Charlotte, North Carolina, houses the Bank of America’s corporate headquarters. Five of the nation’s top 25 banks operate in Charlotte.  It has a high concentration of Bank of America’s 200,000 US direct employees, as well as workers under contract. Charlotte is something of a company town.  A statue at one of the main intersections shows a miner  pouring gold on top of the head of a banker,  modeled after former Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan.

The Occupy Charlotte protesters have been under fierce attack ever since the movement started, and have now had their democratic right to protest severely curtailed.  New rules drafted by a relatively junior city official define “free speech space” and ordain that any gathering which takes up more than 5 square feet of space must last no longer than three minutes. That’s right THREE minutes. (more…)

Seed Catalogs

It’s the middle of winter, cold, dreary, but something I start receiving in my mailbox makes me long for the warm days of spring, the seed catalogs. Those shiny, colorful pages full of picture of ripe fruit and veggies and herbs. I have already started buying some things, a week ago, while on one of my rare trips to town (it’s a 3+ hour drive to town), I was in a Sam’s Club store, I was about to start heading for the check out lanes when I spotted something green and leafy sticking out from an odd aisle. (more…)

Cameron: committed eco-campaigner

WAIRARAPA New Zealand – Feb 1st –  Canadian-born James Cameron, Director of the two highest grossing movies of all time, has bought a thousand hectares near Wairarapa, north of Wellington, under conditions of strict secrecy with a view to moving there “indefinitely” with his family to be self-sufficient at a time of possible economic collapse. It will not be the first time the Director has lived off-grid. He used to have a solar and wind-powered home in California.

Its a coup for the New Zealand government (reported on Off-Grid.net earlier this month) which recently unveiled plans to attract wealthy Americans worried about their own country to live in eco-homes in remote beauty spots.

Cameron is believed to have paid about 20 million New Zealand dollars  for the large rural property. (more…)

Simpsons endorse off-grid lifestyle

Fox continues to dribble out info about the upcoming, record-setting 500th Simpsons episode, in which Homer and family go to live off the grid.

What will Mr Burns think?

We already covered the basic news that the family are ejected from Springfield and find a warm welcome in an off-grid community.

Now it transpires that the episode will also include an appearance by Julian Assange, the autocratic Wikileaks founder, who is living with the off-gridders when The Simpsons arrive. (more…)

Obama praises Nellis - unaware of flaws

Off-Grid.net has written many stories over the years about the US military’s early-adoption of off-grid energy strategies.  But some army and USAF bases are stymied by the big energy companies when it comes to readying themselves for a big outage caused by anything from solar storms to terrorist attacks.

A recent report from Nevada by Greenwire focuses on a base that carries out some of the Air Force’s most advanced work, including testing and flying drones.The 140 acres of solar panels at Nellis Air Force Base’s 14.2 megawatt array are useless when commercial power is out, thanks to a provision in the agreement with the local utility that lets NV Energy turn off the array if the grid power goes down.

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Anne Cobham: practising what she teaches

Paul and Anne Cobham are the second in our series about Canadians living off the grid. They run Willow Retreat and Survival School from a secluded off-grid property in Cape Breton. They moved there in order to escape from the suburban grind and live a simpler, less stressful life. This is not quite what they ended up with!

“But that’s part of the journey,” said Paul, a survival instructor. Anne is a Reiki Master  - a teacher and meditation instructor. They are on the Cabot Trail in the small village of Middle River, Nova Scotia, (more…)

World Economic Fixers grab for power

The Corporate Muppets running Davos, the annual gathering of financial and industrial leaders, launched their 2012 meeting saying that now is the moment for business to take over from government as the key force for social change. But the evidence they present for this claim proves quite the opposite:  in reality, while trust in politicians and companies has collapsed, public movements like Occupy and Tea Party, plus peer-to-peer web sites are likely to become far more influential.

The impetus for the debate is the just-released poll by Edelman, a corporate PR company, showing that the public’s faith in government has dropped sharply around the world in the past year due to a mixture of corruption and incompetence.  It is this change which is causing people to go off-grid in growing numbers, particularly in the US.

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There's no Remembrancer here, dear

The gloves are off in the 100-day standoff between the City of London Corporation and London Occupy protesters.

Occupy organisers plan to take over more buildings in the next few weeks, as the movement focuses public attention on finance industry billionaires. This evening it offered to vacate squatted buildings in return for concessions from City grandees on the transparency of their fundraising and lobbying operations.

After eviction orders were handed out to the St Paul’s and Bank of Ideas squatters by the High Court last week, the Occupy movement took a new building last morning, in the Barbican area of the City of London, and organisers expect to move into other addresses over the next few days. (more…)

Preppers - a new kind of tourism for Taupo

The government has already earmarked the spot for a “Biosphere of the 21st century” and it is home to the New Zealand Clean Energy Centre.
The proposed family-style homes would be heated via geothermal or biomass sources, and electricity supplied via solar or wind energy.
Wastewater would be drip irrigated to energy crops that would provide future fuel for the community. Water would be supplied via rainwater collection.
There will be wi-fi internet along with communal vegetable gardens and septic tanks. (more…)