INTRODUCTION

BACKGROUND

Earthships are not whacky, ‘way-out' or extremist buildings from the lunatic fringe. They should not be regarded as the domain of hippies, sock and sandalwearing folk, assorted eco-nuts and survivalists. This book looks at what earthships are, rather than what they are not. In brief, earthships are a serious, rational and well designed architectural response to some of the challenges that face humankind in the 21st Century. They are also visually arresting, charismatic and extremely comfortable for those who live in them; indeed, they are often described as low carbon living in luxury. Not only do earthships address the fundamental question of how to provide safe shelter for their inhabitants, they have a thorough and holistic engagement with vital issues of sustainability, notably zero carbon and zero waste living, through recycling and reusing waste, energy saving and generation, water harvesting and recycling, and even food production.

During the course of writing this book, the agenda surrounding sustainable architectural practice in the UK has moved on so enormously as to necessitate numerous revisions to keep pace with the many developments. In terms of the need for action to reduce carbon emissions, arguably the most notable of these is Sir Nicholas Stern's review on the economics of climate change published in October 2006.[1.1] Nicholas Stern states that there is a pressing economic need to find global solutions to climate change – potentially the greatest and widest ranging market failure the world has ever seen, which could, he argues, shrink the global economy by a fifth. He concludes that there is an absolute imperative to make significant reductions in manmade carbon production.