There are two kinds of prophets: Those who hypnotize you into complacency with their wisdom, and those who deliver messages of sacrifice that you already knew and wish they’d shut up about. It can even be the same basic message: In An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore made us willing to turn off the lights after leaving the shitter and we love him more. But in the documentary Garbage Warrior, Michael Reynolds—a bedraggled, silver-haired enviro-pirate—makes you want to run all the hot water in your house at once to hasten the earth’s demise.
Your role—as in, your part of saving the planet—is to one day live in a trash hovel. Reynolds and his band of begrudging employees in the New Mexico desert are pioneering residential “earthships.”
The premise is practical: Global warming will have perilous effects on humans. Either we must change our energy-consuming ways and move into “earthships” now, or brace for disasters that will unravel the fabric of society and force us to move into the “earthships” later. But the urgency with which Reynolds insists we build these things is roughly akin to bug-eyed Christians convinced that the rapture will occur at any moment.
“We’re talking about survival now,” Reynolds says. Soon, “people will only be going back to cities just to mine out the goods.”
His primary garbage commune looks appropriately post-apocalyptic. Bearing a notable resemblance to the Road Warrior encampments, walls made of tires are hammered full of soil to absorb sunlight by day and release heat by night; dome homes are built from bottles and earthen mortar; roofs collect rain water. And it’s all off the grid and self-sustaining.
But admirable as it may be, the spectacle of 84 near-consecutive minutes of trash makes the film almost unwatchable. When it’s not a sweeping shot of aluminum-can bricks, it’s Reynolds ranting about officials who revoked his architecture license and resist allowing sustainable-housing test sites. But the guy isn’t completely insufferable. Talking about one of his houses that overheated, he thanks the odds that none of his houses have caught fire. “I’m just glad I didn’t kill anybody—fry a baby. Fuck.” Ideally, Reynolds’s charisma would convince us that the future bleakness is tempered by serenity of a better life. But instead the future just seems exhausting.
The show tonight is free—just like trash—at “Friday Night At The Meaningful Movies” in the Keystone Congregational United Church of Christ, 5019 Keystone Place North, 7:00 to 9:30 p.m. After the film, Jim Burton, president of the Seattle chapter of the Northwest Eco-Building Guild, and Kinley Deller, a waste-reduction specialist for the King County Green Tools Program, will talk about sustainable building in Seattle.
oh my god. i thought you were describing a new reality TV series. Flip this House, but, you know, for the post-apocalyptic demographic.
I’ve seen one of these in New Mexico, there’s a model home open to the public. It’s as bizarre as you describe.
http://flickr.com/photos/manwhoyells/tag…
Actually, some of us find Al Gore just as insufferable. And I didn’t need his ego-stroking movie to remind me to turn off the lights when I leave a room — I grew up in the 70s.