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A Solarpunk Manifesto

• omnibrain 5y ago
  I used to enjoy my cyberpunk and other dystopias like the next guy. But to be honest, nowadays the world is bleak enough and even classic utopias like Star Trek grow stale or turn into dystopias. I like the fresh and friendly new vision of a livable future Solarpunk provides.
  • the-dude 5y ago
    Let me tell you about the 70ies and 80ies.
    • sha256kira 5y ago
      yes... go on?
      • the-dude 5y ago
        First we were all gonna die a horrible death in a nuclear armageddon. When that didn't happen, all forests would die due to acid rain and we would all suffocate. When that didn't happen the hole in the ozon layer was discovered and we would all die of skin cancer. I must have forgotten some.
        • sha256kira 5y ago
          Thats such an excellent succinct counterpoint to all the doomer nihilism we tend to slip into on HN. I feel like this should be on some kind of open source tshirt or commemorative plate.
        • TaylorAlexander 5y ago
          Those... are all problems that would have happened if we didn't change our behavior. And luckily we did. Well, except the forests are still being destroyed.
          • guscost 5y ago
            I don’t believe that claim at all.
            • TaylorAlexander 5y ago
              I mean, obviously nuclear war was averted because we ended the cold war (we changed our behavior). I suppose I could be misinformed but I believe the hole in the ozone layer was fixed by banning CFCs (we changed our behavior)? I know less about acid rain. We are continuing to destroy forests.
              • duskwuff 5y ago
                Acid rain was the result of air pollution containing nitrogen and sulfur oxides, primarily from industrial sources, but also from vehicles. Strict emissions controls have largely solved this problem in developed countries.
              • guscost 5y ago
                > I mean, obviously nuclear war was averted because we ended the cold war (we changed our behavior). I had a very spirited argument the other day about whether a unipolar world is actually more stable than a multipolar world, or not. The threat of nuclear war is ever-present, even if it is less serious now than it was in the 60s. I’m not sure where you get “obviously” in this claim. > I believe the hole in the ozone layer was fixed by banning CFCs The alternative explanation (which I’m sure you will be able to find a “debunking” of somewhere) is that ozone is regenerated very quickly, and the “hole” (it really was never more than a “thin spot”) in the Antarctic has improved because the South Pole is exposed to just a little more solar energy now. CFCs probably do make some difference, but they are very heavy molecules and would not accumulate much in the upper atmosphere: https://news.mit.edu/2021/cfc-atmosphere-ozone-0518 https://news.mit.edu/2021/cfc-atmosphere-ozone-0518 (Note: That article has some data that could support this theory, but it does not reach the same conclusion. You are nevertheless encouraged to think for yourself.)
                • 5y ago
        • roughly 5y ago
          You understand that a huge amount of work and effort went into handling those problems, right? Like, they weren’t not problems, we just actually did something about them... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_the_Non-Proliferation_of_Nuclear_Weapons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_the_Non-Proliferatio... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_Helsinki_Protocol_on_the_Reduction_of_Sulphur_Emissions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_Helsinki_Protocol_on_the_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol
          • mrtksn 5y ago
            Not understanding that is at the core of the teachings of the alt-right thought leaders. It's actually formalised under the concept of "The Adams Law of Slow-Moving Disasters"[0] by the Dilbert's creator, who himself is very active in these politics, which is ironic because the law actually recognises the existence of the diverted threats but the application of the law on the current dangers is preached as "relax, nothing will happen no action needed". You can add the Covid-19 to the list when all this is over. They will say, "We were all gonna die but only 4 million people died. It was yet another fear-mongering by INSERT_YOUR_FAVORITE_BOOGYMAN". The 4 million number to be updated, when it was at 50K the argument was "They say it's extremely dangerous but the flu actually killed more people". It's bizarre. It's almost like a form of douchebaggery where you put all your chips on the idea that somehow it will be fixed by experts and simultaneously demand that the solution that the experts propose should not involve you in any way and if that solution alters your current or future way of life, the solution proposal will result in harassment to its creator. [0]: https://www.scottadamssays.com/2015/01/22/adams-law-of-slow-moving-disasters-update/ https://www.scottadamssays.com/2015/01/22/adams-law-of-slow-...
            • the-dude 5y ago
              I never said or meant such a thing. OP stated that our future was bleak. I offered to tell tales from 70ies and 80ies. Whatever you are projecting is yours.
              • mrtksn 5y ago
        • coldtea 5y ago
          We were also all going to freeze in the "New Ice Age".
          • smolder 5y ago
            Where normally this gets brought up as some reason we shouldn't trust climate science, this is actually a good example of how media sensationalizes shaky science to get people riled up. (The cooling theory, at its height of popularity, coexisted with a larger body of research predicting warming. I.e. it wasn't well supported.)
            • coldtea 5y ago
              The problem is this is based on "it's different this time", which doesn't preclude hearing the same kind of excuses in the future: "how early 21st century climate change stories was mostly sensionalization by the media, and real scientists differed (what with "global weirding")" and so on.
            • exporectomy 5y ago
              A recent survey in New Zealand found that 7% of people believed the worst case credible predicted sea level rise by 2100 is 15 meters or more, which is wrong. More people underestimated it too. But it shows that media sensationalism is probably leading people to ridiculous beliefs about climate change too. People saying climate change is a disaster, crisis, catastrophe, etc. use those words because they haven't got a clue what's going to happen and are just hyped up on fear. The media sensationalizes it out of proportion while the solid science is relatively boring. There's also media sensationalizing it as a false bogeyman which encourages denialism. But either way, most people are just tools of the media because it's so much easier and more entertaining than reading dry science papers.
              • tomjakubowski 5y ago
                > found that 7% of people believed the worst case credible predicted sea level rise by 2100 is 15 meters or more, which is wrong 7%? Not very many. I would imagine much of it is random / thoughtless guessing, as opposed to someone strongly believing it to be true. edit: presuming it is the survey from this paper, they didn't offer respondents an "I don't know" option. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0254348 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
  • GuB-42 5y ago
    Utopias like solarpunk look nice but how does it make good stories? It is hard to make stories without some form of conflict, and being a utopia, solarpunk is defined by the lack of it. I mean, if it is perfect, there is no way for improvement, it is not surprising that utopias go stale. Dystopias are the natural result of pushing utopias too far. Once you have finished describing the wonderful world of joy, equality, optimism and forest-like cities, you will necessarily end up with the question "what happened to assholes?". Are they punished like criminals? Is their behavior "adjusted"? Did we engineer the asshole gene out? And the more you dig in, the more your utopia starts to look like a dystopia. As expected, these themes have been covered at length by many sci-fi authors.
    • pyrale 5y ago
      > Utopias like solarpunk look nice but how does it make good stories? Feel-good stories make for good stories, like a good love story or a fantasy book about a young protagonist overcoming obstacles. There's nothing wrong with escapism from time to time. But indeed, there's not even a trace amount of punk in it.
    • cyberpunk 5y ago
      Ach I dunno, did you read any of the Culture novels by Banks? His post scarcity human/machine setup the closest thing to a utopia I can think of, but there are still a good load of novels there :)
      • detaro 5y ago
        A good chunk of those are about the conflicts/interactions of the utopia with the rest of the universe, at least as the backdrop. (Which also works for solarpunk stories)
        • cyberpunk 5y ago
          I don’t think it’s possible not to have a bit of a soft spot for the affront..
      • lazide 5y ago
  • cyberpunk 5y ago
    Our doom is going to be far less entertaining than a good Gibson novel I suspect. Maybe a good time to teach the kids krav and how to wire a solar panel to a car battery eh. :/
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• twoknee 5y ago
  Hugged to death https://archive.is/tTLWR https://archive.is/tTLWR
• TaylorAlexander 5y ago
  The site is throwing a 503 error, but there is a good archive link here: https://web.archive.org/web/20210717211859/http://www.re-des.org/a-solarpunk-manifesto/ https://web.archive.org/web/20210717211859/http://www.re-des... Looks like a great manifesto. I'd also like to share my real world solarpunk project to those interested: https://community.twistedfields.com/t/a-closer-look-at-acorn-our-open-source-precision-farming-rover/108 https://community.twistedfields.com/t/a-closer-look-at-acorn...
  • sha256kira 5y ago
    omg I love that farming bot project! perfect concrete example after reading that manifesto :^) super inspired
    • TaylorAlexander 5y ago
      Thank you so much! I wrote my own manifesto some years ago. http://tlalexander.com/machine/ http://tlalexander.com/machine/
      • sha256kira 5y ago
        Any other projects (especially software or web related) you can recommend in this same spirit? Or maybe hackathons / conventions / irc / discord communities etc. for software engineers interested in getting involved?
        • TaylorAlexander 5y ago
          I thought about this, but unfortunately I am so focused on my own work I often miss the work of others.
  • exporectomy 5y ago
    Very exciting farm robot! I know weeding is a very labor intensive job on farms so I hope you can help eliminate that entire industry! What other tasks would this be useful for? I think most of farming for basic crops like grain is already very low-labor now, isn't it?
• tomcooks 5y ago
  > has room for spirituality and science to coexist No thanks It's also not clear to me how one would combine tech with ecology, especially solar
• Animats 5y ago
  1800s age-of-sail/frontier living (but with more bicycles) About 2/3 of the world population has to go for that. We're in good shape on energy and in good shape on food. Both can come from a wide variety of sources and locations. The long term sustainability problems are further out, running out of copper, cobalt, etc. Recycling will get some of it, but not all of it, back.
  • omnibrain 5y ago
    That's about the aesthetics for the art/visions. Not a goal how the world has to look.
    • Animats 5y ago
      Right. Like the Chobani commercial.[1] [1] https://youtu.be/MS-sJQkr0H4 https://youtu.be/MS-sJQkr0H4
      • omnibrain 5y ago
        The production company posted an extended cut on twitter: https://twitter.com/thelinestudio/status/1413543900862627842 https://twitter.com/thelinestudio/status/1413543900862627842
      • omnibrain 5y ago
        Looks like corporate greenwashing. It actually has some nice aspects. The windmill zeppelins are unlikely to work, but the drones and harvest machine hint to some (advanced) mechanization in producing crops, so no unrealistic "we do everything by hand, even when we can only support like 10% of the population this way".
        • shkkmo 5y ago
          It seems pretty clear to me that high labor farming can use land area and water more efficiently per unit of food produced.
• sxp 5y ago
  Reddit's https://www.reddit.com/r/solarpunk/ https://www.reddit.com/r/solarpunk/ is a good place start if you want an optimistic view of the future that embraces technology rather than blames it for all of society's ills. And my favorite poem of all time is https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/09/weekend-poem-all-watched-over-by-machines-of-loving-grace/245251/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/09/weeke... There is a strong solarpunk vs cyberpunk split in art and sci-fi which provides some beautiful contrasts: https://mobile.twitter.com/ScootFoundation/status/1330271990805110785 https://mobile.twitter.com/ScootFoundation/status/1330271990...
  • sha256kira 5y ago
    Great links! Other related rabbit holes to go down might be Adam Curtis (kinda obvious) and Liu Cixin. Anyone else have any good living scifi authors indirectly or directly dealing with related ideas?
    • varjag 5y ago
      Kim Stanley Robinson
      • sha256kira 5y ago
        Awesome recommendation thank you! Looks like New York 2140 is a perfect embodiment of what they were talking about in this manifesto.
  • pyrale 5y ago
    Well, the split is probably related to how solarpunk isn't really related to the punk movement. Cyberpunk art usually describes dystopian environments, and the way individuals and communities adapt to is and subvert it. On the other hand, solarpunk art is an overtly optimistic movement, which leaves very little room for a confrontational political message. The example tweet you cited is pretty, with a "just add trees" city, where the necessary trappings of a vertical city (mass transportation, crowds, pollution, etc) are absent. This sounds a bit critical of the solarpunk movement, but it's honestly hard for me to reconcile the hard problems I face and what I see in this movement. Merely adding the "punk" affix is not going to transform what would probably better be called solar-hippie.
• okareaman 5y ago
  I grew up in the 60's and read a lot of Science Fiction in the 70's as a teen. I found a lot of optimistic takes on the future, which are largely being born out: incredible advances in medical technology, home computers and now computers that fit in a pocket, affordable ability to communicate, video conference or travel anywhere in the world, the failure of totalitarian communism, amazing space telescopes, civilian space travel, phasing out fossil fuels for solar and other renewable energy and so on. I'm optimistic we will invent technology to deal with climate change and food/water shortages. Yet after the Vietnam war, race riots, Charles Manson, the oil embargo and 12% inflation, the media just loves to promote doom and gloom about the future. I think anxious people shop more to distract themselves. Sometimes I feel like a lone optimist.
  • sebmellen 5y ago
    That feeling of being a lone optimist is ever-present for me as well. Sometimes I think it’s just a lack of real transcendent and great art. If science fiction’s heyday is over, which artists are seeing and imagining the future today? My personal biases incline me to think psychedelics have an important role to play.
    • exporectomy 5y ago
      Yet another lone optimist here too :) I grew up with a TV show called "Beyond 2000" about the miraculous things the future would bring. The future was widely seen as exciting and better than the present. But nowadays, popular culture seems pretty negative about it, as does science fiction. Maybe the really influential technologies like cars, transistors, computers, and space travel have finished their initial rapid growth and over-hyped stage? But why isn't machine learning or some of the new biotech technologies taking its place? They're as exciting as buggery to me!
  • Hammershaft 5y ago
    It seems to me the pace of technological improvement over the last 20 years has gotten smoked by the pace of environmental degradation.
• prvc 5y ago
  What was the last successful artistic genre where theory preceded practice?
  • burlesona 5y ago
    Arguably, modernism. See the work of Le Corbusier, in particular, which was hugely influential in the US and led to the vision of cities as "towers in the park." Now, that didn't turn out so great, because it turns out the real world is gritty and messy and expensive and difficult to deal with, but the art absolutely preceded the attempted implementation.
• newbie789 5y ago
  This is interesting. I’ve personally only ever seen the word “solarpunk” here on HN and on sites linked to on here. I’m kind of curious as to how big this community is. For example, I learned about steampunk when I asked about why somebody had copper gears on their hat and somebody explained it to me. I learned about cyberpunk from, well, growing up in the 90s. They both immediately evoke specific aesthetics unique to them, and it’s not hard to think of seminal movies/models/novels/music for each one. I do not have this association with solarpunk. I wasn’t unable to picture the solarpunk aesthetics based off the list of bullet points aside from Miyazaki with a lot of bikes, which I doubt is the whole thing. What are some examples of solarpunk art? Who are some solarpunk evangelists? Does this actually exist outside of a phrase used by posters on Hacker News? Edit: I have looked further into this and it’s just… odd. I don’t mean to sound ridiculous but I’m still kind of confused about as to whether this is an actual movement or a very small handful of people trying to astroturf some anime-techno-utopia philosophy (that seems to explicitly seems to forbid any criticism of tech) while using the language of folks that have actually created art and formed good-faith communities over decades. It kind of reads like something a bunch of tech CEOs and VCs cooked up as a “philosophy” in which they’re the ultimate saviors and criticizing tech is the ultimate sin. I mean, even if this is some goofy Elon-Musk-Stoned-Shouting-At-Everyone nonsense, whoever decided to pursue this as an aesthetic and a movement didn’t bother to come up with anything beyond Miyazaki? Couldn’t even pick out what a solarpunk hat or jacket or computer would look like before shipping this “ideology” off to the presses?
  • milofeynman 5y ago
    I read it for the first time an hour ago from a different article. https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/drawing-pictures-of-cities https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/drawing-pictures-of-cities Presumably that article is why the OP showed up on HN
    • newbie789 5y ago
      Thanks! These are some very specific notes about how cities can be more appealing. I’m still kinda confused about what “solarpunk” is aside from some loosely worded articles with anime screenshots.
• anthk 5y ago
  We need more help on solar powered computers such as the Raspberry Pi from https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/about.html https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/about.html. Also, forget streaming. Use youtube-dl and streamripper (streaming music) everywhere you can.
  • kenlamarnoid 5y ago
    Thank you for posting this. I'm posting this comment from a raspberry pi 4 with a USB attached SSD powered directly from DC, powered via a completely off-grid solar setup (discounting the cell networks). This will be helpful. Also, thanks for proving anything useful or halfway truthful on HN can be found at the bottom of the thread, grayed out as normal. This crowd really doesn't like anything they can't empathize with, which really shines a light on the shallowness of their ideals towards 'diversity' or the general empathic capabilities of this lot. Projection at it's finest. Oh yeah, I just about forgot: dang, you are a lizard; stay in your desert please.
• l33tbro 5y ago
  Some great principles, but where do they stand on decentralisation of power? It's hard to see the fuzzy feelings of this movement not being co-opted by state/corporate power to solidify their control of resources.
  • jonnycomputer 5y ago
    Cynicism and fear of a dystopian future can also be harnessed to consolidate power and pursue self-interested goals. Hell that's what exactly what Trump did: harness fear of immigrants and distrust of institutions to create a political movement willing to storm the capitol based on lies about fraud.
  • worldsayshi 5y ago
    I feel like solarpunk is largely anti authoritarian.
• etaioinshrdlu 5y ago
  Sadly, this sounds a little bit like Anarchism. We won't stop climate change without stopping the polluters, or massive geoengineering. So the solution must involve large-scale coordination and collaboration - the opposite of Anarchism.
  • makeworld 5y ago
    Anarchism as a political theory can involve large-scale coordination and collaboration.
    • geraltofrivia 5y ago
      Would you suggest me some readings on anarchism as a political theory?
      • RedXIII 5y ago
        Check out Murray Bookchin's "The Ecology of Freedom"
      • lioeters 5y ago
        Perhaps this is a good start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Goldman#Philosophy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Goldman#Philosophy
  • Proven 5y ago
    They do stop the polluters. Keywords: socialism, post-capitalism. An end to private property. They can stop and permit whatever they wish. It's a dictatorship of a photovoltaic proletariat - much worse than anarchy. These community organizers would need a little bit of crony capitalism at the very beginning (Solyndra/Solar City-style), to get the production of solar cells going. Later it could be done by for free - as long as the machinery works - by the property-less Solarpunk population. > Would you suggest me some readings on anarchism as a political theory? David Friedman, Murray Rothbard, etc. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXWFWIM8OCI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXWFWIM8OCI https://mises.org/search-mises?search=anarchism https://mises.org/search-mises?search=anarchism
• slicktux 5y ago
  Is there anything for nuclear??
  • bobsmooth 5y ago
    That's just utopia.
  • astrobe_ 5y ago
    The only proper use of the last nuclear plants is to provide the huge quantities of energy necessary to capture back CO2, undoing the damage of the last two centuries. Then they'll can be put to rest.
  • npteljes 5y ago
    Just add "punk". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk_derivatives#Atompunk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk_derivatives#Atompunk
• hans863 5y ago
  Is bill gates now a solar punk as well?
• chipotle_coyote 5y ago
  A few comments here have been along the lines "how can you make good stories without conflicts," which I think is missing what makes something "solarpunk" rather than just "utopian". Obviously, there's a lot of ways you can express this, but I'm going to use the words of the linked manifesto, judiciously edited to focus on how you bring stories out of it: What does a sustainable civilization look like, and how can we get there? Solarpunk is concerned with the struggles en route to a better world. The "punk" in solarpunk is about rebellion, counterculture, post-capitalism, decolonialism, and enthusiasm. It is about going in a different direction than the mainstream, which is increasingly going in a scary direction. [The solarpunk] future must involve repurposing and creating new things from what we already have. A solarpunk story isn't about how nice utopia is once it's achieved. If anything, what makes it punk is the recognition that if you want utopia, you are going to have to fight like hell to get as close as possible, that a "true" utopia is by definition impossible, and that "as close to utopia as we can get" isn't a finish line you get to cross over and bask in for eternity. Staying there is going to take work. And the solarpunk idea of utopia even as described in my little snippet -- let alone the whole linked manifesto -- is certainly not universally shared. There will be people who will fight, very hard, to keep that particular vision of utopia from happening. And that, you can definitely build a story around.
  • rainonmoon 5y ago
    Where in the aesthetic or canon of solarpunk is this "fighting like hell" evoked or depicted?
• dbish 5y ago
  I do think we need groups willing to be optimistic about technology. Some of this falls under what I always called techno-optimism, and what I hope to follow in my own vision for the future. Love to see it
• _Microft 5y ago
  If you want lots and lots of solar punk aesthetics, check out https://solarpunk-aesthetic.tumblr.com https://solarpunk-aesthetic.tumblr.com The images of some of the buildings, clothing or sceneries are simply gorgeous.
  • CodeGlitch 5y ago
    I like the terracotta + candle trick: https://64.media.tumblr.com/372a3c79331f497794c9dc0df84a0566/a6c3d9c5372d7439-40/s1280x1920/cfb79fd461b02546dd6df2f29b04f8aaaf3219e7.png https://64.media.tumblr.com/372a3c79331f497794c9dc0df84a0566... (Apparently heats up a room quite well in the event of powerloss)
    • _Microft 5y ago
      That's one thing I made a mental note of as well!
    • balfirevic 5y ago
      Does terracotta somehow magically increase the power output of the candle?
      • _Microft 5y ago
        No, I think the effect is just that the pot is being heated up and will radiatively make it feel warmer in the vincinity because otherwise all the heat would be convectionally transported to the ceiling where you would feel little of it.
        • balfirevic 5y ago
          Possibly (although I'd say unlikely, considering the heat output of the candle), but it certainly won't heat up the room.
          • _Microft 5y ago
            OK, so after some googling I can say that my explanation was actually correct. A single ordinary tealight candle has a heat output of 30-40W though which is way too low to keep a room warm but the radiative heat from the pot indeed does heat nearby objects (or people) much like a patio/mushroom heater does. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tealight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tealight (German) https://www.kreativ-bastelstube.de/teelichtofen-heizleistung-kerzenheizung-waemeleistung https://www.kreativ-bastelstube.de/teelichtofen-heizleistung...
• xondono 5y ago
  It's weird to see this: The “punk” in Solarpunk is about rebellion, counterculture, post-capitalism, decolonialism and enthusiasm. It is about going in a different direction than the mainstream, which is increasingly going in a scary direction. And immediately following the most mainstream and established values of our time: - Solarpunk emphasizes environmental sustainability and social justice. - Solarpunk recognizes science fiction as not just entertainment but as a form of activism. - Solarpunk culture includes all cultures, religions, abilities, sexes, genders and sexual identities. - Solarpunk is diverse, has room for spirituality and science to coexist, is beautiful [..]
  • SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
    I'll believe that these are "the most mainstream and established values of our time" if and when a sweeping "green new deal" style economic overhaul policy is passed and implemented in a majority of rich countries.
  • npteljes 5y ago
    "Punk" is meaningless in these contexts, and it should not be used, or at the very least it should be admitted. It's just riding on the popularity and the brand-recognition of "cyberpunk".
• redsummer 5y ago
  Sustainable? Eco-friendly? Community? Just join the Amish?
• kerkeslager 5y ago
  I don't know enough to say this for sure, but my impression is that solarpunk emerged as a drop in replacement for the (sexist) "helpless white girl" trope in cyberpunk. That is to say, the a solarpunk person or community exists inside of a cyberpunk work as an innocent thing which motivates the cyberpunk hero to protect it or seek revenge for its destruction. Just as with the "helpless white girl" trope, the solarpunks in a cyberpunk work lack agency--they're just victims whose primary purpose is to act as motivators for the characters with agency. This is sometimes cringefully underscored by the solarpunk character also being a helpless white girl (with all the sexism that implies). In the better cases of solarpunk-in-cyberpunk, this may initially come across as condescending, but realize that in context, the cyberpunk hero is only putting on a show of agency. The nihilism of cyberpunk comes from the fact that the cyberpunk hero's actions are ultimately pointless. The capitalist overlords in a cyberpunk work are like Greek gods: immortal. In this context, the cyberpunk heroes' struggles are ultimately in vain--the capitalist overlord may not always win, but the cyberpunk hero always loses. Given this, the solarpunks' decision to carve out some small happiness for themselves before their inevitable destruction seems more reasonable--the cyberpunk hero is a tragic hero whose fatal flaw is that they can't admit defeat, and have to suffer their entire lives struggling ineffectually against powers beyond their control. In a way that's an insight into why I identify so viscerally with cyberpunk: I want to be solarpunk but I'm too cynical. I don't think that's a bad thing, but it's certainly not an enjoyable thing--I think ultimately I'm happiest when I can be a little less cyberpunk and a little more solarpunk.
• novaleaf 5y ago
  Not optimistic, but a great sci fi novel dealing with sustainable tech: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Windup_Girl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Windup_Girl
• Irate 5y ago
  Lame. This is just the United Nation's global homogeniety agenda
• Barrin92 5y ago
  >Instead of embracing retrofuturism, solarpunk looks completely to the future This to me is an interesting point I'm skeptical about. In recent times, among some people like Nicholas Taleb and a few others there has been an appreciation for the culture of the Levant or Mediterranean that's about the commercial or city-state and pluralistic attitude of that historical region, some people even trying to start charter city movements, and so on. It feels like Solarpunk draws heavily from that aesthetic, with its pluralism, mixture of science, diversity and faith and maritime and mercantile culture with some more focus on ecology and technology on top. That to me very much is a form of retro-futurism, albeit drawing from a cultural background most people will be slightly less familiar with. The place of humans in Solarpunk seems very traditional, in harmony with nature, in human-scale cities, often including artisanal designs with a tech twist, but it very much does not seem future-facing. Even the punk label I think is questionable because very little about it seems transgressive or disruptive. Solarpunk to me very much has the same sort of parochial, escapist feel of pastoral American utopianism, fleeing back to nature, except that it comes without the Christian or colonial undertones and is explicitly diverse.
  • Proven 5y ago
    How on earth does it draw on pluralism when it prescribes socialism and the use of solar energy? In anarchocapitalism you're free to own and run your solar powered city. And it can be socialist, too. That's pluralism. In this version only post-capitalistic, solar-powered cities would be permitted. And we'd have to have One Solar Government's employees have free access to everyone's property so that counter revolutionary elements that sustain themselves with fossil fuels can be rooted out. As Lord Acton said: > Socialism ... requires the strongest execution of power – power sufficient to interfere with property.
• sticksorscones 5y ago
  We're currently releasing a solarpunk novel through Substack in a serialized weekly format. Like many of the comments here have mentioned, we were interested in addressing the issues of how to tell a story in a sustainable world. I'd love to hear some feedback, especially since we're having to edit it ourselves. https://kbbailey.substack.com https://kbbailey.substack.com