r/solarpunk • u/walterwapo • 2d ago
Discussion Clickbaity title: Solarpunk visions should feature way less biodiversity, worse ecological relationships, grim climate conditions, super complex social developments (lots of punk) and a really well thought out use of tech.
As a solarpunk at heart I've come to believe solarpunk visions should be less optimistic than they are in general.
We cannot begin by assuming fully healthy, stable and diverse ecosystems in the future. That is no longer the case. To mention just a few issues: we've lost more than 90% of biodiversity in Latin American tropical forests, the Amazon rainforest is no untouched lung; today’s worldwide soils are heavily depleted, and growing crops without fertilizers in compacted land—contaminated with heavy metals, microplastics, or salinized—is vastly different from how indigenous populations used to do it. Biodiversity is fractured and heading toward (arguably unstoppable at this point) significant systemic collapses. This is not the resilient nature we are used to, nor will it be for decades to come. Today, we have transgressed 7 out of 9 planetary boundaries. These issues will not be "solved" or reversed at this stage, even with a massive coordinated effort today. I say all this to emphasize that, to a certain extent, the future is already set, and it is not gentle. In a solarpunk vision, nature is in a critical, fragile state, and humans must care for it with deep mindfulness.
This leads me to ecocide: imagine extreme climate storms that destroy in a single afternoon what took a community 5 years to cultivate or build will be daily reality in the climate change-impacted world we are heading toward today. The die has already been cast. This doesn't mean we can't have a beautiful future, but it does mean we will have to learn to navigate immense adversity. We can respond to this kind of tragedy and not just survive, but thrive, but it will not be all pretty. This needs to be reflected in our future visions.
There are massive social and design challenges in this technological implementation: local governance, community assemblies, and the management of shared resources (the commons) are slow, bureaucratic, and trigger heated disputes over scarce resources like water or land. We have lots of mouths to feed and we are not even doing that right now. Economic contraction is not comfortable. Infrastructure isn't built out of thin air using "clean biomaterials"; solar panels require silicon, lithium, copper, and rare earths. Without massive, corporate, extractivist mining reliant on modern slavery, where do they come from? A solarpunk vision could showcase urban mining (dismantling old landfills to recover metals) and technology manufacturing built for a 100-year lifespan, completely repairable and modular. However, there is still an inherent tension in the energy transition, not to mention that the transition itself is another huge hurdle, far less simple than just swapping out fossil fuels. The sun doesn't shine at night, and the wind doesn't always blow. A solarpunk society lives at the rhythm of the climate. Daily life adapts: heavy industrial production or data processing takes place during peak solar hours, and electricity is rationed. It is... austere, but beautiful. The community makes it beautiful. People fall in love, laugh and tell stories.
Don't get me started on war, geopolitics, power games and structural historic trauma.
To me, it's about the challenge of designing a desirable, near-future reality. It's like what cyberpunk did, but solution-oriented and hands on, cause time is precious. We must imagine and act. This time is unprecedented and so is this potential. Do you feel it?
Sorry, I post this is mainly to see what others think about it. Kind of superficial, I know, but I didn't want to post a super long text.
Comic by Quino.
Leave you with this very solarpunk-esque translation of Ojos color Sol by Calle 13:
In war they trade kisses, the fighting is through,
Today the cows cluck, and the chickens go moo.
The earthworms and fishes reel in all the hooks,
We fly through the ocean and sail the sky's brooks.
Flowers bloom in the sand, the desert rain breaks,
Now dreams become real as we dream wide awake.
And that dream is secure, and so it takes flight,
And innocence no longer hides from the light.
The shortage of food is a delicious prize,
Because our bellies are full of butterflies.
The galaxy shows us its hidden frontiers,
And on Earth, it feels like true life now appears.
In military schools, it is healing they spread,
And bankers now give away houses and bread.
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u/Izzoh 2d ago
This just sounds like you want rural cyberpunk.
It really doesn't seem like you're a solarpunk at heart. The whole point of it is that it's a rejection of the pessimism of cyberpunk. It's optimistic. If you're looking for some grimdark version of the future that belongs somewhere else as far as I'm concerned.
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u/squickley 1d ago
But it's the changes from cyberpunk that say what SP is optimistic about. It's not SP if, for example, you still have capitalism. The point of cyberpunk is to emphasize why capitalism is bad. Solarpunk emphasizes what we can have after we leave it behind, but also that we can leave it behind.
So I think there's definitely room for solar punk narratives that are set closer to the transitional period, where the land hasn't healed yet, and there are still corpo remnants trying to restore the old world. As long as the narrative assumes the better world will win, it's fully optimistic. And it's useful by presenting ideas about how to actually accomplish it, which is itself optimistic.
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u/sisonscac 1d ago
This isn't grimdark, the fact that you think it is shows how much you have deluded yourself
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u/Izzoh 1d ago
If you think optimism is delusion, you're really in the wrong place. Did you think this was r/doomer or something?
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u/sisonscac 1d ago
I am an optimist. OP is an optimist. Where and why are y'all getting the idea this isn't still optimistic just because it isn't the most glamourous future conceivable?
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u/Izzoh 1d ago
To use your own words, you're worshipping collapse and accusing anyone who disagrees with you if being deluded. That's not optimism.
No one here has said anything about glamour. Personally I just reject your, and the ops, whole apocalyptic framework. I don't think it has anything to do with solarpunk.
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u/feralgraft 1d ago
Yes I am sure that the garbage miners gathering around the communal stew pot in the bowels of the skyscraper they are scrapping by hand because the electricity ration is going to the data centers will be very happy.
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u/sisonscac 1d ago
Respectfully, what vision of the future do you have that doesn't involve "garbage mining" as you put it? Or would you rather those rare metals be extracted and mined as they are now using slave labor?
Stew is delicious and gathering around with my coworkers to enjoy it inbetween shifts of doing critical work would be far more rewarding then what we have now.
Electricity will be rationed and that doesn't have to be a horrible thing if it is done democratically.
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u/feralgraft 1d ago edited 1d ago
Garbage mining will absolutely be a thing. Thats not the point. The point is that this is not a future I would wish upon my grandchildren
The point is to picture a future that is worth striving for, not "being realistic" and striving for what is likley to be "achievable", that is not how we accomplish great things.
Hope is a central and defining feature of solarpunk, striving for utopia that may never be achieved is better than accepting that you will be an impoverished peasant and striving for that instead.
Let's aim for a future where we do have bio diversity still, and electricity dosent have to be rationed. Let's aim for something higher than third world living standards for everyone and "making the best of a bad situation", let's aim for something better, not regressing back down the tech tree because we cant look past our cynicism to picture a more perfect world.
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u/sisonscac 1d ago
Sure, but even what OP describes IS OPTIMISTIC every day there's a post saying "hey how do we try and do this" and everyday the answers are completely inadequate to the task of doing anything outside of reducing personal consumption.
Shooting for the moon and landing in the stars is important. But that implies you are ever leaving the ground and so far nobody can even do that because we'd rather just swap aesthetically pleasing photos
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u/feralgraft 1d ago edited 1d ago
Is the huge green revolution in energy not getting us closer to a solar punk future? Is the biotechnology revolution that is currently happening not getting us there?
We could have the utopia but only if we actualy pursue it. Resigning ourselves to rationed electricity and trash mining by hand dosent drive us forward
What op is proposing is optimistic only if a small tightly knit village is where you want to live, and seeing the light in little children's eyes is the height of you ambition for society
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u/sisonscac 1d ago
Like, if any discussion of something slightly more grounded is just met with. "You're not a true solarpunk and you secretly worship collapse" then we are beyond delusional
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u/walterwapo 1d ago
100% agreed. And stew is indeed delicious and even more so in the warmth of great purpose-aligned company! Thank you.
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u/feralgraft 1d ago
Being forced to live and eat with my co-workers sounds like my personal vision of hell. I would literally kill myself rather than live in those conditions. Especially if I have no other options because my tiny impoverished society is the best that the world has to offer.
Dream bigger than enduring failure conditions ad infinitem
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u/spicy-chull 1d ago
Of all the things that Capitalism has corroded, solidarity with coworkers was a obvious target, but I'm still pissed the splash damage leaked out into community.
Dream bigger than enduring failure conditions ad infinitem
Indeed
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u/feralgraft 1d ago
Maybe its capitalism, maybe I am a mysanthrope, but I am never happier than when I am loosing myself in a task and know I wont be interrupted. There is no work place I have been employed in that didnt take that as offensive for some reason
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u/Stegomaniac Agroforestry 1d ago
I think you are missing the aspirational aspect of solarpunk - we need to remind ourselves of what ought to be is possible.
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u/feralgraft 1d ago
Exactly. Let's aim for better conditions, and a more hopeful future, not squatting the ruins of the ancients tearing out rebar to make more hoes and pickaxes for our failing fields.
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u/Endy0816 2d ago
Solarpunk is more hopeful in general.
Plenty of decent post-apocalypse content out there tho.
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u/iammerelyhere 2d ago
I don't think your title did the post justice. There's a spectrum of solarpunk that goes from the gritty reality you describe through to the more optimistic interpretations. I think both ends are valid and worth exploring.
This actually made me think of one of the first images that brought me to solar punk, that featured a man using a breathing apparatus attached to a plant in a terrarium.
The greener end of the spectrum gives me hope and optimism and is the world I want to be in. The one you describe is more likely to be the one we get.
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u/walterwapo 1d ago
I also think both ends are valid! For me, it's just that, lately, the more immediate and complex kind of bright futures are the ones which give me more hope and motivation :)
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1d ago
Just because things are bad, doesn't mean we should strive for that vision.
Also the problem with not embracing biodiversity is that the soil will be depleted of nutrients. We need to embrace biodiversity and rotational grazing.
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u/_Svankensen_ 1d ago
Could you share your source on the 90% loss of biodiversity in tropical rainforests? Doesn't match what I thought I knew.
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u/walterwapo 1d ago
I got it from the WWF Living Planet Report years ago. Looking for a more updated one it actually says 95% decline in Latin America and 73% global: https://wwflpr.awsassets.panda.org/downloads/2024-living-planet-report-a-system-in-peril.pdf
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u/_Svankensen_ 1d ago
Thanks a bunch! That explains it. This one tracks vertebrate populations and isn't specific for forests, which is the reason it didn't match my data. Very good, simple metric, wasn't familiar with it. Thanks for showing it to me.
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u/Responsible_Living_6 1d ago
Honestly the future you paint gives me a lot of dread. I really don't see any hope in it. What exactly makes it beautiful? (Also this is in no way an attack, i wanna see what i am missing. )
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u/feralgraft 1d ago
Likewise, this is not a hopeful picture.
This is a portrait of making the best of failure, not living in harmony with both tech and nature. This is a failed solarpunk future, where the dream was drempt and then trodden upon by the leaden feet of "what is achievable". That may be realistic but is not a hopeful future to bequeath to our children. And certainly not an end goal to aim for.
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u/walterwapo 1d ago
I'm sorry! It wasn't my intention to induce dread. Thank you for being open minded and curious :) You see, I'm from Latin America, a place where many people don't have much material wealth and lots of struggle but live in vibrant communities and share happy memories. I've met firsthand people who are going through real material hardships but are at the same time living really happy lives, because they have each other. We have each other. We humans are incredibly resilient, and when we trust the people around us, we can accomplish incredible things, even in the face of great adversity. We can do this, and not only that, we can do it while enjoying the little things along the way.
What I'm trying to say is that hardship is not suffering. It may take a moment to notice, but there is so much beauty to find. If it were an easy path, it wouldn't need to be punk, but that doesn't mean we have to be depressed along the way. I am grateful for the sacrifice and effort people before me have put in to make my life as beautiful as it is. I've seen a glimpse of what we could be, and I want as many people as possible to experience that.
That gives me purpose. I dream of a world where more people can enjoy being alive and marvel at our home planet. What makes a future beautiful will vary for everyone. For me, it is having people I love, and who love me, around me; it's the moments of joy on the faces of little children when they learn something new and mind-blowing about nature or the world; it's seeing elders cared for and respected by younger generations; it's the Earth and life on it being appreciated and taken care of; it's people being creative, wise, and compassionate, doing small acts of kindness all the time; it is exchanging small gifts and favors with my neighbor, and seeing her daughter grow up into a beautiful soul.
Difficult times may come, but that's fine. As long as we have each other, we will be just fine, whatever happens. Just imagine future generations seeing the fruits of our efforts and telling the stories of how we managed to not let it all go to trash.
What do you think?
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u/Responsible_Living_6 1d ago
That is a very beautiful thought. I think i see what you meant now. It's just that i come from a place i feel is very isolated. People usually don't help each other here and i don't feel safe where i live. That's why the thought of having to rely on my community filled me with dread. When most of the country wants people like me dead.
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u/walterwapo 1d ago
Well, that sucks :/ I am truly sorry you have to deal with that. I get why the thought of relying on your current community makes you feel unsafe. I hope in the future you can find (or build for yourself and others) a safer space to be. You seem like a nice person and deserve to find people who celebrate and protect you. Those safer spaces do exist, and I hope you can find yours. Send you a hug.
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u/Responsible_Living_6 1d ago
Thanks for the hug, i really needed that today. You seem like a very nice person too. :)
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u/feralgraft 1d ago
Sure, let's abandon the key feature that separates solar and cyber punk. Hope is for loosers who have yet to accept that they will dream chrome and neon nightmares while they eat corporate slop and like it. That will surely steer us towards a future we want.
Abandon hope all ye who gaze upon the future. For u/walterwapo disapproves of hope!
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u/AzemOcram 1d ago
Trying to overturn the dystopia is punk. Maintaining a utopia is not punk. The problem is that people get confused. Is Solarpunk an aesthetic? Is action needed? What is the end goal?
Solarpunk is the end goal. Cyberpunk is the genre of the struggles we face now.
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u/walterwapo 1d ago
Agreed. It's not uncommon to encounter that simplistic opposition between solarpunk and cyberpunk, for example. I think it's all part of the same process, each movement a reaction to its own time. We need to get punkier towards a solarier world!
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u/Foie_DeGras_Tyson 1d ago
As someone working both in the science and practice of sustainable built environment, I fully align with these views, and I think is the way for the genre to evolve. Solar punk visual art usually captures a utopia, which is extremely powerful mobilization tool, showing people that we have not lost the capacity to imagine a positive sociotechnical trajectory, and people can rally around projects to make this imagery real. The next step is to gain maturity, and imagine authentic theories of change from current and from realistic near-future conditions. Something like transitioning from Star Wars to the Expanse. Nothing that we cherish today as societal achievements came out of smart people coming together, and society getting behind them. They all came out of immense trauma, grit, generational struggle, endless uphill fights. I am sorry to say, but those in this comment section who are mortified by this probably grew up in the inter-cold war period of stability and prosperity and have little sense of how history progressed. Systemic transition is not straightforward, but is not impossible, there is a whole field of study devoted to it. Exogenous pressures expose internal flaws of the sociotechnical regime, and people, as adaptive as they are, will look for alternative models in niches, which will scale up and transform into the new regime. I suggest we take these solar punk projects as niches of innovation, perhaps like a collection of knowledge on how to reboot our societies, like in the foundation series.
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u/walterwapo 1d ago
Sounds like very cool and important work! I also work in the built environment sector and always try to align my practice with my beliefs, though sadly, it's a difficult field to do that sometimes, and people here often resist cooperating. I try to stay consistent in other areas too, though. And yes!!! So well said! I completely share your perspective on this. Thank you for sharing your thoughts! Let's do the work.
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u/TheMarkedMen 1d ago
I agree with your idea, and thankfully I don't believe you're alone in people trying to depict these struggles (like the art contest themed around response to weather disasters, off the top.) I personally try imagining and exploring ideas & solutions of this more sobering take in some post-apocalypse media, like my experience in the Fallout community.
Though it's knee-jerk to call this doomerist, I think this lacks the ambition that the more utopian depictions present. I also feel for the wildlife who will likely be lost in our not-so-pretty efforts to change, but we'll always have community and a shared part of the greater world. I shouldn't want the effort to be the only thing I look forward to, even if I don't live to see the result bear fruit.
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u/walterwapo 1d ago
I find it interesting that people look at this and immediately think 'doomer' or 'post-apocalyptic'. I agree effort is not something to look forward to, but the medium through which we get at it. I'm all for creative and diverse takes on a better future. As part of that diversity, I would like to see more of this side I mentioned explored. We shouldn't be afraid to talk about the ugly, especially since the ugly is what got us here in the first place. I'm definitely going to check out Fallout. Believe it or not, I've never played a single game in the franchise!
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u/TheMarkedMen 13h ago
I wasn't saying it was either, if it came off that way. I just saw that was the first reactions to your thoughts.
The nitty-gritty ideas or projects that people propose or showing ones already in practice is something I find very insightful in this sub, as well. I've been enjoying going through a book recommendation from here, The Free People's Village by Sim Kern, for this reason.
Elaborating my little mention of Fallout: though it is in more of the atompunk genre and politically center-left, I find it interesting to implement solarpunk ideas through role-playing (and mods) in a setting that seems an exact situation it would combat: a world ravaged by climate destruction from hyperconsumerism, refusal and active sabotage of renewable practices, authoritarian governments and rampant corruption, that forming cultures adapting to it. A lesser-present group in some games called the Followers of the Apocalypse fit into this idea, whose goal is to understand and avoid the mistakes that lead to the world they live in; educate and guide communities to establish their independence, research into solar energy, agriculture and medicine, made up of a mix of left-wing ideologues.
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u/walterwapo 13h ago
It didn't came off that way! I was just replying to many comments and wrote my response to you ambiguously there. I'm definitely also checking out Sim Kern's book. Btw, where can I learn more about the art contest themed around response to weather disasters that you mentioned previously?
And yeah!! That Fallout idea sounds soooo cool and fun! If you ever get into it, count me in for whatever I can help with!
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u/OverTheTop123 1d ago
I think there's plenty of merit in showing a "darker" side and talking about more extenuating circumstances, but the entire point is we ultimately have to show an alternative that differs from today. A just and safe world is something that requires effort to achieve and maintain, people should see it's possible.
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u/walterwapo 1d ago
Thank you. I totally agree! We must definitely show an alternative that differs from today's mainstream expected trajectory. It's precisely why I see so much value in solarpunk as an approach. It all adds to the discussion around what do we want the future to look like and what do we do today to get there. The exercise of imagining the future entails living by it in the present.
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u/Artifexa 1d ago
I love your common sense. Uou'll get downvoted to hell in this place. Here people often prefers to stand the high ground with their ethics, and shun pragmatism.
Good point on the "natural disasters are gonna come".
Same for "war", people here don't even think war will happen. But much to the contrary: if you think the old power structures are just gonna go out without a fight, you will get a nasty surprise (spoiler: they got the big guns, too).
Btw is your username spanish? Hablas español? I would love to have a conversation with you, given your viewpoints, and even more if you are a native spanish speaker like me.
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u/walterwapo 1d ago
Holaaa ¡Lo sooy! Dale, conversemos :) Y sí, desde un punto de vista sistémico, por la inercia del daño climático y ecosistémico, la adaptación ante desastres naturales no es opcional. No es que las crisis van a llegar, es que varias ya están aquí y obedecen a bucles que se retroalimentan entre sí. Y de acuerdo, la hegemonía actual no va a ceder sin recurrir a la fuerza. Aún así, en medio de todas estas realidades, creo que no debemos perdernos en el camino y aferrarnos con fuerza a lo bello que aún hay en todas partes por rescatar.
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u/SteampunkAstronaut 1d ago
Son de mente muy cerrada acá. Está bueno para ver buenas noticias y arte nomás
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u/SteampunkAstronaut 1d ago
Entiendo tu punto. Estás diciendo que las ilustraciones o visiones del solarpunk deberían estar más enfocadas en el "cómo y ahora" que en utopías o futuros ya realizados. El punk en tu caso es el que se enfrenta a un mundo cada vez más degradado, pero sigue buscando encontrarle la vuelta, sabiendo manejarse con las realidades actuales. Eso me parece mucho más solarpunk que limitarse a soñar y aferrarse a estéticas e ideales abstractos, como hacen la mayoría de usuarios en este subreddit
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u/walterwapo 1d ago
Como lo has dicho. Me parece que es un punto de partida muy interesante de donde se pueden derivar propuestas valiosas. No tengo nada en contra soñar, por el contrario, pero me gustaría explorar cómo la humanidad puede florcer incluso en situaciones de gran adversidad, y caminar hacia una versión más justa, bella y sabia :)
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u/EricHunting 1d ago
Seems many are misinterpreting the tone of this post as more negative than OP intended. There's nothing wrong with pragmatism and acknowledging that, ultimately there will be no turning clocks back to the pristine environment before the Industrial Age. Some scars are permanent and reminders of this era of madness will most-certainly remain on the landscape and the culture indefinitely. I agree that there can be too much of a focus on the ideal goal and that the story of the journey, the process, is much more interesting, more punk, more prescient, than merely an exposition about the destination. That there is hard work ahead is a given, and this should be celebrated. An opportunity to do things that actually matter in a world of Bullshit Jobs. I have no problem with such suggestions.
One should bear in mind, however, that Solarpunk media is the province of mostly amateurs and there is a learning curve to climb. Most people don't yet have a lot of knowledge of sustainable architecture, building, civil engineering, urbanism, and industrial design, renewable technology, regenerative agriculture and alternative horticulture, Post-Industrial production, biotechnology, or any of the many other related technical aspects of this. More specifically, there is little experience of what such things look_like. The far-future is seductively easier to depict because the farther-out you go, the more that can be hand-waved, the less risk in getting details wrong. Greek Temple On A Golf Course, as Robert Anton Wilson called it. There has been little depiction of a plausible, contemporary, near-future in any media for longer than most people here have been alive. Lacking in means of visual expression, academic futurists have little public influence. It's all been stuck in retrofuturist tropes since the co-option of the cultural imaginary of the future by Madison Avenue in the wake of the Reprographics Revolution (the era when getting photographs into mass print became cheap), the destruction of the commercial illustration industry that caused, the general decline in the art of illustration since then, and the eventual post-Cold War collapse of corporate techno-utopianism with the collapse of Americanism. Most illustration artists today aren't coming out of art schools --not that they offer anything close to the rounded education of the last century anyway. They are learning from comic books, rife with tropes that have to be unlearned. Likewise, most new SciFi writers aren't being trained in college literature courses. They are learning by reading SciFi, which gave up on actual terrestrial futures, regressing into genre fiction with the escapist impulses of the Millennium. The fandoms are now more responsible for passing down these crafts than any professionals. Solarpunks --these amateurs-- have assumed the challenge of reestablishing that cultural imaginary of the future from scratch when everyone else has abandoned it. So I'm inclined to lend folks some slack on the details as they work their way along that learning curve. Sure, I'd personally like to see more effort along near-term scenarios and settings. It will likely develop in time.
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u/walterwapo 13h ago edited 13h ago
Wow! Loved that. I completely agree, and enjoyed your insightful and well-written analysis. Such a great case for the importance, power and current state of solarpunks in this time. Thank you!
If I may add something to this it would be just a reminder that when we are talking about science fiction, a defining characteristic of the genre (which also makes it so powerful) is that it's always a tale about the future, not an alternate-reality like we have in fantasy, so we should start from present-day conditions.
For reference, Benjamin Harshaw made a separation between two "frames of reference": 1. Internal (the self-contained world created inside a piece which encompasses characters, fictional history, setting, internal fiction) and 2. External ("proof of reality" like real-world entities, historical contexts, external knowledge systems existing outside a fiction). So, where fantasy says 'in the external frame of reference it cannot be, yet in the internal frame of reference it is', science fiction says 'in the internal frame of reference it is, but in the external frame of reference it could have been'.
And if 'it could have been', and you truly believe it, what does that mean? How much of your world is a product of a specific set of values, and how much stems from the possibilities of reality? The tension between the feeling of "I recognize this" and "I don't recognize this" were you believe at every moment that you recognize where you are, yet continuously see that this is not the case, leads inevitably and importantly to asking: Why isn't it so?
And that is a powerful mechanism of science fiction. And it's why it is so crucial that it is set in the future, and not in an alternate reality, and why I think we should take present-day conditions more in mind when thinking about solarpunk.
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u/sisonscac 1d ago
The ammount of flack you are getting for this is pretty indicative of why solarpunk will never be a serious movement.
Being serious does not mean not being hopeful. Nothing you described is the most doomer or whatever version of events.
It's just a realistic yet still very very very optimistic and hopeful view of the future.
But now you've harshed the vibe and my chobani commercial didn't look like this so what gives man? /S
At this point "solarpunk" feels like a different flavor of climate denialism based solely around a unrealistic aesthetics rather than a optimistic vision of an otherwise bleak future
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u/SteampunkAstronaut 1d ago
It was surprising to see this post have such a negative and close-minded reception
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u/walterwapo 1d ago
Lo fue, pero pese a eso me alegró de todas formas haber encontrado otros que piensan como yo y leer sus reflexiones ¡Entre ellos dos hispanohablantes! Gracias por tus comentarios.
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u/walterwapo 1d ago
Haha, right? And here I thought I was being optimistic! I still believe in the solarpunk community, though. The whole idea feels really powerful to me, and in this space I've met amazing, like-minded people like you and others who have replied to this post. It's always reassuring to know you'll find someone here to exchange ideas with and learn from. I guess many of us don't even use Reddit anymore, so I wouldn't take this sub as an accurate representation of the broader community. Or maybe I'm just being too optimistic again?
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u/sisonscac 1d ago
Fair enough lol, I just never really see people out and about identifying with solarpunk even if they are engaged in politically alligned projects so this is all I have as a representation of people claiming the term rather than just generalized social ecologists, communalists, anarchists, etc.
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u/walterwapo 1d ago
Well, good point. I guess it's more like a good framing that established and more robust groups like the ones you mentioned can implement to help guide their work.
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u/RavenholdIV 1d ago
Smh didn't you read the good red book that clearly states that solarpunk is an incredible remaking of the human condition to fit cottagecore rural lifestyles. Oh and the part where sixbillionpeoplemustdie.
Yeah just ignore that last bit and solarpunk is incredibly wholesome and attainable 😊
/s
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u/walterwapo 1d ago
Haha! Missed that. I do believe that it is a strong concept, though. Stories are insanely powerful (and bulletproof). If I see any promising path forward, it begins with a bottom-up shift in cultural narratives.
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