Introduction
Off the grid. This has become the catch-cry of many generations
of activists, thinkers, teachers, researchers, environmentalists, artists,
technologists, Gen Y and subsequently the millennials. The over presence of
consumption in general and especially of utilities has been hurting the
environment and the question of how to approach energy consumption has been on many people’s minds across states
and private enterprises.
The solution to attendant problems of this issue is not
simple. It requires a concerted effort. From many people, including all those
concerned.
Problem statement
The issue is this: Is the world moving away from real human
connection and at the expense of what really matters for the quality of life
for ourselves as well as inhabitants of the entire planet?
The answer seems to point in the affirmative and this not
good news. So, while many people are already completely involved in the effort
to redress the balance that has become imbalance, much more can be done.
Measures up to now
Some measures that are already in place from sustainable
development goals (SDGs) are:
1.
Electric vehicles to minimise pollution from oil
and diesel engines and their emissions.
2.
Biodegradable plastic and cleaning up the
landfills using recycling techniques.
3.
Afforestation, farm adoption, village adoption
and conservation of green habitats to protect the environment.
Recent developments
Recently, a new wave of this movement, for the past 12 to 18
months, towards those goals has drawn support from the radical idea of work from home, which solves for urban
traffic, pollution, stress and loss of productivity while it also saves
operational costs for office buildings which can in turn be invested in green
policies.
This shift towards green energy has been a central focal
point for the SDGs. Without this switch, our quality of life is adversely impacted because we tend to waste our
energy in procurement of what we need to survive, while we also negate our
chances for the same survival by going about it in a way that does not make any
sense.
A close look at how
we waste energy
This wasting of energy has to stop. This means that we
really take a closer look at how we tend to waste energy. If we want to procure
food, it would seem that it is logical that we should all be farmers. But this
is not possible for obvious reasons. We require farmers to grow our food and
sell it so that we can buy that food. If someone decided to grow their own,
then, they are not wasting energy, which has billions of followers across the
world as we can see from community vegetable gardens, rooftop organic farming
and this trend is showing us that more and more, people are sick of the consumption
cycle. People who work 9 to 5 used to be happy to do so, when their quality of
life was proportional to their efforts. But today, this has gone.
Where has our quality
of life gone?
With increasing factors that cause stress, more and more
people do not want to work, which has given to rise to the universal basic income petition. Afterall, they argue, at what
point do we have enough?
This can be asked in relation to many things, but in the
scope of this paper, we ask, at what point should the energy suppliers of the
world tell us that there is enough energy? When are we ever going to stop being
okay with getting from A to B? It never adds up to quality of life if we are
always struggling to make ends meet and calling this a life. It is not. It is
our right to expect, create, maintain and enjoy a quality of life that makes it possible for us to want to work
together.
Is there enough
energy for all of us?
We are told that the production of energy and its delivery
need not cost as much as it does. It is a simple technology, it has been
delivering for over a century now, but unlike other commodities that reach a
plateau, this commodity keeps rising in cost, which makes no sense. When you
think about it, after your overheads for set, plant and machinery and such
capital investment and a healthy return on investment which has paid for the
investment, and generated profit – how much do you need?
Do we need electricity?
As we know, the war over oil is over. Its days are numbered.
So, electric vehicles will replace them and this should mean that there is a
greater demand for electricity and that its prices will continue to shoot up.
But, we know that this doesn’t make sense.
We don’t like it when our expenses keep adding up, or merely
shift from one place to another. This is also because, the average consumer
does not have a similar shift that he or she can make from bank to bank to draw
money for these expenses. They seldom have enough to make ends meet and in most
cases, people go without, when faced with these odds in life.
So, what doesn’t make sense is even the idea that we need
this electricity. Naturally, if we think about, a hundred years ago, no one
even knew what this electricity was. So, there are efforts on the run today as
they were in the past century, to do away with it altogether. The sunlight we
get through the day is probably more than enough, to live a life of quality, which does not involve
any stress of procurement of the energy.
So, it has actually become a reasonable proposition in the
present day, to say, that if we must use electricity, it should come us at no cost to us. At zero cost to us. Why grid?
When so many people take special holidays to SWITCH OFF! To go off the grid is the latest facebook fad, and it
is probably the most important social trend of our times. Less phone, more face
to face. Less TV, more family dinners. Less computer games. More outdoor activity.
Action Point
Our inherent survival instincts are always telling us
something that we all know to be unquestionably true. So if we heed this
instinct, we will survive and thrive.
This is why going off
the grid will bring about the free grid to us. Far from being a utility, it
has become something else. It has become the exact opposite- a non-utility to
the purpose of survival. To the goal of sustainable development. And to the
aspiration that every human being has towards quality of life. This is why GET OFF THE GRID is the biggest
sloganeering, campaigning and social hack, activism catch-cry of our times.
Conclusion
We live so that we live. We don’t live so that we die. We
don’t live anticipating that every day is the end of the world and in constant
stress that we will never overcome our problems. We live in the hope that we
will solve our problems and not only that, but also enjoy our lives after the
work of solving the problems that we face. We are designed in this way, to seek
reward for our exertions and the motivation that we need on a daily basis is
this hope, it is this strength in numbers, and it is in the will of a sum
greater than its parts.
Keywords:
Off the grid,
millennials, energy consumption, work
from home, quality of life, universal basic income petition, electricity.
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