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Partners for Planetary Recovery

Senator Gaylord Nelson created Earthday on April 22, 1970 to salute our earth and bring to the forefront the sustainability problems we face on our planet. Interest in Earth Day ebbs and flows, but through the years it is evident that our earth suffers as a result of human action.

In 1992 I attended the Global Forum, which was a parallel event to the United Nations Conference on the Environment (UNCED) held in Rio de Janeiro. As a result of this event and other preparatory events, I became friends with Dr. Gary Herbertson, the President of Earth Day International. Gary was aware of my involvement in the 12 step program and challenged me to address the recovery of the planet. I gathered the help of a small group that included Beth Ingber Green and Dr. Terry Davis, Gary, and I. After several months of conference calls and refining, we came up with the following program.

Twelve Steps for Planetary Recovery

In the 1930's, a handful of people confronted the life-threatening condition of alcoholism and launched a program of recovery called the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. This program is so effective that it has inspired many other twelve-step programs that have touched the lives of millions of people around the world.

Now we are facing an even more life-threatening condition: the destruction of the environmental life-support systems of our planet. Like alcoholism, this destructiveness is based on addictive attitudes, lifestyles, and behaviors; and as millions of recovering addicts have shown, these self-defeating patterns can be changed.

Twelve Steps for Planetary Recovery is designed to address our personal, local, and global condition. Practicing these steps will free us individually and collectively to discover solutions to our environmental crises and the interrelated emotional, economic, spiritual, and social problems that confront us. One day and one step at a time, they can become a guide for our individual and collective lives.

Here are the Twelve Steps for Planetary Recovery:

  1. We, humanity, admitted that we were destroying the planet and that our need to dominate, consume, and control had become unmanageable.
  2. Came to believe that we, the earth, and the universe are one, and that our tendency to dominate could be balanced by our desire for unity.
  3. Made a decision to call on a Power greater than ourselves to bring us into balance.
  4. Made a fearless and thorough moral inventory of our beliefs, attitudes, and practices, and evaluated their impact on us and the rest of the planet.
  5. Admitted to ourselves, a higher power as we understood it, and each other the exact nature of our wrongs; released shame, so that we could move forward with compassion for ourselves and others.
  6. Became willing to make social, attitudinal, and economic changes in order to be in balance with our planet and in harmony with ourselves.
  7. Humbly asked our Higher Power to help us change our technologies, social relations, and personal and collective lives so that we could promote life enhancement and sustainability for ourselves and other species.
  8. Made a list of all the ecological and social damage we had caused and became willing to reverse it.
  9. Cleaned up our rivers, oceans, landfills, and air, as we cleaned up our thoughts, emotions, actions, and social relations.
  10. Continued to monitor how our attitudes and economic and social behavior impact the web of life, and when we were wrong, promptly called ourselves to awareness.
  11. Sought through observation, experimentation, cooperation, and meditation to expand our conscious contact with ourselves, the earth, and the universe, so that we could continually support our collective well-being, evolution, and sacred rhythms.
  12. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to others and to bring balance into every relationship—with ourselves, each other, our planet, and the universe of which we are a part.

These steps may seem overwhelming. In fact, we don't expect to practice them perfectly. Instead, we plan to use them for study and discussion, as reference points to evaluate where we are.

We need to be honest about our situation and our capacities. We need to face ourselves and each other squarely and lovingly. And we need to do so now.

Nothing less has worked or is working. Nothing more is required. Let us trust in the consciousness of humanity, the earth, and the universe, and let us have faith that our collective vision of a thriving planet can become manifest on this earth. Yes!

Partners For Planetary Recovery

Partners for Planetary Recovery (PPR) is an affiliation of individuals and groups who align with the Twelve Steps for Planetary Recovery. If you are committed to practicing this program to the best of your ability, you may consider yourself a partner.

PPR has no leaders, only service committees whose purpose is to help disseminate this program. While individual partners may have opinions on how to implement these steps, PPR takes no positions and engages in no controversy. Our sole purpose is to support ourselves and each other in changing attitudes, so that we may unleash the great potential of our entire planet.

We feel our partnership across the apparent divisions of sex, race, class, national boundary, religion, and species, and we welcome our emerging unity. Yes!

The Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous

  1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol; that our lives had become unmanageable.
  2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
  3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him.
  4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
  5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
  6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
  7. Humbly asked him to remove our shortcomings.
  8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
  9. Made direct amends whenever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
  10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
  11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood him, praying only for the knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out.
  12. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

The Twelve Steps are reprinted with permission of Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. Permission to reprint and adapt the Twelve Steps does not mean that A. A. is in any way affiliated with this program. A. A. is a program of recovery from alcoholism. Use of the Twelve Steps in connection with programs and activities which are patterned after A. A., but which address other problems, does not imply otherwise.

Distributed by Partners for Planetary Recovery

For more information:
Call Anne Sermons Gillis at
281-419-1775 or 1-800-711-4580
or E-mail her at anne@annegillis.com.