built even bigger houses, complete with invisible domes which protected them from the influx of Soviet nukes. And the contract China received to clean up the 8 trillion tons of irradiated American soil gave the country so much money that it actually moved back into US Treasury securities, providing the survivors with another tax cut to buy Oil of Olay Cancer Cleanser from the Sharper Image Catalogue! It was a bonanza for the economy!





Now I wear a different skin every night!








But somehow it doesn’t make sense. Where’s the deduction for the value of all those trees that burned up? The debit for the unhappiness of the people who lost their homes? Where do we subtract an amount for the peace of mind we’ve lost since we started living in the Nuclear Age? Are we all really just the sum total of what we buy and sell? Robert Kennedy didn’t think so. Here’s what he had to say:





“…the Gross National Product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials…it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.”




That was 40 years ago, but we still aren’t measuring the beauty of poetry, or a lot of other very important things. For instance, because we don’t count the value of educated women in the GNP, we don’t take much notice when the college-campus subsidy for birth control accidentally drops out of the law, causing all those randy university strumpets to go without, or resort to alternatives like the morning-after pill, or prayer.





Please Lord, have him pull out on time.








Because we don’t put a dollar value on dignity, we don’t mind that the working poor have to go to shelters to get a turkey for Thanksgiving. And because we don’t value the well-being of our citizens more than we value getting to work, we don’t mind that the corn the government used to buy and give to those shelters now goes into ethanol for our gas tanks.





Is this one regular or premium?








Even up here in Canada – the land of nearly-free health care – we forgot to put a dollar value on health, with the result that family doctors are paid on the assumption that they will take no more than 8 minutes to see any one patient, meaning that there is never time to talk about anything but the single most pressing symptom. Not only don’t doctors have the time to treat a whole human being, they can’t even treat a basket of symptoms. Just the one.





Sorry, I’ll have to put the heart back in next time.








By valuing the wrong things, we force co-eds and shelter workers and doctors and legless frogs into making the kinds of trade-offs that gradually eat away at our souls.

But we haven’t put a price on that either. Yet. May I suggest $2.63 per soul, to get the bidding started?