Going Off-the-Grid

The other day, an associate told me about her most recent PG&E bill. They told her that she owed them more than $500 for one month’s service. That’s a lot of money. I can understand why she was outraged, and I sympathize. I’ve never had to deal with PG&E, and I’ve certainly never paid a ransom like that, but it’s only because I learned my lesson elsewhere.

I love electricity. I always have, and a lot of the things I enjoy doing, like audio/video recording and production, cannot be done without it. Back in the ’90s, I worked with a number of environmental non-profits who would call me whenever they needed anything videotaped, because they knew I was sympathetic and had access to equipment. I shot one nuclear accident, a few exciting acts of civil disobedience, several colorful protest demonstrations, and a whole lot of long boring meetings.

I stood there, pulling focus, and monitoring the audio, as Yankee Rowe officials explained “burps” of radiation they released into the air, and into the river. I watched officials from the Mass. Department of Public Health explain the findings of the health study of the community surrounding the Yankee Rowe Nuclear Power Plant, which showed elevated cancer and birth defect rates. I squinted into the viewfinder as cancer survivor and schoolteacher Stacia Falcowski showed me the drainpipe where radioactive effluent from nuclear power plants flowed into a pond in a city park in her backyard, and I watched the Geiger-counter confirm her accusations. Stacia Falkowski lives in Springfield, Massachusetts, next to Unifirst, the company which launders uniforms from New England’s many nuclear power plants.

I watched the Public Utilities Commission and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission screw rate-payers, tax-payers, and future generations with the false promise of “clean, safe, too cheap to meter” nuclear power. I saw how corporations, investors, politicians and bureaucrats work together to make the worst possible decisions for ratepayers, but the best possible ones for their investment portfolios. I saw civic-minded citizens make heroic sacrifices of time, energy and money to educate their community and organize resistance to nuclear exploitation, and I saw how utility companies use money, lawyers and public relations flacks to overwhelm citizens efforts to oppose them.

I’ve seen enough to know that they pump dead bodies, crippled children, the habitat of endangered species and humanity’s future through that power grid, and that’s what comes out of your wall to make your TV glow when you pay your electric bill, whether it’s Conn. Ed or PG&E. At the time, I think I only paid about $25 dollars a month for electricity, my share of a bill split four ways, but I really resented paying it, because of what I had witnessed.

That’s when I started thinking about what it would cost, and what kind of changes I would have to make to move my little A/V production studio off the grid. Twenty years ago, in 1997, after a lot of thought and a good bit of research, I made the leap and purchased a pair of 75 watt PV panels, a charge controller and a 250 watt, pure sine wave, inverter from the Solar Living Center in Hopland. The whole system, with a battery, and accessories cost about $1,500, more than a month’s salary at the time, and as much as I could afford.

Soon, my solar powered PA system began providing sound at anti-nuclear protests in Vernon VT. Shortly after that, my production studio went off-the-grid, and shortly after that, so did my partner Amy and I. We haven’t paid an electric bill since, but that’s the least of it. Energy independence feels great. It’s like the difference between booking a cabin on a cruise ship, and having your own sailboat.

I soon realized I could play, record, produce and perform, anywhere. I started playing outdoors, improvising on electric guitar to the natural sounds of the environment. Jamming with nature changed how I thought about music and composition and turned into a thing. These improvisations felt really good, and tended to attract audiences, which then turned into a cross-country tour, culminating with two weeks of mixing, mastering and exploring in the Mojave Desert, and my third solo album.

This solar powered tour also led me to discover Redwood Community Radio, KMUD, and through it, the community of Southern Humboldt. Lots of people, I discovered, have their own “sailboats” out here, and well know the taste of freedom they bring. They even have a shop in town that sells them. Every time we told someone how much we liked it here in Southern Humboldt, they asked us, “Why don’t you stay?” So, we did, and now it’s home.

Maybe two people going off-the-grid means nothing in the big picture of global climate change, and I’m sure Conn. Ed didn’t even notice we were gone, but going off-the-grid felt empowering, liberating, and it changed my life for the better, in ways I would have never imagined before I did it. If you’re on the grid, you have lots of good reasons to resent paying your electric bill, more than you probably know. The price of solar PV panels has dropped precipitously, and electric bills have only gone up since I made the leap back in 1997. What are you waiting for?

 

Even assuming that I would have never paid more than $25 a month for electricity, my system has paid for itself many times over, and I continue to rely on it today. Hopefully it lasts another 20 years or more. I recommend going off-the-grid to everyone. It’s not that hard, and it can be more rewarding than you might imagine.

Choice and Change in Humboldt County

People talk about homelessness as though it were a choice. How many times have you heard someone say, “If that’s how they choose to live…” when talking about homeless people? What a ludicrous idea! Homelessness happens to people. They don’t aspire to it. They don’t plan it, and few are well prepared for it when it happens to them. People don’t choose homelessness. Homelessness is what happens to people who run out of options.

On the other hand, people do choose to become middle-class. The aspiration to become middle-class is so pervasive that it has acquired a nickname. We call it the American Dream. Yes, people choose to become middle-class. They aspire to join the middle-class. They work to achieve middle-class status, and even after they’ve established themselves within the middle-class, they never quite feel middle-class enough.

A lot of people choose to live a middle-class lifestyle, and it’s a choice most people make without giving it a lot of thought. It’s an expensive choice. The middle-class lifestyle consumes people’s lives as greedily as it consumes the earth’s resources. The middle-class lifestyle doesn’t happen by accident. It takes dedication and lifelong commitment to join the ranks of the middle-class.

At the same time, the middle-class lifestyle has a very poor record of making people happy. As anyone raised in a middle-class home can tell you, the middle-class lifestyle ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. Still, people throw themselves at the middle-class, like proverbial lemmings over a cliff. Even real lemmings aren’t that stupid. What gives?

You see, most people don’t choose a middle-class lifestyle because it looks particularly attractive. Most people choose to become middle-class because the prospect of homelessness frightens them so much. In this way, the middle-class are a lot like Christians, who abstain from earthly pleasures, not so much because they dream of someday flying through the clouds playing a harp, but because they fear the fires of Hell.

This kind of fear grows into resentment. In the same way that deeply frustrated Christians vent their resentment at gay people and women seeking abortions, the middle-class vent their resentment at the poor and homeless. In both cases it’s a gross display of stupidity, gullibility and cowardice aimed at the most vulnerable. Like Christians, the middle-class have been frightened into believing a fairy tale that controls their lives and makes them resentful of non-believers.

No one forces them to become middle-class. I’m sure they feel a lot of pressure from family and friends, not to mention the media, and society at large. Even the government tries to enforce a middle-class lifestyle through policy, sanction, and ordinance. However, the decision to pursue a middle-class lifestyle remains a personal choice, and one that can only be realized through dedication and hard work. Still, it’s a choice most people make without much serious thought.

We know that most of the serious crises we face today, like global climate change, habitat loss and the extinction crisis, result directly from too many people choosing a conventional American middle-class lifestyle. From a scientific perspective, it seems clear that the single biggest threat to our long-term survival, is our global infatuation with becoming middle-class. If we actually thought about it, we’d realize what a destructive, high-maintenance, low-satisfaction lifestyle the middle-class have chosen. Few of us would eagerly repeat their mistakes. But instead of thinking, we blindly perpetuate a culture of fear and oppression that serves only the super-rich, while it pushes us all relentlessly towards extinction.

Who do we blame for this? Invariably, we blame the poor. We blame the poor for not pulling their weight. We blame the poor for frightening children, driving off tourists, blocking sidewalks, and especially for not going away. Then, when they finally crack, under the pressure of poverty, lack of sleep, poor diet, constant harassment and social isolation, we blame their poverty on mental illness. How does this make sense?

If you ask me, I say, “Blame the middle-class.” Blame the sniveling cowards who turned their backs on humanity and stuck their tongues deep into the rectum of the super-rich, just for the chance to spend the future, today. Blame the middle-class for their greed, stupidity, and cowardice. Blame them for their choices, because the choices were all theirs to make.

Whether it was their lack of imagination, their gullibility, or their infatuation with bright shiny objects that lead middle-class people to make the dreadful decisions that define their lives and shape our world, ultimately, blaming people doesn’t solve the problem. To solve this problem, people have to learn to live differently.

I realize that you’ve heard this before. “Create a sustainable lifestyle” has been a mantra of environmental organizations for decades, environmental groups that rely mainly on the middle-class
for their support. Still, if we manage to survive this century as a species, it won’t be because we developed some new clean energy source, it will be because we learned to live differently.

Do you remember that part of our Humboldt County heritage? You’ve seen the experimental houses, the strawbale, cobb, ferro-cement, and wattle-and-daub buildings, the yurts, tepees, wikiups, and benders, the domes, tree-houses, house-trees, and the thousands of funky, idiosyncratic little wooden dwellings that grace our Humboldt County hillsides. Those houses exist because a lot of people came to Humboldt County to experiment with different ways of living, not to become middle-class yuppies by growing dope.

We’ve seen how these experiments pay off economically. The Solar Living Center in Hopland, and the Schottz energy lab in Arcata come to mind immediately, as examples of how a modest cultural experiment can catalyze change and create real economic opportunities.

We have a long history of experimental, owner-built housing in Humboldt County. We need housing now more than ever, and we need housing that works for people, rather than vice-versa. We need to learn to live differently, and few things reflect the way we live more than the homes we live in.

Here in Humboldt County, we have the opportunity to take a humane approach to our housing shortage, and open a door to the future, or not. People need a place to live. We can continue to deny our neighbors the dignity of privacy and a place to escape the elements, or we can create the kind of cultural incubator that solves problems, sets trends, and creates the economic opportunities of the future.

Class War against the poor will never succeed, and the middle-class will never be happy with what they have. We need to find another way to live, and if we want to know what that looks like, we need to allow the people who need it the most, an opportunity to build it for themselves.