The story Meet the NYC environmentalists going off the grid and eating discarded food begins: Joshua Spodek’s studio apartment in the West Village is an off-grid oasis. While other apartments in his 15-story co-op rely on electricity produced by fossil fuel-burning power plants, Spodek is disconnected from Con Edison and National Grid. The main circuit breaker in his apartment is turned off. Instead, he powers his few electric devices –[…] Keep reading →

Listen to this story about me on WNYC: The text introducing it says: As President Donald Trump pursues a deregulation agenda, New York’s ambitious clean energy goals appear further out of reach. So what’s a climate conscious New Yorker to do? WNYC’s Rosemary Misdary reports on some New York City residents taking an extreme approach to eliminating their carbon footprints. I won’t split hairs, but I would describe what I[…] Keep reading →

I hear consistently from parents, “Since you aren’t a parent you can’t understand the challenges of raising a child and how it makes doing what you do about sustainability impossible,” or words to that effect. They often imply or even imply, though not as bluntly: “You haven’t held a newborn you created and have to care for for its survival. You haven’t felt that love. You haven’t experienced as much[…] Keep reading →

I don’t know your views on guns, but I value both exploring different cultures and not polluting, which destroys life, liberty, and property. When my friend invites me to go to target practice at his shooting range outside the city, I’m happy to explore a culture as different from Greenwich Village, NYU, and Columbia as most places on earth. Unlike nearly anyone I know, I find cultures as diverse as[…] Keep reading →

Want to read something frustrating about living more sustainably? Want to read why, when people ask the hardest part about what I do, I say it’s the friction from people? I’m not saying I’m anything special, just that I’ve done things as experiments that work out. People say living more sustainably is impossible. When I tell them I’m already doing it, like that I dropped my impact ninety percent, they[…] Keep reading →

I’m posting today my podcast episode with Tina, who volunteers with me delivering food from stores that would throw perfectly good food away to a community fridge for anyone to take for free. She was more quiet and reserved when I turned the microphone on, but this video shows her more usual style and form. She’s a firecracker. This video came when we met on Fifth Avenue when I came[…] Keep reading →

I recently finished a book and a video course on sustainability leadership. Writing means editing. Any creative, expressive work means sketching ideas, composing, outlining, etc. Any creative, expressive work emerges from copious practice work—any painting, musical piece, novel, poem, etc. You’ve seen sketches by da Vinci, Michelangelo, and so on. I don’t keep a writer’s or artist’s notebook. I don’t start by writing on a computer. I start by writing[…] Keep reading →

Today we made SpodekMethod.com live. My book, Sustainability Simplified, mentions the page as a place for more resources and it came out last November, so it’s been almost painful for it not to be working. I couldn’t in good conscience promote the book on podcasts or elsewhere knowing it pointed to an incomplete page and therefore couldn’t enable someone to take the workshop. It’s ready now. I needed to make[…] Keep reading →

After three or four days at least overcast, often raining, I got to charge outside today. Since I’ve also been charging through my window, today was my first time outside in longer than just since those rainy days. Unfortunately for me, it was 40F when I went out (4.5C), rising to 43F (6C) when I went home, but more challenging for charging was the wind. Panels are like sails in[…] Keep reading →