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50 Simple Steps to Kick America's Oil Habit PDF

150 Pages·2009·1.1 MB·English
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Copyright © 2009 Freedom Press All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever or transmitted electronically without authorized consent of Freedom Press. Cover and book design by Bonnie Lambert ISBN: 978-1893910-55-3 Ebook ISBN: 978-1893910-50-8 First Printing Printed in the United States Published by Freedom Press 1861 North Topanga Canyon Boulevard Topanga, CA 90290 Bulk orders and special editions of this book are available for corporate, institutional, environmental, and other public uses. Please call (800) 959-9797 or email [email protected]. Acknowledgements The Green Patriot Working Group is indebted to supporters worldwide. However, we especially wish to thank Tracy Marcynzsyn for helping to shepherd this project through the editing and production process. Be sure to visit www.50simplesteps.com for more information, and to listen to the Green Patriot Radio Show at www.greenpatriotradio.com. This book is dedicated to the United States of America. Table of Contents Dangerously Addicted 50 SIMPLE STEPS Attitude 1. Be a Green Patriot Transportation 2. Make Smart Transportation Choices 3. Give Thy Car a Rest 4. Carpool 5. Use Public Transportation 6. Telecommute One Day a Week 7. Buy a Plug-in 8. Buy Retreads 9. Power Our Buses and Large Fleets with Natural Gas 10. Support Smart Traffic Foods and Beverages 11. Buy Organic 12. Become a Locavore 13. Bring Your Own Bag and Containers 14. Break the Bottled Water Habit 15. Have Your Groceries Delivered 16. Buy Organic Wine 17. Buy Fair Trade Coffee Household Cleaning Products 18. Buy Petroleum-free Cleaning Products 19. Make Your Own Cleaners Cosmetics and Personal Care 20. Buy Petrochemical-free Cosmetics 21. Buy Dioxane-free Personal Care and Household Products 22. Avoid Toxic Hair Dyes 23. Make Your Own Beauty and Personal Care Formulas Home and Garden 24. Sleep on an Organic Mattress 25. Buy Organic Sheets 26. Do Your Bathroom in Hemp 27. Use Sustainable Flooring and Carpets 28. Use Biofuel Heating Oil 29. Buy Soy Candles 30. Use Nontoxic Bug Sprays 31. Unplug Your Vampire-sucking Chargers 32. Know Thy Appliances 33. Go Solar 34. Garden Organically 35. Plant a Rooftop Garden 36. Buy Bioplastics Pets 37. Buy Petroleum-free Pet Products Clothing 38. Be a Green Fashionista 39. Get Real with Hemp Clothing 40. Share Your Shoes Business and Office 41. Green Your PC 42. Make That Ink Soy Shopping 43. Learn to Identify Products Made from Oil 44. Use Less Packaging 45. Upcycle Travel 46. Stay Down on the Farm Kids 47. Turn Your Teen Green Activism 48. Buy Carbon Offsets 49. Think Strategically 50. Talk Up Energy Independence Dangerously Addicted O il is cheap right now, but we’re importing more of it than ever, and as a direct result, our nation remains more at risk today than yesterday. Our only choice is to kick it. Just kick it! Breaking our addiction to oil is essential, and the time to face our country’s dangerous addiction is now. As a nation, our addiction to oil is so strong that we may not even be aware of how much we actually consume: we drink and eat oil (in the form of preservatives and additives in our foods and beverages, and in flecks ofTeflon from nonstick pans). We slather it on our bodies when we use personal care products manufactured with oil, and we wear it in our clothing made of oil-based chemicals. We buy toys made with oil, and we fuel our cars and transportation choices with too much of it—even if it costs less at the moment. We can compare our addiction to oil to that of heroin. Can you imagine a heroin addict saying that the only problem with his addiction is the price of the drug? The problem is the drug. Petroleum is the world’s drug. The world is addicted to oil. Snap out of it and wake up! Splash some cold water on your face, people of planet Earth! Until we stop using the drug, we’re going to experience the unhealthy consequences of addiction. We can’t continue to live in denial. It is too dangerous. Acknowledging the truth is the first step to recovery. What are the consequences of oil addiction? One especially dangerous side effect is that we are funding dictators and rogue regimes in the Middle East, South America, Africa, and elsewhere when we buy foreign oil, or “black gold.” In 1970, America imported 24 percent of its oil, while today we import at least 70 percent of the oil we use, spending about two billion dollars daily on foreign oil from regimes that loathe us. As we spend the projected trillions of dollars per decade buying oil, we are taking part in the biggest exchange of wealth in the history of humankind by funneling some hundreds of billions of dollars annually into the economies of other nations and hostile groups that stand ready to destroy the basic principles of liberty and justice that we hold so dear. Pentagon officials believe that oil resources could be at the heart of international tensions for years to come and predict an age of resource wars emerging with China, Russia, Europe and America in a dangerously volatile scramble for the rest of the globe’s fossil fuel reserves. Drilling for oil domestically won’t ease international tensions over an increasingly scarce resource, especially if our supply is not sufficient to shift our nation into a green and renewable energy-based economy. But going green and developing alternative, renewable energy sources is something we can do. Vice-president Al Gore has led the charge to make this shift within a decade. Kevin Sweeney of the Alliance for Climate Protection, the group founded by Al Gore, says that a combination of smart shopping, conservation, solar, wind, geothermal and innovation could supply all of our energy needs. At the very least, we could blunt our increasing demand and help to diffuse growing global tensions by transforming as much of our economy as possible into renewable energy that transcends oil. Imagine transforming ourselves into a green economy and obtaining 100 percent of our energy needs from non-polluting petroleum-free renewable energy! Our skies would be cleaner. Our health would be better, individually and as a nation. Many millions of new “green” collar jobs would be created for people as sheet metal workers and pipe fitters—good paying jobs requiring a renaissance of newly manufactured materials. Our world would no longer fund nor worry about Middle Eastern oil. Thanks to wind and other renewable energy projects currently underway, hundreds of thousands of workers are now being employed in newly created non-polluting green collar jobs throughout the world. This number will continue to increase if we promote smart policies aimed at curbing our oil addiction and addressing its resultant problems, like pollution and disease—many petroleum- derived chemicals cause cancer. One example, ethylene oxide, a chemical derived from oil and used in almost all shampoos, is known to cause human cancer and leaves traces of its cancer- causing byproduct, 1,4-dioxane, in many products. This increases everybody’s cancer risk, but especially that of children who are bathed in products containing this carcinogen. How can we continue to let oil cause cancer in our children? Studies show that oil-based chemicals such as pesticides used in our homes and gardens can cause leukemia and malignant brain tumors in young children. Many petrochemicals, once in the human body, act like the female hormone estrogen. These

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With "50 Simple Steps to Kick America's Oil Habit", the goal of the Green Patriot Working Group is to initiate the next oil boycott--when America tells the world that it doesn't need oil anymore from unfriendly, hostile or unstable governments because its citizens have been empowered to do their sha
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