"Off the Grid"

An episode of the FX series "30 Days"
Aired week of July 13, 2005

Without preparation, for most people transition to a post-industrial culture will be a shock. The "guinea pigs" of this show, Vito and Jahari, are no exception.

Typical Americans from the Bronx, they live a high tech, energy-guzzling, unsustainable lifestyle that would require 12.5 Earths to support humans if everyone lived that way. That's called the ecological footprint.

I assumed while watching that they were tallied together, or 6.25 each, but maybe not -- I tried the test purposely putting in all of the most energy-using answers with a randomly selected Manhattan zipcode (10080) and came out to 13.5. When I took the test for my own lifestyle, it came out better than that, but still falls well into the unsustainable realm:

CATEGORY... ACRES
FOOD... 5.4
MOBILITY... 2
SHELTER... 6.9
GOODS/SERVICES... 5.9
TOTAL FOOTPRINT... 20

IN COMPARISON, THE AVERAGE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT IN YOUR COUNTRY IS 24 ACRES PER PERSON. WORLDWIDE, THERE EXIST 4.5 BIOLOGICALLY PRODUCTIVE ACRES PER PERSON.
IF EVERYONE LIVED LIKE YOU, WE WOULD NEED 4.6 PLANETS.

Not good! I know a fair part of my lower than average score is because I try to recycle a lot, have a fairly fuel efficient car, try to make sure things get turned off, and basically like natural darkness. But I also drive a LOT more than I want to -- there's no public transit near home, and as a freelance reporter I have to go where the news is, although the plus is that I frequently work from home and don't have a daily commute.

A few days ago, a thunderstorm knocked out our power for about 4 hours... and I liked it. No background hum, no idiot box squawking, plenty of candles for light. I actually grumbled when it came back on, but know it wouldn't have been easy for a long period since our well is electrically-pumped, most of our food's in the fridge, our stove's electric, etc.

In short, my lifestyle is beholden to the grid... and I don't like that. But I don't have the money to install solar panels (if the trees around my house would even let enough light in for them to be useful) or to reinsulate the house more efficiently. I'd love to live in an ecovillage like the show's Dancing Rabbit village (outside Kirksville, MO), and want to convince Jenn (my gf) to do so... but she's a lot less concerned about this stuff than I am.

Anyway, back to the show:

Despite what some naysayers argue, ecovillages are NOT abandoning modern technology & trying to live like ancient people. Common sense says we cannot practically do that, for several reasons, including our much larger population and the fact that most people know about as much about our ancestors' methods of surviving off the land as they do about particle physics.

Instead, many ecovillages & similar groups espouse what is in fact high technology, but not wasteful technology -- things our ancestors would still find to be magical -- and combine that with practices our ancestors would indeed recognize. For the Dancing Rabbit folks, that's solar panels, fluorescent lights, a computer, and a car fueled by biodiesel and alcohol alongside hand-hoed crops fertilized by "hu-manure," insulation based on straw and plaster, heat and hot water provided by wood fires, and indoor lavatories resembling old-style outhouses with sawdust(?) as deodorizer.

The one thing I have a little problem with is their veganism; while our ancestors probably did have a much higher percentage of vegetable food in their diet than we do, they also had meat. I like meat. I understand and agree with the DR point that corporate husbandry practices are notoriously bad for the environment and that beef-raising is especially wasteful, but there are other ways of raising meat, and hunting it wild is something people have done since we came down from the trees.

I might be wrong, but my feeling is that a vegan lifestyle is something that can only be sustained in an advanced society. In times of subsistence, meat is usually the fastest way to get most of the nutrients the body requires for survival. I seriously doubt there's ever been a tribal culture that avoided meat in some form (including fowl or fish) when they could get it, and in some climates meat is the only food source capable of supporting human life. (The Inuit tribes before Europeans came are agreat example; the Arctic has almost no plant life, and their food supply was almost entirely hunted.)

Vito had a problem with that; and both "guinea pigs" had issues with several elements of the DR lifestyle. For them, however, there was always the knowledge that the change is temporary -- if they choose to, they could go back to their consumptive ways once home in the Bronx. # Losing the products and ease of our everyday lifestyle upset them, and if it were permanent, would make even those of us who are sympathetic to a DR-like lifestyle realize just how addicted to the complex web of national/global commerce we are.

# Vito & Jahari said they'd adopt some conservation methods, but I found Jahari more likely to actually do it. It would be interesting to see how they live a month or so after returning from DR.