The end of today marks the end of one month off the electric grid in Manhattan. Like the experiments before it, including avoiding packaged food for a week, avoiding flying for a year, and unplugging my fridge, before starting, I didn’t think I would make it, I thought it would worsen my life, and I didn’t know what challenges I’d face.
Also like those experiments, I enjoyed the results and learned in ways I couldn’t have predicted. Experiential learning does that in ways reading, writing, and analyzing don’t. For example, I experienced limitations of solar like three overcast, rainy days in a row. I connected with people and cultures across time and space who couldn’t just go to the fridge or order takeout for food. I learned to plan meals and meetings around the weather and other natural cycles. I read more. I woke up with the sun and went to sleep with sunset. I climbed a lot of stairs, typically thirty flights a day, four or five days a week.
Revealing possibilities
My main result was making something I thought impossible possible, a result I recognized as one of my main motivations. Among solutions to all our numerous environmental problems, one that helps all is reducing consumption. I’ve come to see that people fear reducing consumption but won’t admit it, even to themselves. They think, as I did, that less will worsen their lives, the economy, national defense, and so on. They don’t want to sacrifice their way of life. I didn’t.
Well, you don’t have to give up much, and what you get in return outweighs it, in my experience, and I didn’t even do it effectively. I just threw together a few ideas with too few solar panels and too small a battery. Attitude overcame the rest.
Next steps
Here are podcast episodes I did on it so far.
I’m writing a longer piece on it and expect to record more episodes.
In the near term, I want to continue until July 7, when my billing cycle ends so I get a full bill with me off the grid. It may not read zero because the building maintenance staff did some work when I was out and reconnected the circuit to vacuum. They didn’t know I was keeping it off and that the battery had charge in it.
We’re expecting three more days of rain. Now that I’ve solved that problem, I know a few partial solutions to make it:
- Watch for breaks in the clouds for chances to take the panels to the roof and recharge. Recharging for less than an hour doesn’t get much and still requires climbing eleven flights, but it could give enough for a load of the pressure cooker.
- Eat more uncooked food. I just picked up from my CSA tons of lettuce so I can make lots of salads. The battery has nearly a full charge so I can cook one pressure-cooker load. It’s easy to make extra seitan to put in salads like others might put in chicken.
- Work at NYU. This “solution” relies on fossil fuels to power my computer and phone, but I started the experiment for my apartment only and decided to allow myself to do things outside that I used to.
I know I’ll plug in again someday, likely in July. I know I’m going to feel dirty doing it. I’ll feel like I’m returning from a culture of less entitlement and cruelty to distant people. I’ll feel more comfortable not climbing thirty flights a day several days a week, but I expect I’ll feel I didn’t earn it and know I’ll be conscious of polluting and hurting others for my convenience. On the other hand, I’ll use what I learned to do more next time and to help lead others to value meaning and purpose over comfort and convenience based on causing others to suffer.
In the meantime, I’ll keep up the experiment.
Hi Joshua,
Thanks for explaining your life in downtown NYC without using electricity in your apartment, as you said “off grid”.
There is a situation that is common in large cities in the developed world. It is about almost homeless people in a city.
One of the big problems for these people is their children.
Can you do some practical guidance on how to help these near homeless families spend less and afford more? I hope you don’t mind my suggestion.
Traditionally girls were taught by their mothers and grandmothers how to deal with a house. That is how to spend less with food, with clothes and with all expenses. This knowledge has been lost and has been mocked.
This generation of 20 year olds complains that they live worse than their parents and grandparents. That their salary is not enough. But they don’t realize how much they spend and how much their grandparents spent.
Thank you.
“Can you do some practical guidance on how to help these near homeless families spend less and afford more? I hope you don’t mind my suggestion.” This is an incredibly broad question that nearly everyone in the world wants to help on. Everyone has answers. Every answer gets argued with: if it addresses the system, people argue “But what about individuals here and now?” If it addresses people here and now, people argue “But we have to change the system.” Any answer will touch on race, sex, class, history, and so on.
My mission is to change American and global culture in its perspective on the environment. Whatever homeless people’s situation, less polluted air, water, and land helps them. They aren’t causing nearly the pollution of people with homes, especially big home, and the roughly 1% of the population who fly internationally, with large cars, and so on.
While living more sustainably would help poor people, I’m focusing on the people whose change would make the biggest difference. If having resources makes acting easier, then the more rich and greater access to resources, the more easily rich people with resources should be able to change. I’m focusing on them. If Bill Gates improved his life by dropping his polluting by, say, half he would at last have the credibility to promote others to reduce. Well, he may not because his dropping by half wouldn’t change his luxury. Having improved my life reducing my pollution well over 90 percent, my experience tells me he could trivially reduce his pollution by 99.9 percent without affecting his output in charities, social life, and whatever brings him value.
People overwhelmingly respond to my reductions with “what about poor people?”, with some implication that they can’t do what I can. Why don’t you ask about yourself, as you’re almost certainly polluting more than they are and you almost certainly earn more than I do? If you ask practically how you can reduce your pollution, which would help everyone immediately and systemically, as well as improve your life and put you more in touch with communities and cultures in other times and places, I’ll be happy to answer, but you know the answers. I don’t know your particular objections, but across the board nearly all are bogus. You can get rid of your TV, unplug your fridge, fly less, drive less, eat less meat, avoid packaged food, buy less clothing, and so on. You and I both know, all these things improve your life, despite what fears you may have for the feelings of withdrawal. You know those feelings will pass and you will connect more with the people you asked about. You will be better able to answer your question than I can.
I guess my best way to answer that question is to suggest anyone wondering learn to improve their lives by polluting less, which will lead them to answer that question experientially better than I could with words. If you are unwilling to improve your life by polluting less, no words from me would make a difference.