home on the wet

Last week, I was lunching with my friend, Terri, and her grandson, Michael. There had been an article in the Oregonian that morning about a fight over wind farms that was gearing up -- specific to the Columbia River Gorge.

It's the old problem of NIMBY -- Not In My Back Yard. People want change. People want cleaner energy from renewable sources. They just don't want to be directly involved in the solution -- in this case, they don't want to have to look at the wind turbines. People are worried about their views being obscurred, about property values going down. They want those wind farms, sure, but they want them to be installed someplace else.

(There's a similar fight over Cape Wind, a proposed wind farm off the coast of Nantucket.)

Terri, knowing my strong interest in sustainable living, said I should set up my own wind farm when I put up my yurt.

I started to explain that many wind farms are set up in the water in order to take best advantage of the available winds, and that I've always envisioned my yurt off in the woods, but then stopped as an odd thought occurred to me....

"Ooh.... floating yurt farm!"

Michael nearly spit out his french fries, laughing. Terri just looked down at the table and shook her head.

Okay, so a floating yurt farm is not exactly the most practical concept. But I have occasionally toyed with the idea of floating homes. I'd been ready to consider houseboats on the Willamette and Columbia Rivers when I was looking to relocate here from the East Coast, but gave up the idea when I considered how not fun that would be for the cats and the dogs.

Still, I think we'll be seeing more pseudo-amphibious homes as we get deeper into the effects of global warming. We're already seeing increased problems with flooding across the globe -- recent examples include Great Britain and Oklahoma -- and melting glaciers will result in rising sea levels, displacing potentially hundreds of millions of people.

I'd seen a television program several months ago -- probably on PBS or the Discovery Channel -- about how new construction (at least in Europe) is responding to this need to accommodate uncertain water levels. It's nice to see that CNN.com has covered this earlier today:

In the Netherlands, where half the country lies below mean sea level and flooding has long been a fact of life, construction and engineering company Dura Vermeer has come up with a novel and, when you think about it, obvious solution to the problem: houses that float.

"These type of homes offer a good way of dealing with the effects of climate change," Dura Vermeer spokesman Johan van der Pol told CNN.
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No, this design won't suit everyone. Yes, these homes are (currently) rather expensive. But I'm encouraged that these sorts of solutions are already being rolled out. Look for similar technologies to come soon to a neighborhood nearer to you.

Possibly even in the Columbia River Gorge, in the form of a floating yurt farm, with big wind turbines in the back yard.