50 Simple Steps to Kick America's Oil Habit

150 Pages·2009·1.1 MB·English

by  The Green Patriot Working Group

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 [phone] 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