The house off the grid is built on
industrial infrastructure.
So what? It's a matter of degree.I helped my parents build their off-the-grid house. It's solar-powered, but uses batteries for backup storage. It collects and filters rainwater, recycles and purifies its own sewage, and is made mostly of recycled materials (in the style of what's called an "Earthship," but with a more traditional, house-like form factor). Did industrial infrastructure come into play? Of course. We used cars and trucks to get stuff there to build with. We used machines and materials produced in the modern world. What difference could that possibly make? The house is still much less ecologically destructive than the vast majority of dwellings worldwide, both in terms of ongoing damage and initial construction. It's possible to create buildings today which get all their electricity from the sun; which require no industrial infrastructure at all for sewage, heat, or clean water; and which cost much, much less than earlier housing models. That's an amazing improvement. All tech's based to some degree on tech which came before. |
The isn't even close to being true. The majority of dwellings worldwide lack what you would call basic utilities and are constructed using local materials, many of which are recycled.
Perhaps you meant the West?
Even then, it's not true. Solar panels, batteries, modern insulation, etc ... these create a ton of pollution during manufacture. Not to mention drilling wells and installing septic tanks as opposed to hooking up to public utilities.