🔥 Sh*t's about to get REAL

If you’re reading this and you live on Earth, during Summer 2023, chances are you are running from floods, choking on wildfire smoke, or withering under a heat dome.

When are we going to get it through our thick skulls?  “The world is on fire” is not hyperbole!

“Don’t scare people,” they say. “People don’t want to keep hearing about problems.”  

And for years, many years, that was the premise we operated on.  

Even though privately we were all, ”Holy Fuck! Shit’s about to get REAL!”

So the past several weeks have gotten really real, real quick.  The headlines around the globe, temperature records being shattered every day after day.  

Previously touted as a haven for people seeking climate refuge, Vermont just got wrecked by massive floods. There’s nowhere safe to go anymore.

You can’t hide.

Debating climate change isn’t working.

Ignoring the climate crisis isn’t working.

Incremental change isn’t working.

Protesting isn’t working.

Lawsuits aren’t working.

Blame isn’t working.

Exposing the fossil fuel industry and who knew what, when isn’t working.

Freaking out isn’t working.

Planting spindly monoculture “forests” isn’t working.

And how about this? 

At 107 degrees Fahrenheit your body starts melting at a cellular level, from the inside out.  Distinct groupings of tissue and organs start to disintegrate, mushing together.  It’s a horrific way to die and now death by heat is the number one weather-related cause of death.  

And while this is happening, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas signed a bill into law which bans the enforcement of mandatory water breaks for construction workers. Sick, truly. Murderous, even.

We are a suicidal/genocidal species.  We are doing nothing to prevent this catastrophe from getting worse and spiraling out of control (which it already has).  

We are doing LESS THAN NOTHING. 

We are actively contributing to our own demise (and that of billions of plants, animals and entire ecosystems) by continuing to eat, travel, consume, and live like none of this is happening.  (Maybe our brains have already melted a bit.)

The way we build housing is killing us. 

We are spewing more carbon in the air to build them, the embodied energy in the materials, the amount of fossil fuels needed to be burned to run the houses, the waste and utter futility of having to tear them down and rebuild them with every fire, hurricane, tornado, flood, because they are built so flim flam and cannot withstand the new geologic epoch we have capriciously hastened in.  

And actually living in these homes is killing us when the grid goes down and we can’t survive the inside temperature. 

If Phoenix were to experience a grid failure (made oh so much more likely with everyone blasting the AC during the heatwave) 12,000 people would die, right off the bat. 12,000!! 

The conventional construction industry is loading our atmosphere with carbon and what gets built spews more carbon just to function. 

None of the boxes we have built or are building are capable of handling where we are headed, much less help turn the tide.  

They are the way they are because we use cost per square foot as one the primary metrics for measuring the worth of a home.

And what we end up with is cheap, flimsy, inefficient, toxic crap.  

We need to change this ASAP. 

We need to change the very idea of what a house can be.

Alternative and natural houses, like the ones being built by our Masterminds, use value per square foot as a metric by which to measure them.

Value such as:

Natural, local materials

Durable construction

Thermal efficiency (passive heating & cooling)

Healthy indoor air quality

Pest-, mold-, disaster-, and fire-resistance

Beautiful, unique spaces and details

The catch is, this starts with you. 

There’s no corporate or government programs to support the eco-alternative building movement.

You as a homeowner (or future one) have to demand change by educating yourself, making a plan, finding allies and making it happen!

And that’s where we come in. 

We’re here to help you on your journey by laying out all your options in an even-handed, unbiased way (we don’t have sponsors!). 

We have advice on assessing your climate, finding land, navigating the permitting process, and determining who will build your home. And we’re growing a supportive online community of people with dream projects in different stages of development.  

For more information about better building solutions and how you can get out of the box, follow us on Instagram and subscribe to our YouTube channel!