Earthships

One of the odder things I saw in New Mexico was this colony of "earthships", houses built out of garbage and packed dirt, powered by their own solar and wind units, and featuring self-contained systems to capture and recycle rainwater. Operating without air conditioners or heating units, the buildings are designed to maintain stable temperatures thanks to design features. The point, of course, is to be environmentally friendly.

I wonder if some of my more eco-aware readers might be able to weigh in on the validity of this. Based on the movie, I have a few doubts. Mostly, they seem to be completely ignoring the environmental impact of living in such a sprawling fashion. A low-density compound of people living 15 miles outside of Taos, New Mexico is either going to result in a ton of driving, or else is going to be curbing its environmental footprint primarily through its residents never going anywhere or buying anything. This is fine, perhaps, when you're talking about people with total commitment to the cause, but it's not really pointing in the direction of a systemic solution. My understanding is that it's much better to encourage people to live in relatively small apartments where they can walk to the grocery store and take mass transit to work than it is to get everyone to stick solar panels on the roofs of big exurban houses. But perhaps I'm wrong?

Comments

In general, I think you are correct... on a large scale, density results in more efficient energy use, less driving, more uninterrupted green/wild space.

But what you are describing is never going to exist on a large scale, it's always only going to be a small number of very committed people who live an abnormally ascetic life. And because of that, I think we can appreciate what they do, which is largely to do a lot of experimenting for us. Remember back in the day when recyclers and urban composters were zealots, and no one thought anyone could ever be made to do that on a large scale? But we do, and thanks are due to the zealots who practiced those things, and found ways to make them work in a day to day lifestyle, and brought the product into the mainstream.

These folks are the inventors and incubators of environmentally friendly technology and habits that will seep into our lives in the coming decades... maybe we can cut them some slack.

Posted by eebee | April 30, 2007 9:12 AM

Matt: while you are quite right about the effects of driving on, say, a bunch of folks living in a suburb full of "earthships", vs. "traditional" types of housing: I think the overall environmental impact of "low-energy" housing is going to HAVE to be an improvement - for two reasons:

First, if a given number of people are going to be living in a given location, it makes sense that their living in "recycled" low-energy-consumption houses is going to be less of a drain on the power grid, (and its concomitant output of pollution), than "conventional" housing.

Secondly, while the energy/pollution issues caused by the increased need to drive everywhere (the same for ANY "suburb", regardless of its construction) area factor, by narrowing the sources of consumption/poluution down to just cars, something CAN by done about controlling the environmental impact: the residents can choose high-mileage, low-pollution vehicles, for example; or use bicycles, or carpool, etc. (although the notion of a bunch of enviro-hippies living in "earthships" riding around in Hummers or Escalades has a nice irony about it!)

BTW, the people in the Southwest have long in pioneers in devising high-density, low-energy-consumption housing made from natural materials; and if you were in Taos, you probably saw an example: they are called "pueblos".

Posted by Jay C | April 30, 2007 9:26 AM

Well, what a coincidence. This is where I stayed when I visited Taos in March of 2000. My father, brother, and I spent three or four nights in an earthship, and of the three I was far the most enthusiastic.

In terms of ecological impact, I think that you have to give high value to the fact that these houses do NOT take any water from the municipal system, as I recall. They gather rainwater and recycle through two sets of gardens. This is greatly important in the Southwest and ought to contrast the low-density sprawl in other parts of the region.

Posted by Marshall | April 30, 2007 9:31 AM

I worked on building some of these earthships, and you are right. The off-the-grid aspects of the buildings allow them to put them anywhere. It not only takes a drive to get to the units, but typically you need a truck or 4 wheel drive to get to them. I agree with eebee about inventiveness, but as we know, inventions can have a tendency to get away from us. As the technology to be off-the-grid becomes more available, yet one more incentive for denser, efficient, communal living is removed.

Posted by bellwether | April 30, 2007 9:31 AM

There's a coterie of people who do that kind of thing as asceticism, some who do it to see what works, some who are into one-upmanship, and some -- like that hero of Pierrot Le Fou -- who are simply tag-alongs. If something moves, if something's novel, somebody will drift into the wake behind it.

While I don't care for that kind of asceticism, if Malthus is right, and he is, we'll be glad that somebody worked out how to do it before lots of us have to do it.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | April 30, 2007 10:00 AM

New Urbanists always talk about walking to the grocery store. The grocery store is the one place most people are always going to drive, no matter how close they live, because they're going to be coming home with bags and bags of groceries, often too many to carry.

Posted by too many steves | April 30, 2007 10:04 AM

"As the technology to be off-the-grid becomes more available, yet one more incentive for denser, efficient, communal living is removed."

Does this necessarily follow? I suppose that one benefit to living in a city is that it's easy/automatic to get hooked up to water/gas/sewer/phone/cable lines, but this is the case most places in the U.S. Is the ability to disconnect from the grid really going to drive significant amounts of people away from it and, more importantly, away from the various other benefits of high-density urban living (other people, variety of food, cultural institutions, etc.)? An interesting thought would be the idea of bringing these traditionally geographically-isolated off-the-grid technologies back into higher-density urban contexts - who wouldn't want to live in an apartment building where during some months the utility bill was a credit rather than a debit?

Posted by jkd | April 30, 2007 10:09 AM

The grocery store is the one place most people are always going to drive, no matter how close they live, because they're going to be coming home with bags and bags of groceries, often too many to carry.

Except that plenty of people who live without cars in cities don't do that, because their shopping styles adapt. Instead of, say, weekly major trips to the grocery store, they make smaller daily trips.

Lots of people in my walkable, primarily single-family home neighborhood walk in the evenings for exercise. If we had a small grocery store nearby, people could easily do their daily shopping as part of that circuit, without any disruption in their routines. Of course, we can't have a small grocery store nearby, because commercial uses have been zoned out.

Posted by allen claxton | April 30, 2007 10:20 AM

Of course, we can't have a small grocery store nearby, because commercial uses have been zoned out.

OT

That why I'm zealously anti-zoning. Suburban neighborhoods would be far more livable places if there were drug stores, pet stores, doctor's offices, groceries, shoe stores, etc wherever the hell their proprietors wanted to have them. Zoning is a shell game, a prison, and a source for graft and corruption.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | April 30, 2007 10:41 AM

"Except that plenty of people who live without cars in cities don't do that, because their shopping styles adapt. Instead of, say, weekly major trips to the grocery store, they make smaller daily trips."

Also, a local cottage industry of unlicensed cabs springs up on weekend mornings in front of the supermarket (or at least it does in front of the Columbia Heights Giant).

Posted by Dan Miller | April 30, 2007 11:02 AM

Except that plenty of people who live without cars in cities don't do that, because their shopping styles adapt. Instead of, say, weekly major trips to the grocery store, they make smaller daily trips

...or get their own carts to roll their groceries home in, etc., etc.

methinks too many steves has never lived in a city.

Posted by right | April 30, 2007 11:19 AM

These things are also feasible in cool, arid climates such as New Mexico. My apartment out there did not have A/C and I was comfortable 98% of the time.

Posted by MP | April 30, 2007 11:31 AM

Oh, I've lived in a couple of cities, though I live in a fairly small one now. Only in San Francisco did I live in an urbanized enough neighborhood that I walked to the grocery store, because I hardly ever touched my car.

Point is, there are only a few cities like that in the country. You can't make every town super-urban-y. What the New Urbanists are trying to do -- create little urban hubs in smaller cities, with transit, and shops, and homes, all in walking distance -- is a nice thing, but it can't eliminate the need to have a car entirely. You might walk to the coffee shop, but you're still going to drive to the grocery store, because it's easy. You've still got a car in your driveway or garage or back alley or nearby on the street.

So, the result is a more livable, walkable community, but the New Urbanists will be very dissapointed if they think it's going to make people walk everywhere.

Posted by too many steves | April 30, 2007 11:44 AM

...or get their own carts to roll their groceries home in, etc., etc.

methinks too many steves has never lived in a city.

Many better urban grocery stores deliver also, sometimes even for free with a minimum order.

Posted by Evan McElravy | April 30, 2007 11:52 AM

The longer you're out there in the land and further away from Washington, D.C. and New York, NY, the more your thinking will open up and clarify. Welcome to the West.

Posted by Garuda | April 30, 2007 12:02 PM

The most appropriate comparison for rural New Mexico dwellings is neither traditional adobe nor conventional balloon-framing. It's mobile homes, the nouveau vernacular of the rural southwest. Against that backdrop of resource-intensive, wasteful and unpleasant housing, innovations like the Earthships seem a whole lot less wacky.

And we do need some people in rural areas, yes?

Posted by pi | April 30, 2007 1:01 PM

Suburban neighborhoods would be far more livable places if there were drug stores, pet stores, doctor's offices, groceries, shoe stores, etc wherever the hell their proprietors wanted to have them. Zoning is a shell game, a prison, and a source for graft and corruption.

This is possibly the oddest thing about US cities to foreign eyes. If you live in, say, London, then - whether you are in the centre or the suburbs - there will be shops within walking distance. Possibly even on the same street. I have two grocery stores on my street - this is not unusual. But in a US suburb there is nothing but houses...

Posted by ajay | April 30, 2007 1:07 PM

Geez, I can't believe there's a debate here about whether it is actually possible to do your food shopping on foot, or whether there is some kind of law of nature requiring that one drive. The need to drive to the supermarket is entirely an artifact of American style urban planning. There are a ton of cities in Europe (and a few in the U.S.) where you can swing by a few shops on your walk home each day.

Posted by MQ | April 30, 2007 1:43 PM

That idea that you have to have a car for grocery shopping...well, no.

I lived in Europe for many years. We would have a small fridge and did a round of the local stores (most within 5 minutes walk) every day or so.

Lived in Tokyo for 12 years. Ditto. You walk to the grocery store and lug home a shopping bag. Or you stop by the store on the way home from work. Heck, a lot of Japanese grocery stores have tons of prepared food in the basement--almost like a delicatessen.

It's only if you insist on sticking yourself out in the suburbs in a McMansion in zoned territory that you have to drive 4 miles to find food.

Posted by grumpy realist | April 30, 2007 2:00 PM

OK, you tell the family with four kids who eat $400 worth of groceries a week that they should just stop by the local market for the items they need and carry them home.

Stupid urban hipsters.

Posted by too many steves | April 30, 2007 2:12 PM

Some of the techniques people develope to line in the New Mexico high desert can then be translated to other urban desert environments, and doing so is a good thing. I live in Tucson, and just down the street from me a guy has taken his house mostly off the grid. He's still on city water, but all of his landscaping is irrigated by collected rainwater and greywater from his house. Not everyone will make the compromises to live the way he does, but if he can convince people in this city to adopt a few of his techniques: planting native or other arid-adapted species, using trees to shade their houses and decrease AC use, using moderate landscaping sculpting to use rainwater and decrease irrigation, etc, it will have a big effect on the footprint of the city.

Tucson would never be called a dense city, but it is a place where you can bike to a grocery store and minimize your driving if you plan where you live. I'd say if you can do it here, there's no reason other communities couldn't plan for it. If they also planned to incorporate incentives for efficient landscaping (via rainwater harvesting or whatever plan was most relevant for the area) that would be a significant step towards a much greener community than the stereotypical housing tract.

Posted by Emily | April 30, 2007 2:17 PM

Six person families don't represent most people. But even if they were too many steves would still be wrong--I grew up in a six person family with Republican parents in a small town, and we'd walk to the store all the time. Yeah, we'd make weekly or biweekly car trips to the grocery store, but the fact that we could buy milk without getting into a car meant fewer car trips. Can cars be eliminated entirely? No, but needing to drive to the grocery store is still a bad thing.

Posted by Consumatopia | April 30, 2007 3:01 PM

So then, mud huts, limited solar power, dependence on rain and recycled water, 15 miles from the nearest food source...what's not to like?
Throw in a family camel and I'm there!
Seriously, $175 per day to stay there?
Spartans or Bedouins may enjoy the perk of solar power but for the rest it is a non-starter.
What is the economic base for this outpost besides rentals to people wanting to dip their toes into a stone-age lifestyle?
Do these people produce anything of value to a first or second world economy?
God bless'em I say if they wish to live this way but it is not the way of the future.
Without modern technology this place would probably not exist.

Posted by Tony | April 30, 2007 3:25 PM

It's the suburban lifestyle lived by so many that kills us. The lawn, the AC, the numerous vehicles and mechanized toys, the balloon-frame or manufactured home, the 9 average car trips a day- those are the expensive things.

As a kid in the suburbs, my mom went to the grocery store once a week. No MacDonalds, no soda pop, no candy- and hey presto, almost no trash.

As for living without a car, well, that would be almost everyone on SSDI, people with disabilities who never worked long enough to qualify for SS. It would be a large proportion of regular SS retirees and disabled. Like the man says, you get a little cart to carry your groceries home in.

Sheesh, do we need to tell you everything?

Posted by serial catowner | April 30, 2007 3:29 PM

Something that some here seem to forget or disregard:
That the energy-intensive industrialized modern world has raised the standard of living (and the very survival)of untold millions in the last 50 years or so.
Medicine, housing, food production, energy production and the charity of this modern world have seen the increase from roughly 2 billion to roughly 6 billion today.
It is through the industry (work) of the industrialized countries that such an increase was possible.
The great innovators and inventors of recent history have come from habitants of urban centers of learning and commerce, not mud huts in the desert.
Those who want to climb back down the ladder of progress are free to do so.
Do not be so disingenuous as to take solar panels and TVs with you and claim a moral high ground because you poop in a non-flush latrine.

Posted by Tony | April 30, 2007 5:04 PM

To address the original question, I think you're mistaking a way to live for the way to live. There will always be places where living like this makes sense and it wouldn't surprise me if 15 miles outside of Taos is one of them.

Posted by Lindsey | April 30, 2007 7:32 PM

too many steves:

OK, you tell the family with four kids who eat $400 worth of groceries a week that they should just stop by the local market for the items they need and carry them home.

Stupid urban hipsters.

That would be my parents. (Well, almost; only three kids, but we ate for four at least.) No car; carried the groceries home on a bike or by public transport. Took us kids to school the same way - bike, or on foot. Holidays? Trains, boats, planes. No cars.

And, I assure you, not hipsters. Not even remotely hip.

Posted by ajay | April 30, 2007 7:41 PM

The thing to think about is why there are suburbs in the first place. To a large degree they exsist so that white middle class families can raise their kids in places with back and good schools (no poor people). Those poeple are not going to move back to cities unless cities start provideing them with the amenities that they want: "good schools," a back yard, room to build stuff in their garage or basement. THey give up something to live that life, but what they get is of value.

I think instead of trying to get them to move back to the city, we should try to make those suburban neighborhoods more urban. Have more commercial hubs, more industry. Make them little cities with greenspace around them instead of just house farms. IT seems more realistic.

Posted by cw | April 30, 2007 9:41 PM

I'm a 41-year-old American male from the Midwest who has never, ever, owned a car. When I was a young adult living in Eugene, Oregon, I would ride my ratty old three-speed to the Ware-Mart and buy two--and no more than two--bags of groceries, one for each pannier. As an older adult living in Brooklyn, my wife or I walk a few blocks to the store, buying only what we can carry.

Sure, our family doesn't buy as much as a suburban family, even per capita. But that's a good thing--good for us, good for the country (I do not have a negative savings rate), good for the planet.

CW's point about making the suburbs more urban is, however, right on target. The place to add density is in the sprawl, turning the parking lots in those horrid "Town Centers" into, well, centers of towns. It can't be done in a day, or a decade, but we'll have the rest of our lives to get it right.

Posted by jlw | April 30, 2007 10:26 PM

LRT, baby, LRT and zoning policies.

Oh, and city administrations that aren't run by little neocon clones.

Posted by bleat my little city planner bleat | April 30, 2007 11:15 PM

"Sure, our family doesn't buy as much as a suburban family, even per capita. But that's a good thing--good for us, good for the country (I do not have a negative savings rate), good for the planet"

Well, it's a good thing for everyone except the people trying to sell you stuff, and the people who work for them, and sell things to them, etc. Personally, I think it's doing a lot more for the world to buy things made or grown in poor countries -- especially things grown in poor countries, given the U.S. govt's efforts to fuck over foreign farmers -- than to try to "buy local."

Posted by too many steves | May 1, 2007 10:31 AM

"Personally, I think it's doing a lot more for the world to buy things made or grown in poor countries --..."
Yeah, that China/wheat gluten/melamine food worked out well.

Posted by Tony | May 1, 2007 11:48 AM

"That would be my parents. (Well, almost; only three kids, but we ate for four at least.) No car; carried the groceries home on a bike or by public transport. "

There have been a number of anecdotes in this direction and I just wonder how many of these families had both parents working? It seems to me that all these small daily trips to the store add lots and lots of time to the primary caregiver's tasks. We aren't in an era where women are expected to stay at home. Yes we could wash dishes by hand, but it takes lots of time which many women would prefer to spend doing other things. The same may be true (at least to some extent) with grocery shopping. The question is: what is the magnitude of 'to some extent'?

Posted by Sebastian Holsclaw | May 1, 2007 12:32 PM

I publish a magazine for green home building and remodeling, and these conversations are fascinating to me on many levels. People seem to forget that there are as many ways to live as there are people living. You can be green if you live in an earthship in the middle of the desert, and you can be green if you live in a condo in Brooklyn. We encourage people to build small homes, but people are going to build McMansions with solar panels. Fine, how efficient can those homes be, so less solar panels are needed? And how can they design the home to use their local resources (water, wind, sun, etc.) to heat and cool the home before turning to artificial energy? Question every aspect of your home and lifestyle, and as you have time and money make the changes you can.

No one is perfectly green because of the products the Industrial Revolution has brought us (chemical use, plastic use, disposable everything, etc.). The thing to remember is that we can all make lifestyle choices that suit us and are better!

At the risk of being trite:

• Reduce
• Reuse
• Recycle

Posted by Monica Marsicek | May 2, 2007 4:36 PM

I live in a small apartment and work in a big city. Because of my long hours (start work at 7am) and the distance from my apt to my office, I have no choice but to drive - less to get up at 4am, leave by 4:30am, and arrive home from work at about 7:30.

Although I drive a small car with great mileage, the amount of driving I do most definitely ads to the polution of a city already suffocating with dirty air. It does, because I'm not alone. There are hundreds of thousands just like me. We don't live in earthships, yet the driving we do to and from work alone is destroying the ozone at a faster rate than any *off the beaten path* recluse living in an energy sparing ship. Yes, they have to drive. So do I. So do the majority of the people living in situations like mine - especially those living in the burbs. At LEAST those living in earthships are helping by cutting back on the earth's energy and resources. They're one up on us.

Posted by Earthbound | May 14, 2007 10:47 AM