Earthships: the ultimate ecofrugal home that I don't want

Last week my mom sent me an email with the subject line, "homes off-grid, climate resilient, and built from trash." Inside was a link to a Washington Post article about Earthships: earth-sheltered homes out in the New Mexico desert built largely from a combination of used tires, dirt, and other waste and designed to be largely self-sustaining. 

Unfortunately, I couldn't read the piece because it was behind a paywall, but fortuitously, a condensed version of it turned up in this week's Star-Ledger Extra, a freebie we get with our weekly supermarket fliers. Between that and the official website for Earthship Global, I was able to glean several interesting facts about how Earthships work and why people build them.

First, Earthship construction minimizes the use of limited resources, like wood, while making use of materials that would otherwise go to waste. They homes are built chiefly from used tires packed with dirt, turning a major waste product (we currently have 2.5 billion old tires in the U.S., with another 2.5 million discarded each year) into a wall that's strong but not brittle, heavily insulated, and naturally fire-resistant. It's also a large thermal mass that absorbs heat during the day and releases it at night. In short, it's about as ecofrugal a building material as you could ask for. Many Earthships also incorporate other waste materials, such as cans and bottles, often as decorative elements.

Also, Earthships are built to be "autonomous." They're self-powering, using solar panels for electricity and passive solar design to keep them at a comfortable temperature year-round. They have indoor gardens that can supply 25% to 50% of their residents' food needs. Their plumbing systems use the same water multiple times: first for drinking and bathing, then for watering the garden, then for flushing toilets, and finally out into a septic tank where it helps fertilize outdoor plants. 

All this makes them appealing to what the Post article calls "climate doomers." Many Earthship owners aren't just trying to live lightly on the planet and help stave off the climate apocalypse; they're planning to survive it. An Earthship builder quoted in the article says many clients see the house as their "panic room." The article says many young people see Earthships as offering "a clean break from a world that feels like it's on the verge of breaking itself."

Now, I can certainly see the appeal of living in an Earthship. They're not exactly cheap to build — in fact, they cost a bit more than other homes of similar size, though you can reduce costs by doing the work yourself with a bit of training. But they're eco-friendly and self-sustaining, and they can offer a haven from disasters that knock society to its knees either temporarily (weather emergencies, the coronavirus pandemic) or permanently (climate catastrophe). And yet, as I read the article, I didn't feel even the slightest temptation to go west and build one of my own.

Because the fact is, I don't want to live in a fortress of solitude in the New Mexico desert.  An Earthship of my own could potentially meet my needs for shelter, water, energy, and even food, but not for human companionship and community. Maybe if I could build an Earthship right here in Highland Park, from which I could still visit the library and attend outdoor movie nights and go for walks in the park and run errands in town, I might be at least slightly tempted. But retreating into the desert to live in my own little earth-sheltered hermitage, cut off from the world and its problems, has no appeal for me. I want to be a part of the world, a part of my own community, and a part of the solution.

What I'd really like is if, instead of paying $2,500 to spend a week at the Earthship Academy learning how to build a complete Earthship from scratch, I could pay some more modest sum to learn how to incorporate elements of sustainable Earthship construction into an existing home. How to add passive solar elements to my home to reduce the need for heating and air conditioning. How to recycle water while staying connected to the town sewer system. How to grow more food at home, indoors and out, without having to build a new house from scratch around the garden.

Making my current home more Earthship-like wouldn't just benefit me. The changes to my home could serve as a model for others in the neighborhood as well. I could find ways to share the knowledge I'd gained with my neighbors (lectures at the library? materials distributed online?) and help them make their homes more sustainable too. And we could work together to make not just individual homes, but our whole town better able to weather disasters, with resources like community gardens and community solar that would benefit everyone.

Then I wouldn't just be the captain of my own Earthship; I'd be part of the crew of a town-wide Earthship sailing toward sustainability. Together, we could all help fend off the climate apocalypse or, if worse came to worst, survive it as a community. Which, to me, seems much better than surviving all by myself.