The Grid is an Amazing Thing, and We're All Going to Miss It
On the arrogance of "the doers."
My daughter is turning 7 next month.
Right now, she has Covid.
She feels it.
We know she has Covid because I slapped on a pair of nitrile gloves, pulled her poop out of the toilet, swabbed it, and ran five different tests. (The first two failed because, silly me, I used too much poop.) Finally, we got a hit. One test yielded a faint line that only a Covid-cautious person would understand, thanks to countless hours of research over the last several years and a small community that cares whether Long Covid upends the best years of our children’s lives. The vast majority of society thinks parents like us are nuts for going to such great lengths.
Moments like these remind me why my family still lives on the grid, even though we know it’s slipping away from us by the day. Ecologists like John Michael Greer tell us to collapse now and avoid the rush.
He’s right, and we’re doing the best we can.
And yet, I also know that…
Those Covid tests were made on the grid. The nitrile gloves I used we…