Scott Huler is the author of “On the Grid: A Plot of Land, an Average Neighborhood, and the Systems That Make Our World Work.”
First, let me explain how I roughed up the Amish.
When I discuss On the Grid, my book tracing and marveling at our infrastructure, at least one person always complains that I don’t spend enough time talking about going off the grid. My usual rejoinder is that outside of sub-Saharan Africa and the Australian outback, I don’t think you can go off the grid in any meaningful way. All your consumer goods, your roads, your culture, the books and websites you consult to tell you how to get off the grid, are brought to you by the grid.
Then a caller to a radio show asked me about the Amish. I made some lame rejoinder about the Amish taking the train – our oldest industrial grid – from their farms to Philadelphia’s Reading Terminal Market to sell their wares, or driving their horses and buggies on nice roads paved by asphalt or concrete. That’s true enough, but let me back off: the Amish get a bye. If they want to say they’re off the grid, I yield.[SButtonZ button="digg"]
Otherwise, if you tell me you’re off the grid, I’m going to laugh at you. On the Grid was included recently in a newspaper book review roundup under the headline “Going Off the Grid,” which is funny because I overtly claim that nowadays you just can’t do that.
And the grid means more than electric wires; if I learned nothing else in tracing all those systems, I learned they’re inseparable. Try treating water without electricity; try generating power without water; try doing either without digital communications. And try managing digital communications without air conditioning and the power to run it. It’s all part of the same enormous web. And we’re all part of it.
I found myself on a radio show one day with someone who wrote a book about going off the grid, and before even going on the air he told our host he didn’t wish to be identified as speaking from the United Kingdom. He was in London, the host was in Massachusetts, and I was in Raleigh. We spoke to one another as though we were in the same room – and he was arguing against the grid. I’ll leave you to determine whether there’s irony there, though I’ll point out that data centers, filled with the computers and air conditioners that run the communications grid, are enormous industrial users of grid power.
I’m not against sustainability – I’m for anything that saves resources, improves systems, and may save our planet before we fry it in its own petroleum-based oils. But driving your grid-produced pickup to get your grid-produced lumber at a big box store, driving on grid-paved highways to your mountain acres whose streams are protected by multiple layers of grid-powered government, and then using your grid-supplied plans to build a windmill to power your grid-produced computer as it gathers its information from grid-produced satellites? And then pointing at your windmill and your satellite dish and your septic tank and saying, “Look at me! I’m off the grid!”
I don’t buy it.
Again: Use less, burn less, waste less, I’m for it. Smart grid? Sure, whatever that turns out to be. Let’s make it, invest in it, do it. But unless you’re spinning your own cloth and making buttons out of clam shell – and not using grid-produced sandpaper to smooth the edges, mind you – you’re no more off the grid than President Obama.
Of course one of the vital questions facing our various grids is how to pay for them, and the numbers are ugly: The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates we’re some $2.2 trillion behind in keeping the grid functioning, and the Urban Land Institute notes that while the Chinese invest 9% of their GDP on infrastructure and European nations spend around 5% of theirs, in the U.S. we spend only about 2.4%, and it shows. Even in times of multibillion-dollar stimulus packages, nobody wants to spend the money to get us back up to speed.
A friend describes the neighborhood power grids or personal water treatment facilities espoused by some post-grid apologists as gated communities of the grid: My friends and I are all right, Jack – don’t be improving the whole thing at my expense. Another friend, a writer about architecture, said simply, “it comes down to whether or not to trust the idea of community, and at some point you just have to.” That is, we share this grid, and we rise or fall together. We either keep it up – together – or watch it collapse.
The grid is who we are right now. And if you tell me your grid is an island, I think you know what I’m going to say.
Another great article to the infrastructurist. The choir is getting pretty big.
This reminds me of a group here in Southern California that was creating a “replica” Native American village, where they were going to relearn and redevelop all sorts of primitive arts and techniques. I learned about this on a local TV broadcast, and apparently nobody advised the camera operator or the tape editor to avoid showing the Nissan pickup truck in the background.
One could also refer to the “nautical history” groups that build replicas of sailing ships from centuries ago. They can use authentic tools and materials, create something as close as possible (considering that the originals were not built from “blueprints”) to the Mayflower, the Golden Hind, or another iconic vessel from 200 to 500 years ago, but when they finally set sail, they know that modern technology will come to the rescue if King Neptune takes a dislike to their voyage. (and they’ll probably take vitamin pills along, so that even if they replicate the salt pork and hardtack of 300 years ago, they won’t come down with authentic cases of scurvy.) Arrhhh Matey! We sail with the tide! But keep ye olde GPS hidden until all the news crews have gone ashore!
Thing is, the Amish themselves never claim to be off the grid. They will happily use whatever modern amenity they like so long as it doesn’t compromise the relationships they have with their relatives and their congregation. So for example, Amish teens are allowed to wear rollerblades, but not ride bikes. Bikes give teens the kind of mobility that makes it easy to go off somewhere private and get “in trouble,” so they are a no-no. Rollerblades are a lot of fun, but don’t provide that kind of mobility, so they are allowed.
There’s an object lesson there. You can decide to be prepared for a profound failure of our fragile grid without being an antisocial nutcase.
Very interesting. I’m less concerned than the author about whether anyone can be absolutely “off the grid,” because there are certainly relative degrees of centralization/decentralization of systems. That phrase is something like “carbon neutral,” more of an aspiration than anything tied to reality. The question becomes whether being more decentralized really does lead to more conservation. It’s almost a statement of fair among some environmentalists that it does, but I’ve never heard a good explanation for why this would be the case.
[...] Huler, author of On the Grid, makes a very important point in a guest post on The Infrastructurist : Nobody is really off the grid. Well, maybe the Amish, but almost nobody. Everyone else is part of [...]
Favored off-the-grid (?) strategy: batteries. Do they mean the OtG criteria?
I guess someone should coin the term “griddiness.” Many people, in both the industrialized and developing world, would like to be less reliant on the grid, if there is one. In the developing world, you’ve got leap-frogging, i.e. villages with solar panels and cell phones that never had “old grid” technologies. I think buildings and homes should be less griddy. Why not? This whole argument seems to be one of degree. Everything from digital infrastructure to ranch houses in suburban Phoenix should be less griddy. I think we’re smart enough to accomplish that.
I went on a medical relief trip to the villages outside of Mexico city. The people lived in shacks, the streets ran with sewage and the living conditions were deplorable. However, there were cell phones everywhere. Somehow they were able to receive a signal in the mountain villages where they did not even have running water. I think the term “going off the grid” is very relative. Great article – I could not agree with you more!
I had to laugh at the paradox when i saw that someone said Amish teens don’t ride bicycles. That must be a very local custom because here in eastern Pennsylvania there are Amish teens riding everywhere!
But to add to the discussion, i think one of the easiest ways to use “less grid” is to live in an old run down small house like we do. You will likely have a lower amperage electric service and fewer outlets, you will have less living space to maintain, you will use less grid produced materials to repair or build such things as pressure treated wood decks, hot tubs, home computer work stations, and various home appliances, as well as structural items which now need less ‘Home Depot beautification” such as floors, walls, ceilings, roofs, windows, driveways and so on. Just fix the leaks and keep it dry, things will gradually dessicate and last almost forever. Eventually the grid items run by electricity will run down and stop, and then become collectables, eventually maybe even valuable antiques. Its about attitude.
p.s. Run down is also sometimes known as “shabby chic”, quaintly attractive, just keep it clean and white, or whitewashed.
And by all means ride a bike and wear overalls.
The Amish are also known for not educating their young past eighth grade, strict adherence to their religious teachings and values, clannish communities, and endless arguments over what kind of straw hats and shoes to wear. They live and work on their farms, and went into building furniture and other light manufacturing because farming is such an effective means for going broke.
Yes, there are some Amish communities that use cell phones and computers now and then, but they are not really off the grid, and most educated modern Americans would find the Amish “lifestyle” a bit rough and socially and financially confining.
Thank you for calling this spade for what it is–a post-industrial fantasy that only the most affluent societies can indulge themselves in.
Good article and it pointed out the varying degrees of “gridness.” I read of many people that are off the Grid, usually celebrities who spent so much money installing various power generation schemes to be ‘green,’ that their real cost of electricity is 1000X more per kilowatt than the grid. Wasteful no matter which way you look at it. But the idea that we are all connected to a grid via roads, phone lines, computers and other non-electric grid items makes complete sense. Does anyone really want to be totally off the grid, outside of a hermit? Many people want to shun the electric grid, and some the phone and computer grid, only because these entities are usually held in a monopoly and you really have no say, choice, etc. Regulations are few and far between and usually not in favor of the consumer. So is the desire to be off the grid, more of a psychological matter of control and independence and not necessarily an altruistic green, feel good kind of action? nogridusa.org
There was a program on the Discovery Channel about people living off the grid deep in the back woods of the Yukon and in deep Alaska and I think it is possible to go off the grid but I don’t think I would want to in that you would go nuts from the isolation. There is more then simply the grid there is the soical grid and that can be as imporatant as the regular grid.Also what no one ever talks about in these books and shows is what happens is if say someone living off the grid where to try and jump back on to it. There is more to simply the grid itself it’s the social grid that will kill you such as you would be rejected by people living on the grid if you where to try and jump back on to it.
Well, if the Amish take the train and still get a pass, then I’ll tell you I’m off the grid. (Laugh if you like). I live on a sailboat in Puget sound. I live without air conditioning, and while my heat is currently supplied by electricity through a shore power cord, I have plans to replace this with a paraffin cabin heater. My stove runs on propane, although I will probably also eventually replace this with paraffin. The boat came with a diesel engine and alternator, but I rarely use these. I just had an inverter installed, and ‘m getting a wind/water generator (and maybe solar panels as well, I haven’t decided) to keep the batteries charged. And the wind is free.
No, I’m not off the grid in the sense that the materials used to make and maintain the boat (fiberglass, epoxy, nylon, dacron, copper, aluminum, and stainless steel) require fossil fuels to produce, but after a certain point you have to cut a guy some slack. After all, just being alive uses up precious resources, and unless you’re living on a farm, working yourself to the bone and recycling your own excrement (did I mention that I have a composting toilet?), then you are probably a net resource consumer anyway. And the interesting thing about a boat is that all of the modern materials can be replaced with sustainable alternatives (wood, cotton, hemp, etc.), and not just in theory. Every boat in the world was made of such materials up until a scant few centuries ago.
So, it’s possible. And I can tell you that living on a boat and sailing your home is much more fun than mowing a suburban lawn. If you’d like some inspiration to get started, read Dmitri Orlov’s essay “The New Age of Sail.” That’s how I got the bug originally.
I’m all for spending more on keeping America’s infrastructure solid and intact, but here’s a different take on the numbers you provided:
2.4% of U.S. GDP = 350 billion
9% of China’s GDP = 442 billion
5% of Germany’s GDP = 168 billion
5% of France’s GDP = 134 billion
5% of UK’s GDP = 110 billion
I agree that we should probably spend more on updating our infrastructure, especially in the development of smart grids or updating the technology, but I wouldn’t necessarily say that we’re not spending similar amounts of money that other nations are. These types of arguments forget that America’s GDP is still 3 times that of China.
Someone who earns 14 million/year doesn’t have to proportionally invest the same amount of money on a given expense that someone who earns 4 million/year does. It probably makes sense that China is outspending us on infrastructure costs at the moment given their economic growth and high population.
[...] I leave you to your weekend with a nice bit of environmental contrarianism that’s really progressive pragmatism. “Off the grid” is, indeed, a fallacy [...]
[...] leave you to your weekend with a nice bit of environmental contrarianism that’s really progressive pragmatism. “Off the grid” is, indeed, a fallacy today, and [...]