Sustainability expert Michael Mobbs: I’m leaving the city to prep for the apocalypse

Michael Mobbs, you might say, has been preparing for this moment his entire life.

Michael Mobbs outside his sustainable house
in the inner-city Sydney suburb of Chippendale.

The 69-year-old former environmental lawyer who, in 1996, converted his two-storey 19th century Sydney terrace into one of the world’s first inner-city self-sufficient homes, is selling his famous passion project and moving to a remote coastal location to prepare for what he predicts will be impending societal collapse induced by climate change.

That is, he says, a total breakdown within the next three to five years.

Selling his four-bedroom, off-grid Chippendale property that he purchased in 1978 for $23,500 and is now valued at $2.2m is proving more difficult than he thought. He’s had it on the market since March, but wants to sell it to someone who won’t convert the back yard into a car space, who wants to maintain the Saturday morning house tours that have attracted some 30,000 eco-curious visitors, and who will appreciate the home’s unique perks: two resident Australorp chooks named Pesky and Blanche d’Alpuget; less than $300 a year in water and energy bills for a family of four and a leafy street blooming with edible verge gardens.

Read the story from The Guardian by Janine Israel - “Sustainability expert Michael Mobbs: I’m leaving the city to prep for the apocalypse.”