Meet some of the characters from my next book – Off the Grid: Inside the Movement for More Space, Less Government, and True Independence in Modern America, published by Penguin 1st August 2010.
I traveled around America meeting these extraordinary people and writing about their lives. Above all I wanted to find out WHY they live off the grid. In this film you will find author Carolyn Chute, explaining why she lost trust in the system — because she had little money, a hospital refused to let her in to have her baby – who was stillborn as a result. Meet author Alan Wiesbecker, who wrote In Search of Captain Zero: A Surfer’s Road Trip Beyond the End of the Road. He is now living on a beach in Mexico.

Meet Vonnie Mallon. She was a Vice-President at Urban Outfitters, then decided to reclaim her life from The Man, and now lives in an Earthship in New Mexico with her man. Or Andrea Johnson, who burnt out after a stint as a PBS camerawoman working 16 hours a day and washed up in Ridgway, Colorado. Or Melinda Secor who was foreclosed upon in New York, so took her three kids in a trailer to Big Bend, Texas.

Every single person I met on my trip along the highways and byways of off-grid America was a truly awesome individual. I take my hat off to them all

Tags: off-the-grid, off grid, Renewable Energy, No Impact man, peak-oil, low carbon, green home, zero carbon