THE proclamation
My name is George Kiefer and I am starting The Earthworkers Sustainable Infrastructure Collective because I want a better future for myself, my loved ones, and every living being on this planet. I feel it in my bones that there’s more I need to be doing to help build and talk about the possibilities of a more sustainable future. I’m calling this company a collective because that’s what I want it to be: a collective of different ideas, solutions, and most importantly, people who come from all different walks of life who all want to build a sustainable future together. We are not doing nearly enough to move our communities forward in a sustainable, people-centric, and earth-centric manner and I think that’s (fucking) stupid. And I hope you do too and want to join me in changing that.
This is where the advocacy part comes in: I think a lot of people feel similarly about wanting a more sustainable future, especially here in the United States, but we don’t fully understand what that might actually look like. I want to talk about ways we can move towards it that are hopefully common sense while transforming our economy in the process. I want to help create a place and community for other like-minded people to find and connect with each other. I want to help build a community that wants to live healthier lives and in ways that are more in balance with the natural world and still fully utilizing modern conveniences.
I will now write about the first products I want to build and how I plan to actually get them built. The products are infrastructure that’s in critical demand: sustainable housing and renewable/sustainable energy infrastructure (solar microgrids, wind turbines, geothermal, hydroelectric, whatever makes sense for the community). I want to build and deploy in any community that will accept our development plans. When I talk about sustainable housing I’m talking about high and medium-density housing. I’m talking about building duplexes, quadplexes, townhouses, row houses, any level of multi-family housing that makes sense for the land and community. The end goal is to build or rebuild beautiful, walkable neighborhoods that are close to Main Streets and city centers. The first step is finding people who are looking for the same type of housing.
How I hope to get these projects built, and hopefully create buy-in from the community where they’ll be built, is by purchasing older houses that are not as energy efficient (and maybe not in great structural/aesthetic shape anymore), tearing them down, and building these newer structures that are focused on energy efficiency and community improvement. This link will take you to a Google Form (I know it’s pretty low-tech, I’m open to other ideas/tools to better capture data) and there you can let the Earthworkers Collective know where you live (city or town and state, not personal address), where you’re open to living, what type of housing (apartment, townhouse, condo, etc.) you’re looking for, and select an income range. With this information I hope I can find enough people to show there’s a demand for this type of housing and how it will be a positive contribution to the local economy.
I want to engage with people who already live in these communities or would want to move to them if they had these more affordable or even minimalist options. I hope that by building more housing units that are more affordable that it can increase the tax base of each local community and with that create investment and entrepreneurial opportunities for more local businesses that will be walkable/bikeable for these new residents and developments. People love local shops and restaurants and if we can make housing more affordable then they can better support local businesses which helps more money circulate through the local economy (which is something I think we all would prefer as opposed to it going to major corporations and billionaires).
One of the big reasons I want to do this is I want to build a place that is more enjoyable to live. I have been fortunate enough to travel for the last 2.5 years and live in many different places for 4-6 weeks at a time and many of my favorite places have been communities that have gentle density and are highly walkable. Places like Bend, Oregon; Fruita and Golden, Colorado; Manhattan Beach and Hermosa Beach, California; Kellogg, Idaho; Haleiwa, Hawaii; Kralendijk, Bonaire; Coco, Costa Rica; Cozumel, Mexico to name a few. I want to help people in every community listed above as well as literally another other city or town in America build better housing and renewable energy infrastructure/microgrids.
We (Americans) have been told that we need our own standalone houses and that is the high watermark of success. We’re all made to believe that we will have our own castles. It seems thought that in reality we’re being pushed into higher consumerism. Gotta have a three or four bedroom house with full bedroom sets in each one, multiple couches, all sorts of home goods and throw pillows. That’s not even getting into the lawn maintenance stuff where they make having the perfect yard a sign of success when in reality it gets you to buy all sorts of outdoor tools and machines that are quite often very inefficient and terrible for the environment (two-stroke engines in particular are terrible). Being forced to buy so many more things to keep and maintain our own house and yard. Suburban single-family homes are subsidized and inefficient. Not to mention they’re more isolating.
I realize the ideas and developments I’m talking about in this are not for everyone and I’m by no means trying to advocate for mandating these types of developments everywhere. Live where you want to live. I want to build housing and communities where I would want to live and I think a lot of other people will want to. And by creating an organization that will help like-minded people find and connect with each other we can use our collective financial power to build these places by using the one thing that gets shit done in America: money.
At a high-level I want this organization to foster a lot of entrepreneurship and cooperative ownership for different products and services that will work and partner together. I think one of the issues we’re dealing with in the United States right now but not really talking about is how the vast majority of the citizens don’t feel like they have any real ownership over their lives and their future. So many people have limited job options and don’t see any benefit to economic growth in their local communities. I want to help spur economic growth and talk with others about some of the policy issues that make it really difficult for small businesses to succeed. So much of the talk about sustainable future development feels like it will leave so many others behind when I want to bring everyone into the future with the collective. I want to partner with other people to figure out how to develop many of the idea kernels I have floating around in my head (like hemp farms for products like hempcrete and other insulation products but the farm house is something like 6-10 row houses of the owners of the farm and they’re the sole members of an LLC that runs the operation).
In addition to housing, the other key area I want to focus this company is building renewable/sustainable energy microgrids in as many cities and communities as possible that are locally owned, operated, and maintained. I want as much of the benefit of the infrastructure to stay where it’s built. I hope we can all admit that the major utility companies in each state are generally bad companies with mediocre service at best. They also have corporate monopolies on how we build and deploy renewable energy infrastructure which is not fair. They have significant influence on every level of our government and I think that is a very bad thing (another area for advocacy). We no longer need their bloated and overvalued services when we can build better infrastructure that we can individually own (like rooftop solar) or cooperatively/collectively own (like wind turbines or geothermal or hydroelectric).
Uruguay is a great example of how people can benefit from the clean energy transition
I want to deploy as much renewable energy infrastructure as possible is by building microgrids in communities that get an excessive amount of sunlight (like most of Southern California rooftops), or wind (like the midwest, east coast, plain states). And I want to do this in communities not just across the US but anywhere in the world, especially underdeveloped cities and communities that can help build an ecotourism economy for those regions. Decentralized power infrastructure will be an excellent way to infuse so many different communities with money and bring new job opportunities to many areas that have been neglected because manufacturing closed down in the region (I also want to help bring more manufacturing back to the US, especially for sustainable energy infrastructure, e-bikes and other types of electric transit but that’s something for the future).
I want to find as many different ways as possible to invest in people and building strong communities that are more self-reliant for many of their basic needs. I want to figure out how to build more greenhouses in every community so people have better and more affordable access to healthy fruits and vegetables. One kernel of an idea I have is getting 3D printers to more remote regions of the world or underdeveloped so that they will be able to build and print various products that normally they won’t have access to but now they’ll have resources to create and sell things to travelers who may need them. This idea came to me when I was watching a Sailing Parlay Revival YouTube video about a group of sailors that were in a remote atoll in the South Pacific and they gave some spare lines/ropes to the locals and helped them build a shelter on their island and in exchange the locals made them a wonderful meal and I thought it was an awesome way to help and connect with people from a completely different walk and way of life (also solid channel and worth watching if you’re into sailing))
I want to make things better. I want to build cool shit. I want to live more sustainably (and in a more minimalist way). The planet is telling humans that we need to stop trying to dominate it and bend it to our will. We need to make large scale changes in how we consume resources and treat the only known viable, habitable planet in the known universe. Elon isn’t getting us to Mars anytime soon (and honestly, would you even want him to be in charge of all life support functions?). Building more sustainable communities is one of the best ways forward that we have.
I’m not trying to be one of those twitter bro developers who’s trying to make as much money as possible (even though I will need to put myself out there and engage with people in that realm but I will hopefully spend less time talking about the 10 keys to be more efficient at business or whatever and focus on listening to what people want and sharing my story and vision with them). Don’t get me wrong, I want to make money and I want everyone involved to make money too. I want this venture to be an efficient and growing company, but I also want to make the right investments into these buildings and ideas to make them solid and long-lasting, not built as cheap as possible. I want these buildings to last a long time and be resilient to a climate that’s becoming increasingly more volatile and extreme. I want to do this with other people who want the same things. I think we all want to live healthier lives and do the right thing when it comes to climate change.
This isn’t targeted at Millennials and Gen Z either. One of the many other benefits of more density is better living options for the elderly and disabled (https://x.com/maxdubler/status/1758951966104031727?s=46&t=y6d7Sf6xL1YcO8gxgXfK-w)
There’s VERY STRONG consensus within the scientific community that we need to build as much renewable and sustainable energy infrastructure as quickly as possible https://x.com/profstrachan/status/1759004495789347183?s=46&t=y6d7Sf6xL1YcO8gxgXfK-w
I want to find sensible ways to invest in every single community across the country and believe that decentralizing our energy infrastructure is one of the best ways we can do that. Nuclear is great but takes much longer to build and deploy. Time is not a luxury in regard to the climate crisis (https://x.com/profstrachan/status/1759005189061644673?s=46&t=y6d7Sf6xL1YcO8gxgXfK-w)
I am not a scientist. I am not a reporter. I am not an expert by any quantitative means. I am someone who sees an opportunity to make things better and help bring more balance with the natural world into our lives (and firmly believe we will be happier with these types of changes)
I have many ideas, some are basic and common sense, and some others are bolder (and a little more out there). I am someone who is deeply concerned about the direction everything is heading. I’m continuing to learn about how the climate crisis will have an impact on all of us. I am alarmed by what the scientists and experts are saying. I see an opportunity for us to work better together in ways that make sense to me and I hope they make sense to you. I don’t want to make this political but it inherently is. We have to act now. Destruction, damage, and death are in our future but if we start working together to make real changes we can keep things from getting worse and be better prepared for future disasters and catastrophic weather and climate events. We will all be impacted in both unique and broadly similar ways. Our collective future depends on our actions and choices today.
I’ve made a lot of “I” statements in this and I’m going to make a few more before this concludes but I want to say that I don’t want this to be about me in the long run. I like being an anonymous person moving through the world. I’m an introvert. I love being out in the world but also love keeping to myself. I love the chaos of life. I’m a middle child with a sometimes weird social manner. Admittedly I’m nervous about actually taking this step and I want this statement to be as near to perfect as possible (I think we can all agree at this point that didn’t happen) because of how much space this has occupied in my head and wanting to convey the passion and feeling behind what I hope this can accomplish but I also know time is not a luxury we have anymore. People probably don’t care that much about my fears or insecurities (and nor should they cause after all this isn’t about me).
What are the next steps? How can others participate? I’m building a website now and want to hear from people who are interested in bringing more sustainable housing and renewable energy infrastructure to their communities. If I can find concentrations of people in various communities/markets/regions then I can pitch investors who want to invest in the American people and their communities. Show them that there’s viable and addressable markets all over. I’m going to try different messaging methods including short and longer form discussions (probably YouTube and/or instagram stories) as well as continue to write more posts/essays. Follow us on Instagram (@earthworkerscollective) and Twitter/X (@earthworkersco) for updates! There will be a newsletter at some point in time as well.
My name is George Kiefer and I am now an Earthworker. Please join me on this journey and mission and let’s take control of our future. I think we can build something really cool.
Let’s start building a better future.
P.S. I’ll save my thoughts on cars and high speed rail for a future post (but I’m guessing you’ll have a sense before I get into that one).
