Living Off The Grid - Is it Possible?

While reading How Scotland is leading the way in living without mains power, water or sewerage, I recalled that my father told me that two of his Greene County aunts refused to have electricity run from the road to their farmhouses. That was in the middle to late Forties.

Nick Rosen, a writer who travelled the UK in a camper van powered by vegetable oil to chronicle the lives of people living off the grid, has claimed that Scotland is a pioneer of the lifestyle.

Rosen released How To Live Off-grid: Journeys Outside The System, last week. It is the Domesday Book of a burgeoning subculture, documenting the bewildering mix of visionaries and eccentrics who have made the decision to become self-sufficient.

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What he found were people living in traditional yurts, sailing the canals in boats or living in eco-friendly palaces with every modern comfort but none of the pollution or carbon emissions.

Around 100,000 people in the UK are thought to be living off-grid, with a possible 5000 in Scotland, although accurate figures are extremely difficult to come by.

EPA closes library

Is this political or what? With the Bushies it seems assume the worst and hope it is not too bad.

The Environmental Protection Agency has been fiddling with its libraries recently and now is about to do more, according to this press release from Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is finalizing procedures that may lock away a large portion of its library collections from access by the public, according to agency documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). Compounding the inaccessibility of physical collections, the public’s ability to electronically search digitized EPA holdings is problematic as well.

Over the past 18 months, EPA has closed large parts of its library network, including regional libraries serving 23 states, as well as its Headquarters Library and several technical libraries. The holdings from these shuttered facilities have been shipped to one of three “repositories” – located in Cincinnati, North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park and D.C. How the public, and even EPA’s own staff, access these growing repositories has been uncertain.

As I see it, this will not serve the public or the business community. What am I missing?

Economic Development Ideas

Maybe the difference comes from Muncie having different assets from Anderson. Turning the Roberts Hotel (that's downtown Muncie for those who do not know any better) into a water park sounds crazy but at least somebody has an idea.

Professor Barkey finds that college education improves one's economic standing and economic diversity is not so bad. I do not find the first point exactly Big News. I cannot say I agree with the other conclusion. Seems the best means to improving one's economic well-being is get a college education and then get a salaried position paid for by the government.

Recycle Force over in Richmond combines recycling with giving convicts employment.