How To Boil A Frog

A great new site popped up yesterday, How to Boil a Frog. Actually, it's not exactly new. But what drew attention to it now (via EnergyBulletin.net) is a new page on peak oil. This is a stunning and highly creative presentation, laid out as a game board, with embedded links leading to a number of well-produced video interview clips with key experts, along with essential articles, books, websites and documentary films. What it amounts to is the best multimedia introduction to peak oil we've seen.

I spent an evening sifting through the entire site, watched all the interview clips, and took notes. The hand-drawn graphics, light humor, and well-produced video segments all make the medicine go down very nicely. A brilliant piece of work, combining .

But I could find anything about the creator of this masterpiece. I did find a a feedback link and fired off a query with kudos. Here's what came back:

Jon Cooksey is a writer/producer who generally works in TV, creating and running drama series (he's currently in development on scripts for a new drama series based on the Marvel comic "Moon Knight", as well as two series pilots for the CBC, both involving action, romance and comedy.) In 2006, he decided he was going to have to take personal action to make sure his daughter didn't end up living on a raft with the last polar bear, and set out to make the documentary "How to Boil a Frog", which has evolved into an eco-comedy about overshoot, and its various symptoms (global warming, peak oil, overpopulation, the war on nature, income inequality, and so on).

In the process of making the documentary (which is still in progress), Jon has interviewed dozens of experts in climatology, sustainability, economics, energy, journalism and many other areas, and also started the movement to save civilization online with the How to Boil a Frog website, at http://www.howtoboilafrog.com/. In addition to offering up youtube-sized mini-documentaries and chunks of his interviews, the website offers a variety of entertaining resources and a chance for people to participate by sharing their own feelings about the mess we're in and what they think our chances are.

The process has also led Jon into various kinds of activism; at present he's focused on getting Vancouver prepared for peak oil with the formation of the Vancouver Peak Oil Executive (http://www.vancouverpeakoil.org/), and has just put up a peak oil page on the website (www.howtoboilafrog.com/peakoil.html) that he hopes will be a unique destination on the web, both funny and informative, for video and other links about the subject, its ramifications for society, and how it feels to recognize that life as we know it is about to change.