The 12 Steps of Carbon Awareness

The 12 Steps of Carbon Awareness

1. We admit that we are selfish users of the earth's limited resources. Standing alone, we feel powerless to stop our wasteful ways. We resolve to manage our lifestyles more effectively, to address the rapidly mounting ecological crisis.
2. We believe that through increased social awareness we can reduce our individual and collective carbon footprint.
3. We have decided to step up our social activism until such time that global warming is effectively stabilized and reversed.
4. We will conduct a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves and our behavior together on this planet.
5. We will reveal the exact nature of our wrongs to the natural and social world.
6. We resolve to overcome the persistent defects of character that result in our imposing an excessive carbon burden on the planet and other human beings.
7. We invite other conscious consumers and natural beings to help us overcome our personal and collective shortcomings.
8. We will engage in a regular program of study and inquiry to understand all the persons, natural beings and planetary processes we may have harmed and disrupted, and to the extent possible, we commit to making amends to them all.
9. We will make direct amends to nature and other people injured by reckless use of resources wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. We will continue to take personal inventory, and when we are wrong, we will promptly admit it.
11. We will look within ourselves and our communities to mobilize a collective response that is fully commensurate with global warming and other pending ecological threats.
12. Having achieved profound clarification and inspiration through these steps, we will also carry this message to other compulsive consumers. By our example and leadership in increasing our social activism and changing our destructive lifestyles, we will encourage them to practice these principles in their affairs as well.

If you are are guzzling oil compulsively and can't stop, the first step to recovery is to admit that you are a selfish user of the world's resources, and that you need help. Until we admit we have a problem, we can't make progress.

If you wish to divest your Hummer and unburden yourself of your carbon sins, confess to Fr. Paul R. Bear at CarbonConfession.org and visit the Tree of Carbon Forgiveness for absolution.