Here's the latest. The kilowatt-hours numbers don't lie. You can do it too. Yes, you can, even if you have kids, a job, or whatever excuse. Not one single human was connected to an electric grid more than about a century ago.
My story I disconnected from the electric grid for 8 months—in Manhattan became Ars Technica's top story the day it posted and the next. It also generated many questions and comments. I can’t answer them all, but I wanted to address the big ones, such as How much solar power did I generate and use? Didn’t I just transfer my power use to NYU “cheat”? How much power did I use there? What did I do for heating and air conditioning? Wasn’t I just leeching off my neighbors’ heating and air conditioning? Did going out at night mean I was passing my power costs to restaurants? How did I keep food from spoiling? Did I have to shop for food every day, or nearly so?…
Peter Singer is one of the best known philosophers. He's won many awards. As a vegetarian since 1990 and vegan about a decade (I didn't note the date I stopped eating cheese, the last animal product I still ate for a long time; also I ate less animal product than anyone I met who called themselves vegan for much of the time I was still vegetarian), I've known about his 1975 book Animal Liberation for a long time. Peter Singer I'm writing now because I recently re-heard his drowning child analogy and saw a new take on it relevant to sustainability. I'll describe the analogy very briefly since you can look it up, then describe my take. The analogy suggests you consider if while wearing…
Friday was sunny but cold. After a January with only two or three sunny days, therefore only two or three chances to power the battery to cook, I didn't want to lose the chance to cook. Friday's temperature The temperature was in the low twenties F (-5C or so) and it was windy. It was either my coldest day up there or close to it, but I didn't mind the cold since the sun meant I could cook. I mean, by the time I headed downstairs, my feet were numb, but I've been out in colder to play ultimate and ski. It was also six weeks since the solstice and I could charge a couple more hours per day already. So I felt abundance. I'd…
Disconnecting from the grid put me in touch with a few people preparing themselves and their families for an apocalypse, as does just living in America. It seems that population includes many people who buy portable solar panels like the ones I bought. I can't criticize them. On the contrary, it occurred to me that their believing that people can live sustainably can make them great role models, in contrast to many so-called environmentalists who don't even try to live sustainably and call for huge funding for solar and wind that are not clean, green, or renewable, as if calling them "clean," "green," or "renewable" would make them so. Maybe I'm missing something, but with eight billion people on a world that can sustain about…
You tell me what you fear you'll lose without pollution and I'll tell you what you'll gain more of. If you think you'll connect les with family, you'll actually connect more. If you think the poor will be hurt the most, they'll benefit the most. If you're worried about losing your job, you'll find greater job security. If you think your health or the economy will suffer, they'll improve. What am I getting at? Why do I believe you'll experience the opposite of your fears? Addiction makes you feel you're getting more of something but overall you get less of it overall in life, outside brief spikes. Gamblers feel like winners when they're actually losing. Meth addicts feel like they have more energy, but overall…
Talking about an amendment banning pollution raises many questions. One of the biggest is how to define pollution. Beijing air pollution I'd expect an actual law would result from democratic processes. Encyclopedia Brittanica's definition isn't bad: Pollution occurs when an amount of any substance or any form of energy is put into the environment at a rate faster than it can be dispersed or safely stored. The term pollution can refer to both artificial and natural materials that are created, consumed, and discarded in an unsustainable manner. Wikipedia's seems too broad: Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into the natural environment that cause adverse change. as does the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Any substances in water, soil, or air that degrade the natural quality of…
Many people point out how suffering from environmental problems like pollution and sea level rise correlate with skin color and ascribe the cause to racism. You don't have to look hard to see who lives in America's Cancer Alley and Sacrifice Zones and compare their skin colors against the largest shareholders and board members of the companies profiting from creating those areas, or the people displaced from their land to extract resources or dump garbage compared with the people who pay for the plane tickets and SUVs the resources power or buy the cell phones and disposable diapers dumped there. It seems plausible, but I agree with Eric Williams and Ibram Kendi that slavery caused racism, not that racism caused slavery. Hierarchies that allow one…
I've been learning more about abolition in the United States. In 1776, thirteen slave states, likely no one could imagine a world or nation without slavery. Yet in 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment made us one free nation comprising thirty-six free states. Today no one would seriously propose repealing the Thirteenth Amendment, what Lincoln called the "king's solution." No law, judicial interpretation, or executive order could achieve what it did. On the contrary, relying on them delayed uniting the U.S. in outlawing what a majority of Americans wanted to outlaw. I am going to propose to you something as bizarre of someone in 1787 proposing a constitutional amendment banning slavery: an amendment banning pollution. To many today, the Thirteenth Amendment sounds so inevitable, we can't imagine…
Katherine Roth interviewed me about unplugging my fridge and apartment from the electric grid and Bebeto Matthews photographed me cooking and putting my solar panels on my roof. Read the story and see the pictures at A fridge too far? Living sustainably in NYC by unplugging. I hope it helps achieve one of my main goals for this experiment: for a few people to say "You can do that!? I want to try!" The goal is not for them to copy my results but to apply my process of mindset shift followed by continual improvement to improve their lives for themselves in their lives in their way as I did in mine. If I could change anything about the article, I'd change two things. First,…
People think if they can't fly, they won't be able to see their family. They think, "if I'm here and my parents or children are flying distance away, if I don't fly, I won't be able to see them." They also think, "if my business can't compete there, I'll lose revenue and go bankrupt." Then they conclude, "I may not want to pollute, but family is more important and I'm no good to anyone if I can't afford to eat or pay rent, so I have to fly." I used to think people wanted to be close to their families all the time. It turns out people like to be far enough from their parents they can't drop in any time, but close enough they…
Over and over people tell me they care about the environment but family comes first. Their parent is sick and they've chosen to live flying distance away, they married a spouse from another country and feel they have to fly there twice a year, and things like that. Okay, say family is important enough to disregard hurting other people. Imagine someone else wanted to see their parent, suddenly hospitalized, but for them to do so, your home would be demolished, you would be put in a refugee camp, and your water sources would be polluted. If they wanted a cell phone to keep track of their child, your child would be put to hard labor, maybe given a birth defect like the child below, from…
Yesterday began month 9 with my apartment disconnect from the electric grid. Today begins year 13 posting daily to my blog. Which seems more challenging? Which has taught me more about myself, humanity, and nature? Tough call. They seem even. I'm continuing both so I'll keep learning from both. The off-grid in Manhattan seems more rare, a bigger disconnect from my ambient culture. Earth also passed a month after the north's winter solstice and I can tell the added sunshine time, though January has been mostly overcast in New York. People ask the questions I would have, like how long a charge lasts, but I'm learning that view starts from what I want. When you rely on fossil fuels and uranium, you can dominate nature.…
If you want to leave the world better than you found it, which will help you leave your legacy better: To inhale deeply on a cigarette and blow the smoke in a baby's face or To fly somewhere on vacation? Blowing smoke in a baby's face seems worse, doesn't it? I bet none of you would do it. But flying hurts more babies more grievously. It pollutes billions times more. It displaces people (and wildlife) from their land. Funding it will fund more extraction. Flying homogenizes once-diverse world cultures. It separates families and tears communities apart in the name of bringing people together. The list goes on. I picked flying, but I could have said buy an SUV, set the temperature above around 68F (20C)…
Regular listeners heard me on the Carbon Sessions podcast, by the community created by podcast guest Seth Godin that created the bestselling book The Carbon Almanac. You can tell that one host of the Carbon Sessions, Brian, had listened to This Sustainable Life. We kept in touch after recording. He was interested in the Spodek Method. We practiced it and recorded the three videos below of me teaching it, conceiving of using them as a test to create an online course. Neither of us could have predicted that he'd have the chance to practice it in a later Carbon Sessions recording, impromptu. Here is that episode. In a conversation with another host on new year's resolution, he walks her through the Spodek Method. To my…
Have you read many of the responses to my Ars Technica article, I disconnected from the electric grid for 8 months—in Manhattan? Many push back about what I shared and I'm learning from them. Not that they differ from many online forums, but I noticed a few trends. Many of the responses object to things I didn't say, even putting in quotation marks things I didn't say. Many assign me intent I didn't imply and don't have. Some said things I did were easier for me so they couldn't do them while others said things I did were hard so they couldn't do them. Nearly no one picked up on my goal to be a role model, ideally to prompt some people to say "You…
Part 2 of the introduction shares a few stories that illustrate the Spodek Method, a leadership technique to create mindset shifts and continual improvement on the environment. The optimism girds us for a more challenging next episode.
Ars Technica published a piece I wrote on my experiment disconnecting my apartment from the grid, I disconnected from the electric grid for 8 months—in Manhattan. It goes into more depth than my TIME piece I've Been Living Off-Grid In Manhattan for Half-a-Year. It's in my voice, unlike the New Yorker's Off the Grid in the Big City. One of my main points was seeing the experiment like the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk. Normally when I talk about flying, I'm talking about pollution, displacing people from their land for fuel, and problems like that, but tabling the sustainability perspective, looking at it on the Wright brothers' terms, before anyone could have imagined the problems flying would create in sustainability, tearing communities apart, emptying small…
I posted scans of all my 2022 electric bills, showing zero kilowatt-hours since May. Here's my first zero bill for 2023: I talked to a guy last year who told me he regularly paid $1,000 for monthly bills. What do you pay? What would you like to pay? If you'd like to pay and pollute less, thereby hurting other people less, what's holding you back? They also share this annual graph. They probably mean to help you see trends over time or by season. In my case it seems to show my usage is off the chart:
I can't believe how many people parrot things like "It's the journey, not the destination" and then consider any travel not involving flying as beneath them. Do you believe what you say or not? Why not live it? In my experience, the journey is more important.
My letter to the New Yorker's editor in September led to a reporter, Zach Helfand, visiting and writing a story on me. They published it today (including spotlighting it, see below): Off the Grid in the Big City: It begins, "Josh Spodek disconnected the circuit breaker in his apartment, and now—thanks to solar-powered vegan stew—his carbon footprint is about that of three house cats." Along with the New Yorker piece, I recommend the pieces I wrote with more detail: In TIME: I've Been Living Off-Grid In Manhattan for Half-a-Year In Ars Technica: I disconnected from the electric grid for 8 months—in Manhattan Zach spent an afternoon and we covered a lot, including his talking to three executives, two from major fossil fuel companies (one ExxonMobil,…
Part 1 of the introduction shares a few stories to frame how I approach sustainability, then describes the outcomes I designed it to bring about, mainly to enable you to lead yourself to a more sustainable future that you'll find preferable to any alternative.
Talk about acting sustainably enough and some smarty-pants will tell you that individual action doesn't matter, that BP duped you by creating the personal footprint calculator to distract you from them. If you haven't heard, here are a few articles and posts for reference, but I wouldn't read them: BP popularised “carbon footprint” to greenwash and guilt-trip. Here’s how. Big oil coined ‘carbon footprints’ to blame us for their greed. Keep them on the hook Demystifying the concept of personal carbon footprint Those articles talk about how the companies are the problem. They should change. We're not the problem. They say we need big changes, not little ones one person at a time. People like this then avoid reducing their pollution. Way to teach BP…
We were all born into a culture with certain values. When I was a child, flying was an unalloyed good. It meant spreading culture, learning new cultures and cuisine, and so on. In principle we knew something about jet exhaust and that extraction caused people to be displaced from the lands and occasionally spilled. Cars meant freedom. The solution to pollution is dilution. But the world changed and our understanding of it did too. Diluting pollution didn’t solve it. It spread concentrations out, but some didn’t go away. It grew until it passed thresholds to lower Earth’s ability to sustain life. We could put our heads in the sand for a few decades, but by now the changes make it clear what we thought improved…
The title says it all. Hit a piano with a sledgehammer and you'll get some noise. You can call it music if you want, but I prefer to play scales. I start with a mindset shift then follow with a lifelong process of continual improvement, the Spodek Method. We overestimate what we can do in a day and underestimate what we can in a year. That's how you reach Carnegie Hall and it's how we could, as a culture, reach sustainability. I was invited to another conference on sustainability. People were flying from all over the world to attend. Why should anyone listen to you suggest we pollute less if you don't listen to yourself? If you think life is that much worse living sustainably,…