In Super Size Me, Morgan Spurlock taped his experience of eating 3 meals per day at McDonald’s for one month. 30 Days is a spin-off television show of that concept. Morgan hosts the show, but finds one or two guests to follow through on the 30 day immersion experience. In Off the Grid, Morgan sends two people to live at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage for 30 days.
From the Chinese-American perspective, I found this show to be fascinating. In China, you have several hundred million people seeking to live on the grid and join the 21st century. However, our modern lifestyle is resource intensive. Where will we find the energy, water and food for all these people? In America, you have a small band of people seeking the opposite route. While these people may have renounced consumerism, their lifestyle depends entirely on consumerism albeit by their neighbors. Recycling or reusing doesn’t exist unless you have a neighbor throwing away perfectly reusable goods. Biodiesel doesn’t exist unless you have restaurants and fast food chains producing vast amounts of grease. Basically, if everyone tried to live like the people from the Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage, their lifestyle would collapse because their would be no restaurants producing grease, no companies selling solar panels, and no consumers abandoning usable goods in dumpsters. So, while they do use less energy and water than most of us, I don’t think their lifestyle is sustainable.
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