How long would you go without your refrigerator? How about your stove, lights, coffee maker, microwave, television? In May 2022, Joshua Spodek disconnected his Greenwich Village apartment from the electrical grid to see if he could live unplugged for a year.
Two and a half years later, he is still off the grid, and has a new book that he bills, in its understated subtitle, as a guide to “Solving All (Yes, All) Our Environmental Problems.”
Going off the grid has long been an appealing fantasy: Plant some solar panels in your backyard next to the hot tub and the organic vegetable garden, and let the energy flow.
Doing it in a studio apartment in New York City is something different.
Mr. Spodek, 53, an executive coach and former adjunct professor of leadership and entrepreneurship at New York University, is easy enough to spot in the neighborhood. On a sunny October afternoon in Washington Square Park, a few blocks from his apartment, he was the guy with four solar panels spread out on the lawn behind him.
Nearly every day for the past 30 months, Mr. Spodek has lugged solar panels and a 17-pound battery up and down 11 flights of stairs to his roof to charge them. (Taking the elevator would be cheating, electricity-wise.) With four hours of sunshine, the setup provides enough juice to power his laptop, cellphone and Instant Pot pressure cooker for the day. The gear cost him about $700 on Craigslist.
He was in the park on this day because his building’s roof was under construction. “Which means I had to ask people to watch my stuff when I went to the bathroom,” he said. “Whereas in my building I could just go downstairs.”
Mr. Spodek’s life has taken many turns. He has been an advertising entrepreneur, dating coach, educator — oh, also a blogger, podcaster, marathon runner and auxiliary police officer.
But even before he unplugged, he had dedicated himself to other environmental challenges. In 2015, he set out to avoid all food packaging, to reduce the volume of garbage he was sending to landfills. He bought only loose fruits and vegetables, and bulk staples like beans and nuts.
“For a while it was not delicious,” he admitted. “But I kept at it and eventually the food started getting really good. I had friends over more.”
The following year he gave up flying, which contributes to climate change.
Next he challenged himself to pick up three pieces of litter each day from a corner of Washington Square Park with a reputation as a hangout for drug users and dealers. “I thought that by showing up they might open up to me, and I could learn something,” he said. “That didn’t happen.”
One thing he has learned, through experience: Do not pick up litter from spots favored by dogs.
Still, he has continued to clean up, and to avoid airplanes and packaged food. “I haven’t had to empty my garbage in more than a year,” he said. His website keeps a running tally of his burpees, an exercise akin to a squat thrust. It is a lot.
There have been complications. For instance, he had to give up dating. “I knew that when I was leaving mainstream culture that it was going to be difficult,” he said. “And I consciously decided I’m not going to put the effort in. I’m focusing on this. I’m not going to be a monk, but I’m channeling a bit of that.”
When the weather turned overcast and snowy last winter — just two sunny days over a stretch of three and a half weeks — his battery ran low, and he had to limit his diet to uncooked vegetables and cut off almost all communications. “I couldn’t talk to people on the phone,” he said. “But what I remember is that I was reading more, meditating more, sleeping more. I had to write by hand. I made some big advances because I had the time to think.”
There are cavils. Many in the environmental movement feel that concentrating on personal consumption, as Mr. Spodek does, plays into the hands of fossil fuel companies. The concept of a carbon footprint, for instance, was popularized by a 2004 ad campaign for BP, and the oil industry spends millions to promote plastics recycling, even though very little plastic is actually recyclable.
“This is a lively debate within the environmental community,” said Michael Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University. “How much do we focus on demand? The only way we’re going to seriously move away from fossil fuels is to significantly reduce the demand for fossil fuels.”
To that end, Mr. Spodek has been reaching out to people to participate in virtual workshops to learn to do what he does: not to unplug completely, but to make at least one change to live more sustainably — ride a bike, cook from scratch — and see those changes as upgrades, not sacrifices.
“The first thing that people do is not that important to me,” he said. “It’s the mind-set shift. Is it intrinsically rewarding? Because then people will do more.”
Students from the early workshops are now leading workshops of their own, with his help.
At a recent workshop, eight participants logged in from as far away as Finland. The suggested price for eight sessions is $1,000, but most people pay less than that, and some pay less than $100, Mr. Spodek said. They brought a variety of corporate and environmental experience.
Lorna Davis, former chief executive of the food company Danone North America, attended from Connecticut. She had met Mr. Spodek years ago, and had given up buying clothes for a year, then extended to two.
“I think Josh is unreasonable,” she said in an interview. “He’s extreme and he’s dramatic. But I think that the people who really make a difference in the world are not reasonable by definition. And there’s something about him that provokes me in a way that makes me think.”
She added: “There’s no way in hell that I’m going to unplug my appliances. But there’s a reasonably good chance that I’ll stop buying as much from Amazon as I do. Maybe I’ll stop altogether.”
Bill McKibben, an environmental activist who has spent decades advocating collective action, applauded Mr. Spodek’s use of solar panels, pointing to a movement in Germany in which more than 500,000 people added solar panels to their balconies in the first half of 2024.
“More power to him,” Mr. McKibben said of Mr. Spodek. “It’s a really good illustration of how effective solar power is, even in small doses. And there’s going to be an endless amount more of just this kind of experimentation.”
But he added that private lifestyle choices were limited in their impact. “The most important thing an individual can do is be a little less of an individual,” he said, “and join together with others in movements big enough to enact some change.”
Mr. Spodek acknowledged that his own exercise in living off the grid had a negligible effect on climate change. He was vague about how his personal example — even his modest workshops and podcast, “This Sustainable Life” — could spread beyond the circle of people already trying to live more sustainably.
But even small, individual gestures can have a ripple effect, said Sarah Lazarovic, vice president of communications and creative strategy at the nonprofit Rewiring America, which promotes conversion to electricity, including solar.
“When someone puts up solar panels on their place, it’s catalytic because people see it done,” she said. “Then they’ll do it, and other people will see that. So I never underestimate the power of individual action.”
Mr. Spodek pointed — perhaps immodestly — to other social movements that began with a few individuals.
“I have no intent to just do one-on-one for the rest of my life,” he said. “What I’m doing is creating leaders so that they can create yet more leaders. And that means creating organizations, institutions.”
Culture change had to start somewhere, he said. Why not with him?
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