Posts from — June 2010

One day, maybe….

The cost for water and sewerage in Brisbane for the average household is now AU$2.59 a day. If you lived off the grid getting water trucked in could cost $2.23 to $2.30 a day.

Residents in the Moreton Bay Regional Council area were facing a rise of between 27 and 66 per cent from July 1 until the local council stepped in to subsidise it. (more…)

I have thought about going off grid for years but would like to see a successful model of it myself. Anyone nearby that would like to share?

Vonnie Mallon used to be Visual Director at Urban Outfitters. Now she lives in an Earthship in New Mexico. “They knew how to take more than you can give,” says Vonnie of her old employer.
But Vonnie was not forced out – she left while her career trajectory was still on the up. She had realized that if she wanted her marriage to work then she had to be home more, and that the money and stuff she got from working was worse than useless if she did not have a happy relationship. (more…)

I want to help people find off the grid homesites in BC, especially cool and remote ones in the Cariboo/Chilcotin.

I know a lot about buying and selling real estate in British Columbia, and I know the Chilcotin/Cariboo quite well. Check out www.bushpilotproperties.com for properties I’m selling.

Power to the poople (sic)

Sanitation professionals – says Rose George in The Big Necessity; the Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why it Matters – divide cultures into the faeco-philiac and the faeco-phobic. India, excepting cow-dung, is the latter. China is the former. China has fertilised with human excrement for 4000 years.

This regard for excrement as treasure no doubt explains the dearth of scatological swear words in Chinese languages. (more…)

Ingrid Holmes

GIB is shaping up to be a “Super-quango” spearheading one trillion British pounds of investment in the green infrastructure. The US could learn from the plan — it will have a clear remit to focus on investments that grow the green economy, and is less likely to fall for greenwash proposals. (more…)

Boris - don't believe a word this man says

London’s chatterbox Mayor, Boris Johnson has announced he will run for a second term, but he will have a disappointed electorate to deal with.  Boris has failed to make an impact on London life in anything except PR coverage.  His most lasting memorial will be the stone ping-pong tables erected in many of London’s parks.

Others will comment on his failures in housing, transport and business. This web site was excited by his promise, when he was running for office, that he would “take London off grid.”

Indeed there were plans already afoot to do just that, (more…)