Author: Joanna Turtle

Wow, we’re back in San Francisco! We landed exactly one week ago.

For me, it’s been a whirlwind roller coaster of happily seeing friends and family, missing Berlin and my friends there, basking in the beautiful California sunlight and nature, frustration at the terrible public transit and lack of density, and kicking my job search into high gear.

Shortly before we left Berlin, I saw this museum exhibit poster on an advertising column. (We didn’t end up making it to the exhibit, though we had been to a previous exhibit of this famous German artist’s work.) The exhibit is titled Abschied und Anfang – Farewell/Parting and Beginning – which resonated with me as exactly where I was in that moment. Farewell to Berlin, and new beginnings in the US.

Before we left, we had a lovely goodbye weekend, stocking up on good vibes to send us onward to California. On Friday we finally made it to the cute and cozy Yorckschlösschen jazz club down the street from us, with some good friends (and good music!). Saturday we had our “House Cooling” goodbye party (“Abschiedsparty”), with cold ice cream & sorbet of course – and Chinese New Year cake! I was glad to be surrounded by all my Berlin peeps. It’s hard to say goodbye to Berlin, even though I’ve done it multiple times now, so it felt good to see everyone one last time.

Sunday Bryan and I cleaned and packed for most of the day, but in the evening we went to the Stadtbad Neukölln bathhouse, for one last very German experience. Germans are suuuper into bathhouses & saunas, and some are really big – called a Sauna Landschaft, or sauna landscape (I recommend Vabali if you’re ever in town – I could spend whole a day there!). Many gyms have a sauna and a steam room, and for my last couple of months in Berlin I was going to a sauna & steam room at least twice a week after workouts.

Saunas are generally coed and “textile free”. I’ve had one weird experience with that, but otherwise it seems to work out fine, and nobody really thinks about the nudity like they would in the US. There is of course a long German word for doing things nude – usually just abbreviated FKK, which stands for “free body culture”. Most beaches have an FKK area, and all saunas are FKK. No Puritans! Though there are women-only days or women-only areas for women who feel uncomfortable with coed nudity. Apparently there’s no concern about men feeling uncomfortable?

Anyway, that bathhouse is one of the nicest in Berlin, because it was built in the early 1900s and is extra pretty, with ancient Roman-inspired mosaics everywhere. I also like that it’s cheap, operated by the city, and accessible to everyone – it’s a great government service, and one that is hard to imagine existing in the US. Bryan had never been before, so I was glad he got to see it, and it was also great to swim, relax, and get some exercise & blood flow before sitting on an airplane for the better part of a day. The only bad thing about my final weekend is that I forgot to get a pile of sausage to bring back to SF. It’s just not the same here!!

Now that we’re back, we’ve been staying with my sis for a few days while my brother-in-law was traveling, and doing lots of babysitting of my adorable(!!) niece. But we’ll be moving to North Berkeley on Wednesday, at least for a bit. And I’ll be in LA from Feb 7 through President’s Day. If you’d like to meet up in LA or SF, please send me a note! I’d love to see everyone.

As for what comes next – we’ll see! For now, all I know is that we’ve said farewell to Berlin for the moment, and now it’s time for new beginnings here.

<This post is by Joanna.>

Before we came to Berlin, I told Bryan all about how cold it was, and how it might never get more than a degree or two above freezing in January or February. And yet, here we are in mid-January, and it’s been so warm I don’t even need my heavy jacket. Apparently it’s been warm the past several years now.

I haven’t super researched the climate predictions for Berlin, but here’s what a nifty study of cities’ 2050 climates says (the website has a nice visualization to check all your favorite cities, as well as a spreadsheet with more details if you’re curious):

By 2050, the climate of Berlin will be most similar to that of current-day Canberra. The maximum temperature of the warmest month is likely to increase by 6.1°C, resulting in a mean annual temperature change of 1.8°C.

Crowther Lab, Cities of the Future

I’ve also heard people cite predictions that German summers will be significantly hotter (they are already getting hotter), and that there will be even more drought and flash-flooding across the country (also already starting to happen). I was a bit sad this summer that one of my favorite Berlin parks, Hasenheide, had rather dry and brown grass instead of the lush green of my memories.

And clearly winters are getting warmer too! Personally I’m pretty happy to be able to walk and bike outside comfortably. But… I also know that this is very much not what the weather is “supposed to be” in January.

I wonder what future generations will think of their climates. I guess they’ll be used to whatever they grew up with. Will they be curious about what it used to be like, or sick of us old fogies obsessing over how things used to be? Will those of us who remember things being different feel moved to tell stories about it? What stories will we tell? Will it be sort of like how I grew up with stories of the Great Depression? Or will we all just forget what it used to be like, and live with the way things are in the moment?

The Bundesrat is Germany’s Senate, and it’s different from the US Senate in a number of significant ways. Like the US Senate however, it has a couple of very important purposes:

1. Provide a voice for state-level considerations, and a way for less-populous states to not get drowned out by more populous ones.
2. Have an Upper House of the Legislature that has slightly lower reelection pressures and members somewhat less likely to get caught up in short-lived/radical fads, who can thus serve as a check on the potentially rowdier Lower House.

The US has slightly weakened item #2, as Senators are now directly elected (they weren’t originally). But they still have much longer terms than the House, and only a portion of the Senate is up for election every 2 years.

Degressive Proportionality

One can argue about whether a state-level voice is appropriate anymore, but I am not getting into that. I’m willing to accept that states may have particular interests and that society may therefore decide that the vote of someone in a small state should have more power than mine in California. The question is, how much more power should a resident of a less-populous state have?

In the US, Wyoming is our least-populous state, with 578,000 people. California is the most populous, with 39,560,000 people. We both get two Senators. Put differently, individual Californians get one sixty-eighth (1/68) the representation of individual Wyomingites in the Senate. I am fine with Wyomingites having a vote that counts more than mine, but one person having 68x more powerful a vote than another is just too much.

And by the way, this is also an issue in the House, even though it’s supposed to be proportional. California has 53 Representatives, which is 746,000 people per representative. Wyoming gets the minimum of one representative, who represents their 578,000 people. So even in the House, Wyomingites get 1.3x the representation of Californians, on a per-person basis.

But back to the Bundesrat. It uses representation with degressive proportionality to give less-populous states greater voice, but not such an outsize role as in the US. Every state gets between 3 and 6 seats, depending on population:

• 3 seats if population < 2 million
• 4 seats if between 2 & 6 million
• 5 seats if between 6 & 7 million
• 6 seats if population over 7 million

The result is that representation ranges from 224,000 residents per seat in Bremen, to almost 3 million residents per seat in North Rhine-Westphalia (Wikipedia). In other words, Bremen voters have 13x more of a voice in the Bundesrat than North Rhine-Westphalia voters. It’s a significant boost – but it’s not 68x. I think it’s more fair, as it prevents both individual large states and groups of small states from dominating the Bundesrat.

For any math nerds who want to think about the optimal extra voice that residents of smaller states should get, here is some interesting reading on the subject.

Unlike in the US Electoral College, there is no role for state-specific representation in the election of the Chancellor. That is done by the proportionally-elected Bundestag.

Other Differences

The Bundesrat members are not elected. Instead, the state Governor-equivalent (usually referred to as a “Minister President”) automatically serves in the Bundesrat. Other seats are generally filled by state cabinet members. The individual members from a given state delegation don’t have autonomy, however. They must vote as a bloc. And if just the Minister President shows up, that’s fine – he/she/they can just say how the entire state delegation votes, and that’s it.

As a result, Bundesrat members are generally less focused on national or international politics, and more pragmatically/bureaucratically focused on how the legislation in question will impact their home states in practice. If a proposal brings home pork, great. If it’s infeasible to implement, bad news. If it limits state rights, they can get very fussy. For example, for the legislation authorizing e-scooters, the Bundesrat was mostly just concerned about the issue of sidewalk riding. They absolutely did not want a bunch of wild young scooter riders terrorizing elderly and disabled citizens on the sidewalk – that results in a lot of angry constituents. But just about every other issue in the legislation was basically unimportant to them.

Another consequence of the appointment process is that the makeup of the Bundesrat changes every time there is a state Legislature election. State elections occur generally every 5 years, with the 16 different states staggered so they don’t vote all at once. The Bundesrat makeup is thus continually changing, but is always consistent with state level representation. I don’t know that this is better or worse than the US system, it just is.

Finally, the Bundesrat has less power than the US Senate. While the Senate can initiate its own legislation (except for budgets, which the House always initiates), the Bundesrat can only respond to legislation passed by the Bundestag (lower house). It can request changes and reject legislation, but it can’t introduce brand new legislation. Given that the members of the Bundesrat already have full-time jobs running their home states, that’s probably a good thing. Again, whether this is good or bad I don’t know. It seems to function fine, though sometimes I think the Bundesrat has a bit of an inferiority complex (“we really are important, we promise!”).

Still, I do see the Bundesrat serve as a brake on the Bundestag (like in my scooter example), so it seems they’re serving their function. And since there is no executive to serve as a check on the Bundestag in the parliamentary system (the governing coalition is always aligned with the Chancellor), it’s good that the Bundesrat is there as a check on the Bundestag.

Having lived in both the US and Germany, I’ve felt that the German government just functions better. Some of that is likely due to Germany being a smaller and more homogeneous country. But I think they also have a better constitution (sorry, U.S. founders…). Let’s start with the German equivalent to the House of Representatives – the Bundestag. I don’t promise to get all the details just right, but I’ll do my best.

The Bundestag is the German Legislature, their lower house. The Bundestag passes laws, which then go to the Bundesrat (equivalent to the U.S. Senate, the upper house) for modification/approval. Technically the President can veto legislation – but only if they think it is unconstitutional.

The Bundestag also elects other members of government. Along with additional representatives from each state, it elects the (mostly-ceremonial) President every five years. It also elects the Chancellor (equivalent to a Prime Minister – that’s Angela Merkel). Half the members of the Supreme Court are also elected by the Bundestag – that vote requires a 2/3 majority, in order to encourage more centrist choices.

Elections to the Bundestag happen every four years. Typically 3-6 parties make it in, and they negotiate a coalition government (the standard thing for parliamentary systems). Right now there are 6 parties in the Bundestag, and a “Grand Coalition” between center right (Merkel’s party) and center left (the junior partner in the coalition, because they won way fewer seats).

Bundestag elections are different from US House elections in several important ways. I’ll focus on the electoral system in this post, because I think it is the most important area of difference between the Bundestag and the House of Representatives.

Before I get started, I’ll just note some of the things I want to see in an election for the lower chamber of a legislature:

• Give everyone a vote of equal power
• Allow for representation that is nuanced, not just black & white
• Promote less frothy/grandstanding, and more problem-solving behavior by members
• Allow for viewpoints held by a reasonably-sized minority to be voiced in the government and influence mainstream political dialogue
• Ways for less privileged and/or less politically charismatic people to become a member

How Elections Work

Most importantly, every German gets two House votes per election – the first one for their district representative (“direct mandate”), and the second one for the party of their choice (“list mandate”).

There are 299 district representatives, and they are elected similar to most US representatives (except California, where we’ve adopted ranked-choice voting, yeah!!) – one local candidate from each party can run, and whichever one gets a plurality of votes in a district wins.

There are also 299 or more party delegates that are elected via the “party list” vote. Parties publish their lists of candidates ahead of time, and each voter votes for one party (e.g., I would vote “Green Party”). Seats are assigned based on the popular vote across the entire country, such that the overall composition of the Bundestag by party (including direct mandate seats) matches the popular list vote.

Some tricky bits:

1. If a party fails to get more than 5% of the party list votes, it doesn’t get any seats assigned – this is to keep out fringe groups like the Nazi Party.
2. People can run for election both as direct candidates and as list members. If they get elected as a direct candidate, their name just gets crossed off the list, since they’re already in.
3. If letting in only 299 list members means that a party gets more direct seats than its share of the popular vote would have dictated, the other parties get extra seats so that the overall composition is correct. As a result, there may be well over 299 members of the Bundestag elected via the list mandate (on top of the exactly 299 who get in via direct mandate).
   • For example, if the Conservative party gets 150 direct mandate seats in the Bundestag, that’s 150/598 = 25% of the Bundestag at its minimum size, just from their direct seats. But if they only got 20% of the party vote, then the size of the Bundestag needs to be increased to 750, so that they have 150/750 = 20% of all seats. Those extra seats would go to other parties that were underrepresented in the direct mandates, relative to their share of the party mandates, so that every party’s share of seats reflects its share of the popular vote. (FYI: My round-numbers example is pretty extreme – 50% of the direct mandate seats, but only 20% of the list vote.)

Tricky item #3 happens all the time, when people elect somebody they trust and who has represented them for many years with their direct mandate, but then vote for a different party with their list vote, because actually they agree more with the other party’s overall platform. Or maybe they want to shake things up locally via a right-wing direct vote, but still keep Merkel in charge via a conservative list vote. As a result, the Bundestag can have up to 800 members (which admittedly sounds a little unwieldy, but seems to work).

In Germany’s 2017 Bundestag election (results above), you can see how the yellow party (FDP) won zero direct mandate seats, but with 10.7% of the party vote they got 80 party mandate seats. Nationalist AfD (blue) did even better in the party vote, despite only winning 3 direct mandate seats. Meanwhile CSU got zero and CDU got hardly any party mandate seats, because they got a very high number of direct mandate seats but not such a high share of the party vote (probably due to people voting for those other two parties). Fringe parties like the joke/protest party Die PARTEI and the animal protection party didn’t make the cut.

Impacts of the German electoral system

The electoral process I described is complicated and wonky. But it has real, positive impacts.

The Bundestag reflects the people’s preferences

A true popular vote

The Bundestag’s overall party composition is directly dictated by the popular vote by party. What a concept!

There is essentially no incentive to gerrymander. Sure, one representative’s seat may be safe, but winning more direct seats won’t give you any larger of a governing majority after the party vote is factored in, so there’s not much point. For comparison, in the last US election, FiveThirtyEight forecast that Democrats would need to get 55.6% of the popular vote just to get 50% of House seats.

While the U.S. founders wanted to avoid political parties, the reality is that we have them, and that they are the primary organizations for setting overarching political agendas. The legislature is tasked with implementing a political agenda, so I appreciate that in Germany the legislature’s makeup reflects the mix of political agendas each citizen prefers, on a one-citizen-one-vote basis, rather than on a weird gerrymandered basis. I think this better reflects the actual will of the people, rather than the will of whomever is in power and gets to draw the lines.

Multiple parties, with more representative platforms

By having a dual vote, Germany allows the mix of represented agendas to also include those of medium-sized parties that couldn’t otherwise make it into the Bundestag. While fringe parties that get less than 5% of the popular list vote are excluded, everybody else gets in – even if they are too small to win a single direct seat.

For example, I would love to be able to vote for both Nancy Pelosi and a (reformed and actually viable) Green Party. But I can’t do that in the US – there’s no way a Green candidate could or should beat Nancy Pelosi. So we end up with only Democrats and Republicans, and that’s it. This can leave us stuck supporting partisanship and platforms we take serious issue with, without good alternatives (e.g., if you’re a Republican who doesn’t like Trumpism… what do you do?).

In contrast, Germany has a half-dozen parties big enough to enter the Bundestag. This allows for more nuanced party platforms that more accurately represent what their members want. For example, the center-left party can focus more on labor issues, and be somewhat green but not strongly so, while the Green Party can focus on climate change and gender issues, but less so on labor.

Imagine, for example, that instead of Trump taking over the Republican party, that a new party had developed. The Republican party could have stayed as the establishment party with more traditional conservatives, and the new party could have been the home of a more extremist/populist/anti-immigrant/nationalist movement. That is exactly what happened in Germany. The new nationalist party is winning lots of seats, and is able to very directly voice the concerns of its constituency, as you would expect in a representative democracy. It says lots of inflammatory anti-immigrant things and challenges existing conventions around third-rail topics like Holocaust remembrance. But it hasn’t taken over the Conservative party of Angela Merkel, and it’s not a part of the governing coalition, because actually only a minority of people (whether in Germany or the US) share the party’s views.

Having multiple parties also results in a slightly less religious approach to partisanship. Some parties are more aligned than others, but the alignments do shift. It’s quite normal for someone to be undecided as to whether they want to vote center-right vs. center-left, center vs. far left, green vs. far left, etc. While there’s basically zero overlap between green and nationalist party members, I’d bet there is some between far left & nationalist. So while liberals demonize the nationalist party just like Democrats demonize the Republican party (and vice versa), there’s less demonization across all the other parties, and more understanding that sometimes there are just differences in priority/focus.

You can see these shifting alliances in the governing coalitions, too. State-level elections show a diversity of coalitions in state legislatures, with some combinations that are hard to imagine happening in the US:

• Center Right + Green
• Center Left + Green
• Center Right + Center Left
• Center Right + Center Left + Green
• Center Right + Libertarian
• Center Right + Libertarian + Green
• Center Left + Libertarian + Green
• Center Left + Green + Left

Local needs addressed

At the same time as the overall composition of the Bundestag is determined by party, every district still gets to elect someone to advocate specifically for their needs, to bring home the pork, etc. For example, Berlin has Green Party representatives who advocate for improved local bike infrastructure. There are also a handful of local mandate representatives with no party affiliation. With the dual vote, people can separate local advocacy from broader party platform issues if they wish.

I do prefer California’s ranked-choice system to a plurality vote (I think it’s more representative of the majority will), but maybe that would be *too* crazy in Germany? Then they’d have to vote for their top 2 or 3 candidates, plus their preferred party. I’d love it, but I might not be typical 😉

Room for more diversity, skills, and moderation

If a major party really wants to be sure someone gets into the Bundestag, they can just put them high on the party list. Party leaders can be assured of entry into the Bundestag this way, but others can also get in via the list vote.

The Green Party has a rule that the list always begins with a woman, and then alternates between women and men. So even if women don’t win as many direct seats, they will get added in as party delegates. Barring the tricky situation mentioned above, this means the Greens end up with ~50% women in their parliamentary delegation, every election. They are also developing recommendations for other ways to integrate diversity into party structures and decision-making, and will be voting on new rules later this year.

Different parties have different rules for how they create their list of people. Candidates may be up and coming leader types, but they might also be policy wonks with expertise in something important; because the Bundestag is relatively large, it can get more into policy details than US politicians generally do.

List candidates might not be the best campaigners, or the most charismatic leaders. They don’t need to be super partisan and work people into a froth to get them excited enough to vote for them. Yet because of the list vote they can still make it into the Bundestag, where they can do useful things.

I’m really not sure how parties select which people exactly end up on the list. I think some allow members to vote only for party leaders, who then select list members; others may allow for more direct voting by members.

More ability to focus on getting work done

Once in the Bundestag, members also have more freedom. In the US today, if a representative isn’t sufficiently “pure” for the more partisan members of their district, they risk a primary challenge and/or lack of enthusiasm for their reelection campaign.

In Germany, these pressures also exist. However, the list provides an alternative to the direct vote that doesn’t depend on any local purity tests (though the member needs to stay in the good graces of the party as a whole). And with elections once every four years instead of once every two years, members don’t have to continually campaign to keep their seats.

Long time no see! Sorry we haven’t been very good about posting here… But I really do plan to post again soon!! In the meantime… We are very very briefly in the bay area for a friend’s wedding over the weekend. While we’re there, I’m planning to join the climate strike in SF for about an hour, from 10-11 am tomorrow (Friday). If you’d like to join, let me know! We can meet near Civic Center just before it begins. It would be great to see you, if you can make it! (Bryan’s busy running errands; he won’t be there.)

-Turtle

With all of our traveling, I sometimes get an environmentalist’s guilty conscience. We’re renting a Jeep SUV! And taking so many plane flights! And I still eat red meat!! This is against everything I supposedly stand for!!! I personally define values not as what we profess to care about, but rather as what our actions reveal us to care about. So… do I value sustainability or not?

For the past few years, I’ve been assuaging my guilty conscience with annual carbon offsets (guilt is a great motivator!!). I’m not sure that I believe it’s a perfect counter to all of my emissions, and really I think carbon pricing needs to be mandatory rather than voluntary, but I do believe it does good – it’s not just a modern-day indulgence. And if as many people bought offsets as buy Priuses, I think that’d be pretty awesome!

I’m also very particular about what type of offset I will purchase, because I think a lot of them aren’t effective or aligned with my values. I’ve settled on water filters for rural communities in developing countries, which offsets the carbon emitted from burning wood to boil water. Just as important, the project reduces the amount of time people (often women/girls) spend gathering wood, preserves local forests & biodiversity, and reduces negative health/economic/quality-of-life impacts of either burning wood indoors (soot impacts) or drinking contaminated water (illness impacts). Some projects I won’t invest in are renewable energy projects & landfill gas capture in the US – I think these should be mandated by law, not funded with offsets, and often they’re economic anyway.

Our 2018 Carbon Footprint

With the help of my Google calendar (to check travel history) and my favorite carbon footprint calculator, here’s where I stand this year. It’s inexact, but I figure it’s a reasonable estimate:

Air travel is always my arch-nemesis… But road trips were a big factor last year, too. Maybe Bryan and I can do more train travel in Europe? But I’m pretty resigned to having a big carbon footprint this year, and figure I’ll just have a lot to offset. Water filters, you can count on my support!!!

Bryan joined in the exercise this year, too. He had a larger footprint, about 50 tons. He took more flights than I did, and also chose to offset indirect impact from services like rent paid and hotel costs.

But we’re both pretty low-footprint for where we live, I think because we don’t own a car and mostly got around by bike or Caltrain last year.

If you’d like to calculate to calculate your carbon footprint and offset it

1. Calculate your carbon footprint
2. Purchase offsets here (or wherever else you’d like, but I like Native Energy!)
3. Feel good about it!

You can get super detailed like I do, or you can just enter your zip code, number of people in your household, and household income, and the calculator will give you an average number. And if you’re open to sharing, please post your footprint in the comments on this post!

Happy Offsetting!!

Just a short update to share the good news – my fellowship application has been officially approved for May through July of this year. Yay!!!

I’ll be at a transportation think tank in downtown Berlin called Agora Verkehrswende, learning all about the shared e-scooters and (e-)bikes that have exploded around most urban areas in the past couple of years (“shared electric micromobility”).

I’m simultaneously very excited, and a little bit nervous – I’ve signed up to learn all about a new industry, and write something thoughtful about it, in the space of three months 🙂 But it’s good to have an anchor for our plans, and I’m grateful for the chance to dive into an industry that’s related to my old one, but not quite the same. I’m curious where the experience will take me!

Once the fellowship is over, I can see about freelancing or other ways of earning a living in Berlin through year’s end. But for now, I’m glad to have a place to land, and am happy to defer thinking too much about what comes next until I’m actually in Berlin.

On the recommendation of Joanna’s former housemate Dave, we decided to stay in an Earthship AirBnB for our three days in Taos, New Mexico in January.

Earthships are basically a brand of zero-energy buildings, and there’s a large condo development of them on an old quarry site (so as not to further disturb the land) about 25 minutes outside of Taos, just past the beautiful Rio Grande gorge.

The trip brought Joanna back to all of her memories of learning about passive houses (another word for the same concept) during college. Lots of thermal mass and insulation, windows that let light inside yet block heat loss to the outside, solar panels, direct current appliances that can make more efficient use of solar energy, rainwater capture, water recycling/reuse, and much more.

In theory, an Earthship is self-sufficient, with naturally occurring sunlight, wind, water, earth, and nearby wood providing everything necessary for all heating, cooling, food/drink, waste processing, and other needs. We both found it inspiring and delightful, and appreciated the sense of connection with the world around us. Morning rituals of opening the blinds to let in the light, delighting in the quickly warming clay tiles underfoot, and only showering once it’s warm enough. Evening rituals of closing the blinds at sunset to keep the heat in, stepping outside to admire the milky way, staying warm by cooking together, and using the wood stove if it’s especially cold. Tending to the house took a little time, but not too much. It felt good; it felt grounding. And it was neat to see how obviously the Earthships were inspired by the local Pueblo Indians’ architecture, with its thick adobe walls.

Here’s a short walk we took inside (you can pan to look around):

At the same time, things about the Earthship also felt impractical (Bryan) and/or outdated (Joanna), and not actually as green as they seem. Tourists like us can’t get by on so little water (Taos gets 7 inches per year), so they truck it in. There’s propane to heat all that water, propane for cooking, and it looked like the fridge was operating in propane mode, too. The whole development is a 25 minute drive from town, and while it’s possible to build a multifamily Earthship, their density is very limited. Among other things, Joanna was confused as to why they use solar water heating instead of electric (solar water heating is theoretically elegant but not as economical), why the cooking isn’t electric, why the blinds aren’t insulated (and automated), and why they’re doing rather outdated things like DC circuits (since conversion from AC to DC has been nearly lossless for many years now).

In areas where infrastructure exists for growing food, treating wastewater, generating power, we question whether it is more efficient to centralize versus build self-contained homes; however, in parts of the world where such services don’t exist or aren’t reliable, an Earthship has benefits.

By promoting Earthships as an ideal, are their builders encouraging visitors to thoughtfully consider their resource use and find ways to live more in harmony with the planet? Or are they showcasing outdated and non-scalable technologies and land use patterns that are not really the most comfortable, efficient, or effective ways to solve our problems – and thereby furthering the idea that environmental sustainability is inconvenient, impractical, for tree huggers only, and not yet ready for prime time? Even after staying there for several days and deeply enjoying it, we’re not quite sure.

We’ve just packed our things in SF and arrived in LA, and are at the start of a year of sabbatical. Wow. We’re hoping this will be a year of exploration, connecting with others, contemplation and thoughtful action, pondering how we’d like to live, and of course, Octoturtleyness.

We hope you’ll join in on bits and pieces with us, whether meeting up with us for a few days, having some thoughtful video chats, or following along here.

In the meantime, if you’d like to see more of our travel plans, and maybe join in on some of them, please have a look at our travel calendar page. Or look to the sidebar on the right (or scroll down on mobile devices) for a quick glance at what’s coming up soon.

We look forward to seeing you along the way!

– Joanna & Bryan