The climate crisis needs cooperation, not individualistic mavericks

Every maverick will fight over the thermostat, we need collective agreements

Off the grid is as realistic as the free market. 

Unless you have lived somewhere with no Wi-Fi, no cops, schools miles away, no public transit, no roads, no health care, no grocery stores, you aren’t off the grid.  Modern rural living is often country cosplay and doesn’t equate with off the grid. Rural America gets more that its fair share of the fruits of civilization and this is some of the resentment that blue cities have for red rural ‘Real Mirkins.’ We’re paying for their 10 gallon hats. 

Also, your parents joining a cult, is not off the grid. The Guru has air conditioning and is tweeting examples of simple, pure lifestyles. Off the grid only exists when you have been removed from society, and most of us don’t get to choose to live like that. The world is populated even in the harshest environments.  It is not a lifestyle like Barbiecore, it’s protected uncontacted like those societies in Amazonia, New Guinea, and the Sentinelese.

There are no “off the grid” lite places in the US, except the resource stripped reservation and hyper segregated Black community. If you live out on cleared land, with Wi-Fi, a road, and unpolluted air, with access to healthcare for you and your dog—you aren’t “off the grid.” You’re cosplaying country and if you believe you are “off the grid”,  you mean out of touch with reality. 

Your beautiful private, “off the grid” ranch, desert hideaway, mountain retreat is not quite as independent and organic as you think. 

Your privacy is enforced by policy, laws, and by an understanding between you and the greater society. A society greater than your individualistic delusionalism.  Orwell famously noted “People sleep peacefully in their beds only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”

The security that “your property” enjoys, is provided to you by the tax dollars of your community and communities that have been resource stripped. 

You are not off any grid. You are a cosplayer with a sofa tent with no jousts to bellow “Huzzah!”  And I’m someone that purchases season passes to two Renaissance Faires and the Fairy Fest.

The skills you obtained are from a tax funded school system. I don’t know how many homeschoolers you know, let us just say they know a lot about The Jesus and not much else. Your historical knowledge is from the resources created and maintained by your parents and ancestors.  Of that, how much they received is greatly dependent on their race AND or class.

Sadly, our Unions were racially exclusionary and some of the craft unions still are. Your white and white adjacent inheritance is from redlining. 

Off the grid is a naked king’s fancy new clothes for those cos-playing Grizzly Adams of privilege.   And this idea that you’re hiding from the cultural excesses, you have not put on some sort of Cloak of Invisibility. The state can locate you at any time if they have the motivation, the only thing your “off the grid” nonsense is doing is giving right wingers content for their propaganda to let people starve. You are an example of why there is no need to plan infrastructure and your nonsense encourages sprawl. You help with organized disorganization. The climate crisis needs cooperation, not individualistic mavericks.  It was this indulgence of the preferred classes and ethnicities that got us into this morass.

When you post a picture of your beautiful cabin by yourself and talk about all the space you have by yourself, what do you think you’re doing? You’re advertising for the local government to get more people on the land around you, so they can build a tax base and collect subsidies. 

There is no off the grid, just exploited settlers and delusional “temporarily” embarrassed millionaires.