Vanlife - Climate and Energy Focus

[mountainFrugal]

This feature article in Bloomberg about vanlife (and vehicle dwelling in general) is a fairly good general audience article emphasizing low energy use and climate change disaster displacements/migrations as motivations for #vanlife. The photos are really good too. Nothing new for this crowd, but recognizing these other reasons in a major news outlet is the interesting bit to me.

https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2023 ... te-change/

[AxelHeyst]

For now, however, the biggest motivator for the climate nomads is not disruption but an older, more established worldview: anti-consumerism.

Otterman says life in a vehicle has given her a “tactical” understanding of consumption. “You can’t charge your phone and use the electric kettle,” she says. “And you’re constantly paying attention to the amount of water you use, because when that tank is empty, you have to go to town and get more.

Every nomad shares this intense resource awareness. Each one speaks of knowing exactly how much propane they use in a week, how long they can charge their electronic devices on solar after a run of cloudy days, and how to stretch water by sponge-bathing and using a spray bottle for rinsing when brushing teeth. Many also use composting toilets and recycle items others would toss without a thought, such as paper towels from public bathrooms.”

Great article.

[C40]

Yeah I lived in my van for about two years and I was so much more aware of how much energy I was using (and where it came from, and personally involved in the process of storing the energy, and more aware of things like sun angle variations over a year). Plus there was needed optimization of stuff - buying and having only things that were useful - and a pretty hard limitation on accumulating more things

[unemployable]

People don't do it to save the planet, that's a virtue-signaling cover. They do it because they're poor. I do it, not only because I'm poor, but also to be somewhere warmer than Colorado in the winter. Does that make me a climate refugee?

[ertyu]

Does that make me a climate refugee?

in the greater picture where climate change has lit a fire under billionaires' butts and made them scared about holding on to power in the face of The Starving Hordes (See Survival of the Richest by rushkoff), and they've realized that their power isn't in their absolute wealth but in the gap between their wealth and everyone else's so it's best to keep the masses poor, you are

if the system is such that "non-poor" is either inaccessible or only accessible via constant (boring) (tiring) toil within corporate structures, then you're poor because on average, it's difficult to be non-poor without a soul-crushing IT or corporate job. of course there are exceptions, ERE is all about finding a way to be that exception -- we're talking average.

so in that sense, yes, you are on a level a climate refugee

[unemployable]

I... was not aware I was a pawn in some game of chess between Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, especially considering I use none of their products. Cool, do I get government money or something?

So climate refugee is just a rebrand of snowbird, the same way, for example, sleeping around is now polyamory.

[sky]

People don't do it to save the planet, that's a virtue-signaling cover. They do it because they're poor. I do it, not only because I'm poor, but also to be somewhere warmer than Colorado in the winter. Does that make me a climate refugee?

You now are part of the "Pail Pooping Pauper" class.

[jacob]

Well, this derailed fast ...

Whether people talk and quibble about climate, cost, travel, mobility, ... it objectively doesn't matter to the outcome as long as they're walking the same path. In my opinion, the greater the diversity of motivations for doing the what is essentially same thing, the better. It makes a movement more resilient and also more interesting.

FWIW, having appeared in pieces like this, what tends to happen is that the journalist tends to have some angle (here climate) and will ask questions fitting that angle while calibrating towards their audience. Interviewees will respond to those questions accordingly. (For example, I'm not super motivated by FIRE, but since FIRE is currently "the thing", I'll get FIRE-type questions even if FIRE is just a side-effect of my "lifestyle" as far as I'm concerned. I've started a practice of only answering questions if they'll let me post my full answers separately, usually adjacent blogs.)

[7Wannabe5]

Yeah, I've experienced the same hyper-awareness of resource use during my extended nomadic camping adventures, and also with my off-grid stable site permaculture projects. When you are rough camping, the van is actually one step up towards the grid. Like going back to where the van is parked to charge your phone on the van battery is kind of a cheat vs. using your portable solar at the campsite vs. just not using anything that needs electricity. Snowbirds with huge vehicles that have very large reserve capacities are probably less likely to become aware of their resource use.

So climate refugee is just a rebrand of snowbird, the same way, for example, sleeping around is now polyamory.

Kind of, but "sleeping around" to "polyamory" is more like how easy it was to adopt a dog from the dog pound in the 1970s vs how difficult it is to do that now. A not entirely unrelated to this thread thing one of my relatively much more affluent partners recently said to me was "If we were married, I would let you live in your camper in my backyard."

[ducknald_don]

There have been a few posts here about people living in cars or vans. These people's situations always look precarious to me. I'm not sure why it gets celebrated so much.

[jacob]

There have been a few posts here about people living in cars or vans. These people's situations always look precarious to me. I'm not sure why it gets celebrated so much.

There's a huge difference between those who do this deliberately and those who are forced into it. Compare between people who quit their jobs vs people who get fired. The latter, who make up the majority, are often desperately dependent and unable to understand why/how anyone could possibly exist w/o a job... or a stick home by analogy.

[7Wannabe5]

There's a huge difference between those who do this deliberately and those who are forced into it.

True, but only to the extent that clear trail of breadcrumbs or survival line to optionality is maintained. The mountain does not run a credit check before dropping a rock on your head. Worst example I can think of which actually did alter my behavior was when a couple of different,likely Green-minded, young women who were choosing to use their bikes for transportation through rough city neighborhood near where I was living were kidnapped by thugs in a van, raped, and forced to get cash from ATM machines.

Also, it almost certainly must be the case* that if two humans are superficially maintaining the same lifestyle, yet one holds more optionality, then the one who holds more optionality is actually using more energy and/or depreciating (mothballing?) more assets.

*No free lunch.