So these folks who are looking to get off the grid how much a bad thing do you think that is? In fact, within the last, say six weeks, right where we are at the studios of Living on Earth, we’ve had to boil our water because the water main system failed, we’ve had power outages, and of course almost everyday we have traffic jams. It’s not so much self-sufficiency, although for many that is a factor, it’s self-reliance.ĬURWOOD: So Scott Huler what about this. And they’ve come to distrust the state and authority and the financial system and they just want to provide for themselves. They say they want to do that because of the ever-increasing price of electricity, or because they don’t trust the system to deliver them electricity and clean water and the other things that we traditionally rely upon the state to provide. And a lot of people would say, well why on earth would I want to do that? But there are quite a few people who think they can answer that question. Living off-grid doesn’t mean doing without electricity and water – it means providing your own electricity and water. And it asks questions like, ‘how on earth is that possible? How could it be that that happens and you flush your toilet and you never have to think for five minutes about what happens to that stuff, and how can that be,’ and is that a good thing or is that a bad thing, and above all just how does it work and how did we get to this place and what next.Īuthor Scott Huler, “On the Grid.” (Photo CURWOOD: Well it seems both of you would agree that for 99.9 percent of us, we all would be looking for electricity and water in our lives. My book starts from my house and looks up and says, ‘look at all these things sticking out of my house, these wires, and these tubes, and these pipes, where do they go and how do they work,’ and it asks questions like, okay we had a drought here in Raleigh, a drought of biblical proportions where it just stopped raining for months and in the middle, at the worst part of that drought, when we were almost out of water, you could turn on your tap and brush your teeth for 20 minutes, with the water running while you were humming Mozart and you would never run out of water. HULER: My book is about all of the systems that the people in Nick’s book want to do without. The technology is allowing it - the low energy fridges, the more efficient solar panels, and the fact that it’s becoming more acceptable and you’re allowed to “tele-work,” you know, be on the internet in the boonies, and so people are exercising this freedom, some of them are.ĬURWOOD: And Scott Huler your book is called “On the Grid: A Plot of Land, an Average Neighborhood and the Systems that Make Our World Work.” Tell me in brief, what is your book about? ROSEN: Well literally, “off-grid” means living without utilities, but also has a metaphorical meaning, which is living kind of outside the system, or half-in and half-out of the system, and so going off the grid is something that more and more people are doing because it’s getting easier. So we invited them on our show to grapple about their views of the grid with Living on Earth’s Steve Curwood acting as referee.ĬURWOOD: So I’m looking at your book Nick Rosen, yes the title is, “Off The Grid,” but also it says, “Inside the Movement for More Space, Less Government and True Independence in Modern America.” In brief, what is your book about? Two books that examine the infrastructure of the United States are “On the “On the Grid,” by Scott Huler, and Nick Rosen’s “Off the Grid.” As you might guess from the titles, the authors have some very different ideas. But pipes and power lines are vulnerable to age and attack from nature and terrorists.
At least, that’s what’s supposed to happen.
You flick on a switch and the light comes on. It’s easy to take our electric grid for granted, and the pipes that provide our water as a given. GELLERMAN: It’s a recycled edition of Living on Earth, I’m Bruce Gellerman.