Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre

RYSSDAL: But why would someone, particularly someone used to urban or even suburban life, choose to isolate themselves so far out in the wilderness?

TONY: We’re not isolated at all. During the week, I’m talking to people all around the world, and on the weekends, my wife and I are usually in Seattle.

RYSSDAL: But the time you have to spend driving to Seattle—

TONY: Is nothing compared to how many hours people waste in their cars every day. Think about how much time you spend driving back and forth to work, either ignoring or actively resenting the city around you. Living out in the country, we get to appreciate our city time because it’s voluntary instead of mandatory, a treat instead of a chore. Greenloop’s revolutionary living style allows us to have the best parts of both an urban and rural lifestyle.

RYSSDAL: Talk for a minute about this “revolutionary living.” In the past you’ve described Greenloop as the next Levittown.

TONY: It is. Levittown was the prototype for prosperity. You had all these young GIs coming home from World War II, newly married, anxious to start a family, hungry for a home of their own, but without the means to afford one. At the same time, you had this revolution in manufacturing; streamlined production, improved logistics, prefabricated parts… all from the war, but with tremendous peacetime potential. The Levitts were the first to recognize that potential and harnessed it into America’s first “planned community.” And they built it so fast and cheap that it became the model for modern suburbia.

RYSSDAL: And you’re saying that model’s run its course.

TONY: I’m not the one saying it, the whole country’s acknowledged it as far back as the 1960s when we realized that our standard of living was killing us. What good is all this progress if you can’t eat the food or breathe the air or even live on the land when the ocean rises up over it? We’ve known for half a century that we need a sustainable solution. But what? Turn back the clock? Live in caves? That was what the early environmentalists wanted, or, at least, how they came off. Remember that iconic scene in An Inconvenient Truth where Al Gore shows us a scale with gold bars on one side and Mother Earth on the other? What kind of a choice is that?

You can’t ask people to give up personal, tangible comforts for some ethereal ideal. That’s why communism failed. That’s why all those primitive, hippie, “back to the land” communes failed. Selfless suffering feels good for short crusades, but as a way of life, it’s unsustainable.

RYSSDAL: Until you invented Greenloop.

TONY: Again, I didn’t invent anything. All I did was look at the question through the lens of past failures.

RYSSDAL: You’ve been very critical of previous attempts…

TONY: I wouldn’t call it critical. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for those who came before me. But you look at those huge, government funded eco-cities like Masdar[2] or Dongtan.[3] Too big. Too expensive. And definitely too ambitious for a post Sequestration[4] America. Likewise the smaller, Euro models like BedZED[5] or Sieben Linden[6] are nonstarters because they depend on punishing austerity. I liked the Dunedin[7] project in Florida. It’s comfortable and manageable, but it just doesn’t have any wow, and this…

RYSSDAL: We should note that Tony is gesturing to the houses and land around us.

TONY: Tell me this isn’t the definition of “wow”?

RYSSDAL: Is the story true about you hijacking a Cygnus corporate retreat and pitching the project only after you’d hiked them up here?

TONY: [Laughs.] I wish. They knew a sales pitch was coming, and they knew it had something to do with a plot of land that the federal government was planning to auction off to the private sector, but they didn’t hear my proposal until we were standing… actually… on the very spot we’re standing now.

RYSSDAL: And nature did the talking.

TONY: And me. [Both laugh.] Seriously, like Steve Jobs playing the orchestra,[8] my orchestra is this land. When you’re here, surrounded by it, connecting to it on a visceral level, you realize that that connection is the only way to save our planet. That’s been the problem all along, destroying the natural world because we’ve created so much distance from it.

I asked my friends at Cygnus to imagine two different endgames for this soon to be privatized land. Clear-cutting by a Chinese timber company or… or… the minimal footprint of a micro-eco-community that personified the new Green Revolution. Six homes, no more, ringing a common house in the top-down shape of a turtle, which, according to some Native American beliefs, is the foundation on which the world is built.

I described how the Tlingit-style houses would look like they literally grew right out of the forest.

RYSSDAL: Which you can see now.

TONY: Exactly, but what you can’t see is that these homes are all built from 100 percent recycled materials. Wood, metal, insulation are recycled blue jeans. The only new material is the bamboo for the floors. Bamboo’s really important to the planet. That’s why you see it growing all around the neighborhood. Not only is it one of the most versatile and renewable building materials ever, it also helps to sequester carbon. There are also what you’d call “passive elements,” like the giant floor-to-ceiling windows in the living room that allow you to warm or cool the whole house by raising or lowering the curtains.

But passive elements only go so far. When it comes to active, green technology, we’ve got it all. See how the roofs have this bluish-purple tint? Those are solar panels. Peel and stick, like old-fashioned wallpaper, and “triple junction” so they can harvest every photon on a cloudy day. And those converted amps are stored in Cygnus’s patented battery that not only fits invisibly into a wall, but is 13.5 percent more efficient than the competition’s.

RYSSDAL: Suck on that, Elon Musk.

TONY: No, no, I love Elon, he’s a good guy, but he does have some catching up to do.

RYSSDAL: Like the solar profit program?

TONY: Exactly. If you harvest more energy than you need, why not be able to sell it back to the grid? And I don’t mean a rebate like in some states, I mean sell, for cash, just like the Germans have been doing for almost two decades. That’s not technology, that’s just good business, making money while you sit on your ass.

RYSSDAL: And speaking of sitting on your…

TONY: I was getting to that. The houses don’t just harvest sunlight, they also collect methane gas from, wait for it, your own poop. Again, nothing new. Biogas has been used in developing countries for years. Even some American cities are tapping into the deposits from their own landfills. Greenloop’s taken all that hard-won experience and kicked it up to American suburban standards. Each house is built on a biogas generator that breaks down what you flush. But you don’t see it, or smell it, or even have to think about it. Everything is regulated by the Cygnus “smart home” system.

RYSSDAL: Can you talk a little bit about that system?

TONY: Again, nothing new. A lot of homes are getting smarter. Greenloop’s just gotten there faster. The central home program is either voice or remote activated, and with a constant eye toward energy efficiency. It’s always thinking, always calculating, always making sure you don’t waste one amp or Btu. Every room is riddled with both thermal and motion sensors. On the highest efficiency setting, they’ll automatically shut down all light and heat to every unoccupied space. And you don’t have to do anything more than just live the way you’ve always lived. You don’t have to sacrifice an ounce of comfort or time.

RYSSDAL: And that goes back to the same political will that allowed Washington State to change its solar energy policy.

TONY: And put up half the money for its construction, and built the private road up from the main highway, and laid all those miles of fiber-optic cable.

RYSSDAL: Green jobs.

TONY: Green jobs. Who keeps all those fancy electronics running? Who cleans off the solar panels? Who mucks out the used-up waste in those biogas generators, carting it away along with the garbage and recycling and kitchen scraps, only to bring that organic waste back as compost to be spread around the fruit trees?

You know that every citizen of Greenloop generates between two and four service jobs for their fellow Americans? All bused in on electric vans that charge up at the Common House. And that’s just the service sector. What about actually building those solar panels and biogas generators and wall batteries? Manufacturing. Made in America. This is the Green Revolution, the Green New Deal, and what they’re now calling the Green Green Society. Greenloop shows what’s possible, just like Levittown did before it.

RYSSDAL: Although, we can’t ignore that Levittown had a racial segregation policy.

TONY: No, we shouldn’t ignore it. In fact, that’s exactly my point. Levittown was exclusive; Greenloop is inclusive. Levittown wanted to divide people. Greenloop wants to unite them. Levittown wanted to separate humans from the natural world. Greenloop wants to reintroduce them.

RYSSDAL: But most people can’t afford to live in this type of community.

TONY: No, but they can afford a piece of it. That’s what Levittown was all about, not just showcasing the homes, but every new convenience that was in it: automatic dishwashers, clothes washers, television. A whole way of life. That’s what we’re trying to do with Greentech, and as far as solar power and smart homes, it’s already happening. But if we can put all these planet-saving ideas under one roof, literally, and plant just enough Greenloops around the country for those ideas to trickle down to the general public, then we’d finally have our Green Revolution. No more sacrifice, no more guilt. No more conflict between profit and planet. Americans could have it all, and what’s more American than having it all?