12 ms·

Solarpunk

• digdugdirk 2y ago
  One thought that keeps popping into my head every time I see something solarpunk related - Solarpunk is proto Star Trek. It's the closest concept we have to that post scarcity utopia, albeit on a very small scale, and likely completely unsustainable for any decently sized chunk of the global population. But it makes me wonder what the best way to chart that progress would be, and what the present day equivalent for quality of life it would be best to aim at based on current levels of technology.
  • autoexec 2y ago
    It seems like Trek handwaved away or ignored a lot of the issues that weren't directly solved by replicators. Joseph Sisko had a restaurant on earth. The idea of a guy who loves to cook for people having a place where anyone can walk in off the street, order from a menu, and eat for free is easy to envision. The problem comes when you start to think about how there's a very finite amount of physical space. Questions like who decided that he should have that property for his restaurant vs anyone else who wanted to do something with it just never come up. I'm interested in seeing Solarpunk grow so that we can see different people's ideas on how issues like this can be addressed without these fictional worlds becoming dystopian.
    • nullstyle 2y ago
      To me, it seemed pretty clear that in the Federation context a restaurant or a bar is a cultural space and its value would be beyond its ability to produce meals for hungry people
    • protocolture 2y ago
      Yeah. Star Trek is very "Look at this cool society" without "This is how we got there" I dont know if it is still canon, but the vulcans supposedly simply "fixed" earths economy and transitioned humans away from money. Its very surface level. They never go into depth about how that was done or what the downsides were. Even in say, Arthur C Clarke's childhoods end, there were details about the how and why people resisted the overlords.
      • rkagerer 2y ago
        Some episodes explored steps along the journey. Eg. DS9's Past Tense where they're taken back in time to a Sanctuary District confronts poverty and homelessness.
      • mistermann 2y ago
        [dead]
    • harimau777 2y ago
      That part that bothered me is that everyone in the Federation appears to have more or less the same worldview. That struck me as sort of a cop out versus depicting the characters having to navigate different worldviews/religions/ideologies making up the Federation.
      • autoexec 2y ago
        Most of that kind of conflict was usually framed in terms of human vs alien. Sometimes it was still within the federation (Worf trying to get someone to kill him when he was injured and likely wouldn't fully recover for example), but a lot of it was dealing with outsiders like humans having to deal with Ferengi who had very different ideology when it came to things like greed or women's rights. For outsiders, while the show was pretty careful about expressing a respect for differing cultural views, they did seem to side one way or the other. When there was disagreement within the federation it tended to be a single person or small fraction with an unpopular opinion (like the guy who wanted to disassemble and reverse-engineer Data) creating conflict vs a sizable faction.
        • whearyou 2y ago
          It seems to me the assumption of consensus with disagreement coming from small fringe factions mirrored much of the American experience during the TNG era.
        • dguest 2y ago
          I sort of thought that was the whole point of the show: the humans live in a liberal utopia according to western progressives and the aliens are everyone else in the world they have to get along with. It let the writers comment on contemporary issues with adjustable knobs for violence, sex, and laser beams, in hopes that the right cocktail could dislodge people from from their instinctive association with a political identity and let them learn something.
    • slightwinder 2y ago
      > The problem comes when you start to think about how there's a very finite amount of physical space. It's not finite in a practical sense, especially if you are a space faring civilization. Certain space is treasured and in demand, but space usage overall comes down to how well you can utilize it (how tall your buildings can be), and how you access it. And in Star Trek, they have transporter, allowing people to live everywhere and still visiting most places casually for breakfast. Even today, humankind on earth is not going out of space. Instead, we have problems with finding places which are easier to utilize for the majority, or which are popular for cultural reasons. But the first one is no problem in Star Trek, and the second one seems to have reached a peaceful solution. > Questions like who decided that he should have that property for his restaurant vs anyone else who wanted to do something with it just never come up. Who decides today that someone should have a certain space? And I'm not talking about money, welfare-projects exists today too. Every society has their organization, why should this different just because they have no money by our understanding? And why do you think it's a privilege for Sisko to open a restaurant that others have not? I would think everyone can open a restaurant if they wish, but they simply do not wish to do this if they have no monetary stress doing it. At the end, a restaurant is hard work, not everyone is willing to put up with this.
  • Wickedflickr 2y ago
    Sustainability for large populations is kind've a cornerstone of solarpunk, alongside decentralization and horizontal power to empower individuals and communities against corporation and government control. There's a lot of discussion on how to implement solarpunk in the here and now over on the fediverse, like Lemmy, but a condensed version of short term goals tends to be: 1. Switch to solar and wind on a mass scale, including personal solar such as the type described in low-tech magazine, combined with reducing energy use as much as is reasonable. 2. Embrace permaculture urbanism, where energy and food production take place in cities. The most well researched proposal put forward is by the Edenicity project. 3. Replace as many cars as possible by implementing more robust and far reaching public transport and bicycle infrastructure in urban and rural areas, more in line with the Netherlands. 4. Build new societal structures that are bottom up through mutual aid, to wean ourselves off corporatism and consumerism, and to develop community independence. None of those objectives are too far fetched, and would lay the groundwork for even more positive change.
    • Avicebron 2y ago
      I would also add that all of these would provide jobs, construction, high-level engineering, etc and any knock on benefit people with paying work contribute to their local/national economies would bring.
    • whearyou 2y ago
      I agree. But it has a similar aspirational quality, to me, as well thought out proposals for eg Moon colonization. I suppose the question left is overcoming the blocking path dependence - the method of mass action to get there.
      • Wickedflickr 2y ago
        Moon colonization requires billions or even trillions of capital all at once, and can only be done by elite experts in a very specialized field, with no practical gain to society toward solving or global warming. It would be an expense almost impossible to justify, and only corporations building the parts would truly benefit. Solarpunk, on the other hand, is accessible for an incredibly wide swath of people to contribute toward achieving, as a solarpunk life would actually save money while improving quality of life and mitigating global warming. Solar panels are within the financial reach of most parts of society, bicycles are far more affordable than cars, better zoning laws are only a stroke of a pen, gardening your food or creating a larger communal gardening area creates food resiliency while saving money, and again is within reach of almost all economic situations. It can be a big government program, but it scales down incredibly well compared to colonizing the moon, and I believe that is key to it being viable.
  • roughly 2y ago
    > completely unsustainable for any decently sized chunk of the global population I think the inherent critique in Solarpunk is that our current way of doing things is unsustainable for any decently-sized chunk of the global population - that climate change and general environmental collapse are signs that capitalism as we’ve run it so far cannot continue. If you take the critique at face value, it becomes less of a trade-off, because we don’t really have the thing we think we’re trading against: we’re not trading a successful capitalist future for a gamble on sustainability, we’re trying to find a successful future to begin with.
    • AstralStorm 2y ago
      The heart is in the right place, but the means to achieve it are incorrect and incomplete. We should at least try to experiment with various social, ecological and economical approaches, as we're currently being held stuck.
  • BirAdam 2y ago
    Once a replicator is invented, human economic systems don’t make any sense. In a society without scarcity, money is meaningless as anyone can have whatever he/she desires nearly instantly. Of course, there are great discussions around what this would do to people psychologically and thus what such a breakthrough would do to human civilization.
    • cpitman 2y ago
      A replicator still cannot give everyone a beachfront villa.
      • dv_dt 2y ago
        But a holodeck could
        • BonitaPersona 2y ago
          Okay so you get the holodeck villa, and I get the real beach villa (which also has a holodeck inside). Deal?
          • volemo 2y ago
            Ehm, everyone gets a holodeck, a replicator, and an abundance of energy to run them? Deal, take your beach villa, idc.
      • guy234 2y ago
        you could replicate another planet with just as many or more beachfronts
    • krapp 2y ago
      Replicators as depicted in Star Trek cannot exist in the real world because they violate the laws of physics.
      • cosmic_cheese 2y ago
• koolala 2y ago
  I miss like any form of social idealism.
  • sho_hn 2y ago
    I try to remember that the USA is the same country that made the 90s Star Trek I grew up with a mainstream hit.
    • dimator 2y ago
      this makes it all the more heartbreaking for those of us who grew up as teenagers, informed and molded by star Trek's techno optimism. I thought we (society) was on the right track then, at least making progress towards worthwhile things. now, all of that is just a faded memory, and society is turning into a zero sum shitscape
• arn3n 2y ago
  I truly love this aesthetic and it's vision of the future. Clean air, healthy food, empowered communities. Abundance without waste, progress without destruction, and equal opportunity without tyranny. This is the future that we should be developing software to enable. Instead, I'm frequently disappointed by the modern usages of software, which seem to cause excess waste, accelerate the destruction of our planet, and enable authoritarians. Maybe it's time to rethink what we're working towards.
  • layoric 2y ago
    Everything gets captured by capital.. This aesthetic resonates the same with me. Its partly what drove me to join a startup to do global solar radiation forecasting as first employee. Burnt myself out over 4 years, but built platform that enabled higher penetration of solar pv power into grids all over the world, and was successful in this. I left due to burn out and realizing that most of the customers we would talk to about large scale solar utility sites that wanted integration with the data were basically banks/finance/insurance companies trying to return a better yield, they didn't care how. After I left got bought out by a risk management company. Call me naive, but I went into it knowing solar power is _cheaper_, and the inability to measure how much solar energy was in an electricity network, and uncertainty about the generation were the main problems the startup was aiming to solve. The finance made it attractive to capital, I got that, partly why I was convinced it would succeed, but I underestimated how laser focused these groups are to "line go up". They would outsource everything because they were there as the money people, and have people in the meeting knowing just enough to gauge if project was on track for expectations of "line go up". Problem being is that the margins aren't there. Everytime a solar panel is added to an electricity network, the life time ROI for ALL panels in the network goes down. This is due to pushing down the price of electricity during the day. Eg, when oversupply occurs in the middle of the day (and they don't store it cause X is cheaper), it causes electricity markets to drive prices down and even negative, meaning the return of possible life time generated power for each panel also gets reduced. Saying all that, the adoption of renewables is growing at a rapid pace due to it being cheaper, but also slowed down by constant value extraction shenanigans.
    • 2y ago
• davidw 2y ago
  I could use some optimistic takes on the future. I read the news if I want dystopian. In everyday life, I do some local work to try and make housing more abundant and less impactful, but it's a small piece of the puzzle.
• GaggiX 2y ago
  It has never being cheaper to diy your solar installation with 500W solar panels at 100€ and 1Kwh lifepo4 cells at 100-80€.
  • Wickedflickr 2y ago
    You can even skip storage in many cases, which brings the cost of an installation down dramatically. Low-tech magazine has a great article on the concept.
  • kennyadam 2y ago
    Do you have any product/purchase info and links for that pricing please?
    • daemonologist 2y ago
      To get decent prices on solar panels you have to pick up from a local supplier (which at least here in the US is difficult because they cater primarily to professional installers); they're just too expensive to ship. Even then around here the cheapest panels are going to run at least ~$0.35/W, although you might be able to find used ones for less. Batteries are a little easier. For used in the US I'd take a look at https://batteryhookup.com/ https://batteryhookup.com/
  • bergie 2y ago
    Yup, solar panels are ridiculously cheap nowadays. In almost every case I've seen, the hardware to mount the panels has been more expensive than the panels themselves
  • ragebol 2y ago
    DIY solar install is much easier than I thought it would be, especially if you use micro-inverters.
• untrust 2y ago
  Future generations will probably look at our current housing and building design as barbaric and primitive. The fact that we build houses and skyscrapers covered in sunlight and place bricks instead of solar panels will dumbfound future generations. They will look at us and think "Man, these idiots really didn't understand free energy was all around them."
  • KPGv2 2y ago
    Well, you replace bricks every couple hundred years, but solar panels every 10–20, right? Also a 2000W solar panel is like $300 or something and it's half the size of a door. Unless a building is crowd-funded by the future tenants with the promise of no electrical costs, and also the future tenants expect to live like 100 more years, I can't see how this could happen, short of the eradication of private property and the government constructing these things.
    • Wickedflickr 2y ago
      Housing co-ops would be incentivized to implement those features. Our society should make it easier for co-op of all types to be created and thrive (such as through taxes), but especially worker owned and housing co-ops.
    • Chilko 2y ago
      I get where you're coming from, but let me correct some of your numbers for other readers: > you replace bricks every couple hundred years, but solar panels every 10–20, right? Old panels perhaps, but modern solar panels come with performance warranties that guarantee they will be producing >85% of their initial output after 30 yrs. > 2000W solar panel is like $300 or something and it's half the size of a door 2000W solar panels generally don't exist, so I assume that's a typo for 200W? Modern utility scale panels top out at ~700W with dimensions of 2.4 m x 1.3 m, however rooftop panels for commercial buildings are in the 500W range and ~ 2 x 1 m (so yeah about a door). International wholesale prices for these from Tier 1 manufacturers are now < $0.10 USD / W (although from what I understand more expensive in the USA).
    • Tepix 2y ago
• roughly 2y ago
  Becky Chambers’ “A Psalm for the Wild Built” is a nice dose of solarpunk fiction if you need a pick-me-up: https://bookshop.org/p/books/a-psalm-for-the-wild-built-becky-chambers/15125608 https://bookshop.org/p/books/a-psalm-for-the-wild-built-beck... (Chambers’ entire body of work is just generally a nice cup of tea and a warm blanket for the soul in sci-fi form - the Wayfarers series starting with “The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet” is maybe the best collection of before-bed reading I’ve ever found.)
  • tstack 2y ago
    > the Wayfarers series starting with “The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet” is maybe the best collection of before-bed reading I’ve ever found. I agree wholeheartedly and do, in fact, read them in bed. I transitioned to the Wayfarers after souring on The Expanse (I enjoyed most parts of those books, but the black ooze is not for me). The low-stakes, slice-of-life content is more up my alley.
  • selykg 2y ago
    I really didn’t enjoy The Wayfarers. But I absolutely adore the Monk & Robot books. I just wish she would write more. It does not feel finished after two books. That series is my warm blanket on a cold winter day book.
    • runfaster2000 2y ago
      I quite enjoyed both series. They are not similar (as you implicitly suggest). Wayfarer bugged me at first because each book is a massive departure from the next (somewhat like Ender 1 and 2). As much as it pained me to leave the characters of the first book, the following books were more meaningful and stayed with me much longer. I also wish Chambers wrote more. Amazing author.
    • bbminner 2y ago
      Same. You can clearly tell how much better of an author she got by the time the Psalm came out. It is a very solid book. The second one in the series seemed more confused, but the first one felt very thought though and intentional.
• markstock 2y ago
  If you love this aesthetic and the concepts beneath it, I highly recommend Paolo Soleri's Arcology: The City in the Image of Man.
• ghfhghg 2y ago
  Would love to see some media based off this concept. I'm so sick of cyberpunk.
  • arjonagelhout 2y ago
    I still have the dream to build a game that has this aesthetic / idealistic worldview, but haven’t figured out the game play and mechanics.
  • smj-edison 2y ago
    I'm on your side, but playing devil's advocate: what would the "conflict" be plot-wise in solar punk?
    • AnonymousPlanet 2y ago
      The conflict might be against people who want a cyberpunk world.
      • smj-edison 2y ago
        Now we just need -punk warfare. Each nation has a different form of punk, and their tenuous treaty just broke down... Can our heroes unite these societies that cannot understand each other?
    • solanav 2y ago
      Interpersonal or community conflicts could work for example
    • ghfhghg 2y ago
      Yeah it's tough. Unfortunately game design is not my strongest attribute. Hopefully someone more creative than I can think of something though!
  • teamonkey 2y ago
    Not exactly solarpunk, but Scavenger's Reign may hit some of those notes
• october8140 2y ago
  I love the Solarpunk aesthetic. I think it still needs a defining work. Like Blade Runner for cyberpunk. The best example I’ve seen is a yogurt commercial.
  • etrautmann 2y ago
    Pretty awesome for anyone who hasn't seen it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-Ng5ZvrDm4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-Ng5ZvrDm4
    • FrustratedMonky 2y ago
      Chobani commercial. It's nice image. But don't think Chobani is doing much different than any other dairy product manufacturer.
      • rocketvole 2y ago
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqJJktxCY9U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqJJktxCY9U The decommodified version is also a good watch
    • dkarl 2y ago
      It's hard to take that seriously as a vision of the future. As an expression of values and aesthetics completely untethered from reality, sure. It makes a great yogurt commercial. But realistically, as something to strive for? So much of the technology in it is essentially magic, but there's just enough physical labor to romanticize. It's pretty obvious the physical labor is optional and voluntary. In other words, it's a group of people hanging out in an automated agricultural facility that has been designed to allow them to LARP as old-time farmers. I mean, either that or the technology just happened, coincidentally, to need exactly an enjoyable and healthy amount of labor to keep it going, and the labor just happened to take the outward form of a romanticized relationship to the land and nature. But that's too much of a coincidence to take seriously, and the alternative is that the human labor isn't necessary to produce the food, and the humans' place in the process was designed to be enjoyable for them and also not to be compulsory. If the people aren't needed there, presumably they aren't confined to the premises and forced to act out an unnecessary and antiquated form of labor. They come and go, and when nobody is there, the automation takes over. So it's basically farming as glamping. (Glarming?) The people in this vision could drop everything tomorrow and go to a spa, without any consequences for whoever depends on the output of this farm.
• nsedlet 2y ago
  This 1967 poem is often mentioned in the context of Solarpunk as having a similar vision https://allpoetry.com/All-Watched-Over-By-Machines-Of-Loving-Grace https://allpoetry.com/All-Watched-Over-By-Machines-Of-Loving...
• mc3301 2y ago
  I highly recommend this game: https://thefuture.wtf/ https://thefuture.wtf/ Not affiliated with it, I simply found out about it through the "srsly wrong" podcast a few years ago.
• renewiltord 2y ago
  Solarpunk environmentalism is very appealing to me but most environmentalists detest the tall buildings it has because environmentalism to them is about community character: which is an American term for single family sprawl. So we have to break the back of environmentalism to save the planet. And we shall. Once we have destroyed American environmentalism we can get to saving the planet.
  • autoexec 2y ago
    > most environmentalists detest the tall buildings I've seen it both ways. Some environmentalists hate single family homes and see suburban sprawl as the enemy. They'd rather have everyone packed into dense urban environments where anything a person will ever need in life is just a 15 minute walk/bike ride away from where they live eliminating the need for cars and leaving more land untainted by human interference. They'd be happy to do away with the inefficiencies of getting products, utilities, healthcare, and other resources to rural homes and communities spread out all over the place as well.
    • renewiltord 2y ago
      Those environmentalists have no power in the environmentalism movement. If you check every large enviro-corp they're all of the "preserving community" approach. Most of them oppose nuclear. And a near majority wind and solar. Some even geothermal. Usually they fight for golf courses and so on alongside socialists. That is what environmentalism means in the US. It is like the words Democratic People's Republic. They're words. But they mean a different thing.
    • CalRobert 2y ago
      Houten, in the Netherlands, combines both pretty well
  • kuschku 2y ago
    You can't have solarpunk without urbanism. Any "environmentalists" that pretend otherwise are lying. Neither skyscrapers nor mass single family housing are sustainable. There's a reason the past 2000 years of urban development have been in rowhouses and smaller multi-story buildings.
• LMSolar 2y ago
  [shameless self-promotion] We're building one version of Solarpunk at LightManufacturing. Fun visuals in videos below. Off-grid real-time manufacturing using solar heat, without energy storage, transmission lines, etc. We've operated out of modified shipping containers since day one, molding durable parts used around the world with heliostat arrays. Coworkers include road runners, western fence lizards, and lots of talent out of CalPoly. :) https://lm.solar/video/videos/ https://lm.solar/video/videos/
  • metalman 2y ago
    Hey now! house and shop here in Nova Scotia is solar pv, it just works. local old time foundry here built a solar fresnel lense and mirror rig, and did some casting in aluminum and bronze, "Lunenburg Foundry", there is a bit of non technical stuff on the web somewhere. "Nova Scotia Solar" puts out a manual for passive solar construction that works in Northern areas, and there are many others tinkering, and succeeding with passive and semi passive building. The main thing about solar is that once its up and running, there is no monthly bill, and if it's time to run outside and hang out with the critters, try and see things there way, it's no biggie.......bring...brrrrrring...."ya what?".... "um I thought I should call and say I'm feeling great.... ,so I wont be in today"
• throwawa14223 2y ago
  This aesthetic is unpleasant to me in a way I cannot put my finger on. It bothers me the same way Star Trek does.
  • nis0s 2y ago
    There’s more than one way of thinking of it, the key emphasis is on intermingling Nature in its design elements. See this [1] or [2], for example. [1] https://newintrigue.com/2025/01/29/solarpunk-a-vision-for-a-sustainable-future/ https://newintrigue.com/2025/01/29/solarpunk-a-vision-for-a-... [2] https://hackernoon.com/what-is-the-solarpunk-aesthetic-and-movement-more-than-science-fiction https://hackernoon.com/what-is-the-solarpunk-aesthetic-and-m...
• reactordev 2y ago
  Sign me up. Solar has come such a long way, and wind gen is so much quieter now. If you happen to have a creek or river running through your property you can even make a hydroelectric generator. With LiFePo batteries being what they are, you could setup a complete off-grid home on 14kw. I’m all for it. Someday, someday. I’m still stuck in the rat race but I would be a solarpunk, totally.
  • bergie 2y ago
    14kW is a lot. On our boat we can live off-grid with 860W of solar and a hydrogenerator for when we're under way. Last time we were connected to shore power was in December when we were in the Canaries... Here's a short summary of our energy setup (and other notes on the Atlantic crossing) https://lille-oe.de/2025-01-24/ https://lille-oe.de/2025-01-24/ Admittedly in the time since Canaries we've also burned some 10-15l of diesel for propulsion purposes. And we cook with an alcohol stove, not electric. But we do desalinate all our water with the solar we have.
    • pabs3 2y ago
      Is there much movement towards electric instead of petrol/diesel propulsion on the water when there is no wind?
    • AstralStorm 2y ago
      Approximately 3-4 kW per capita is required to approximate medium European lifestyle. A bit could be optimized, but not all that much. Anything less and you're making important tradeoffs. Either on heating/cooling, transportation, or hardware capabilities. Usually making tradeoffs hurts the most disadvantaged and poor. Remember to also count stuff. Embodied energy is a thing so often forgotten. Trash and other waste disposal is not free either. Growing food requires energy input too.
• owenpalmer 2y ago
  Chobani made a really beautiful ad featuring the solarpunk aesthetic: https://youtu.be/z-Ng5ZvrDm4?si=BEmNr2kaBblgI64v https://youtu.be/z-Ng5ZvrDm4?si=BEmNr2kaBblgI64v People hate on it for different reasons, but I like the vision/aesthetic they're going for. Note: not affiliated with Chobani
  • mattvr 2y ago
    Also check out the unbranded version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqJJktxCY9U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqJJktxCY9U
• TeeMassive 2y ago
  I love solarpunk as an idea. I would love to live in a solarpunk utopia. My biggest problem is its lack of grounding in economics. It's obvious that the people producing solarpunk art and literature comes from a privileged Californian background where the temperature is always suitable for living outside without heating or AC and it's always sunny not too far from the equator and without too much natural disasters. The cost and efficiency of solar panels and wind turbines are never discussed nor compared; which any serious major engineering endeavor should do first to be taken seriously. I think a solarpunk type of society is possible only if the population live near the equator and has a high level of societal sophistication where most people have an engineering degree and contributes positively to advance and maintain a society with the efficiency needed where there is a lower economic availability of energy.
  • akeck 2y ago
    Yup. I'm seeing this as well in trying to write Solarpunk fiction that has near zero hand waving of technical and economic challenges. I've had to rethink a bunch of everyday stuff that today relies on substantial heavy industry behind the scenes (like toothpaste).
    • morbicer 2y ago
      I get what you mean in general, but toothpaste isn't a great example as it's not a necessity. My wife goes without it for years and has no cavity or gum issues. - https://advanceddentalartsnyc.com/is-toothpaste-necessary/ https://advanceddentalartsnyc.com/is-toothpaste-necessary/ - https://www.huffmansmilesdental.com/is-it-okay-to-brush-your-teeth-without-toothpaste/ https://www.huffmansmilesdental.com/is-it-okay-to-brush-your...
      • akeck 2y ago
        Thanks for the info!
• nis0s 2y ago
  My criticism of solarpunk is its emphasis on hydro, wind and solar energy instead of more efficient sources like nuclear. But I appreciate the futurist optimism and self-reliance ethos of solarpunk. I am not interested in aspects of solarpunk which sacrifice individuation and individual liberties—I think it’s possible for innovative solutions to respect both individual liberties and the systems which sustain us all.
  • michaelhoney 2y ago
    > more efficient sources like nuclear thing is, nuclear is not punk. It requires large-nation-scale financing. A community cannot build a nuclear power station.
    • bluefirebrand 2y ago
      A community cannot manufacture solar panels or high capacity batteries either. Like it or not, these things require large supply chains to manufacture in volume
      • lukan 2y ago
        Well, you can make even solar panels at home. https://www.instructables.com/How-to-Build-Use-A-Dye-Sensitized-Solar-Cell-DS/ https://www.instructables.com/How-to-Build-Use-A-Dye-Sensiti... Same with batteries, but just not in a way to compete with the large scale industrial processes. A wind turbine is far easier here. Still, with improvement of tools, I can see a future, where even small communities have the capacity to practically make their own solar panels and their own batteries. But also buying it from the next industrial center makes sense to me (not at odds with the solarpunk idea to me). I also do see small nuclear reactors a possibilitiy for those small communities, but I really don't see humanity advanced enough, to handle so much distributed radioactive material, without having dirty bombs or improvised nuclear bombs going off regulary.
        • bluefirebrand 2y ago
          > Well, you can make even solar panels at home. If you have access to a supply chain that digs up the materials you need from the ground and manufactures fancy glass panes and circuitry and such for you, then sure. You can assemble a solar panel at home
• adagradschool 2y ago
  https://youtu.be/Pvnvjqzj1O0?si=-Yq0ikEMpaPSzneQ https://youtu.be/Pvnvjqzj1O0?si=-Yq0ikEMpaPSzneQ If guided meditations and solar punk are your thing, you're not alone
• araes 2y ago
  Fell down the rabbit hole of reading about this subject for several hours. Yet a couple of cool architectural applications I found were kind of neat. Bosco Verticale, isn't all that far away in link jumps, yet one of the most applicable current constructions using those types of sci-fi ideas. Here's the Streetview version at ground level in Milan: https://maps.app.goo.gl/RS4FBzQE1JcYWYH36 https://maps.app.goo.gl/RS4FBzQE1JcYWYH36 The other one that was quite a bit further, from looking at Earthships, tin can walls, and bottle walls, was Wat Pa Maha Chedi Kaew in Thailand. The Buddhist temple of 1.5 million empty Heineken and Chang beer bottles. WP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wat_Pa_Maha_Chedi_Kaew https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wat_Pa_Maha_Chedi_Kaew The photo tour's pretty incredible on Google. https://maps.app.goo.gl/J2BSqS9zhPfxKUJKA https://maps.app.goo.gl/J2BSqS9zhPfxKUJKA
  • WhyNotHugo 2y ago
    There are a few crazy buildings of this style in Amsterdam. E.g.: https://www.architectmagazine.com/design/buildings/mvrdv-breaks-ground-on-valley-in-amsterdam_o https://www.architectmagazine.com/design/buildings/mvrdv-bre... Not entirely sure how sustainable they are compared to building shorter houses spread horizontally, but the truth is that this country doesn't have any more space to keep doing that.
    • araes 2y ago
      Since the link was to the in-progress planning and construction announcement page, here's a link to the finished structure's website and the Google Maps Streetview looking up at the finished structure (completed 2022). The finished website, has a lot of cool aerial views looking down from the upper apartments. Site: https://www.mvrdv.com/projects/233/valley https://www.mvrdv.com/projects/233/valley Maps: https://maps.app.goo.gl/3Qcmzu9y7kVTydcL9 https://maps.app.goo.gl/3Qcmzu9y7kVTydcL9
• woah 2y ago
  It's a cool aesthetic, but as a practical movement has some issues with reality. You get stuff like the solar powered website that runs out of batteries when enough people visit it. Cool statement but it would probably have been more environmentally friendly by any measure to deploy on a tiny virtual instance living ephemerally on cloud hosting. Bumping AWS's power consumption up by a tiny fraction vs having a bunch of components shipped to your house.
  • whearyou 2y ago
    Great example. In the theory-land of Solarpunk, pretty much all the more fleshed out example I’ve seen imagined also have a similar issue with reality. In particular I’m thinking of KSR’s (otherwise great) novels. It’s a shame because I think most people would agree some version of “Star Trek” is desirable and working toward a realistic imagining of it helps work toward a path to getting there.
    • globular-toast 2y ago
      The most likely version of Star Trek is depicted in Wall-E.
      • lukan 2y ago
        This thread was supposed to maintain some optimism.
  • benrutter 2y ago
    I think this is an important thought, but climate actions are often more than choosing the path of least emissions, especially since the options available are determined by our current economic system. Sites like the one you're referencing (https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/ https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/ if I'm correct) don't just exit to be normal sites with less emissions, they're also presenting a vision of the kinds of things our tech world could and should value differently.
  • ImaCake 2y ago
    It's not quite the right aesthetic but what about having solar panels and an electric car? Or even just an electric bike or scooter. There's definitely a few practical solarpunk-esque tools available to us, probably will be more in the future.
• delta_p_delta_x 2y ago
  This is basically Singapore. But even Singapore isn't perfect—way too hot and humid, somewhat car-centric road planning, and for many Western people, too authoritarian.
  • solanav 2y ago
    Solarpunk being an anarchist adjacent genre/aesthetic makes it very distant from an authoritarian regime that suppresses freedom of speech such as Singapore…
• danans 2y ago
  Like any aesthetic system built around an ideal, Solarpunk might not be practically realizable for most of us, but there are ways to implement the practical parts of the ideal in your lifestyle. One of my favorite activities (which I do regularly) is "solar" cooking using an Instant Pot and an air fryer that both run off my domestic battery that is primarily charged with off peak solar power (either from my panels or the grid). This is how I cook 80% of my family's meals. In my case I have a whole house battery, but in theory you could run an Instant pot off one of the larger capacity portable batteries.
• karel-3d 2y ago
  How do the solar panels get made?
• sinuhe69 2y ago
  I didn't see anything! Does it work with uBlock?
• ETH_start 2y ago
  Solarpunk is largely our reality. • Solar and wind hit 30% of global electricity in 2023 (up from 19% in 2000), with solar growing 22% yearly since 2010. • Vertical farming is proliferating, and projected to increase by 25% annually through 2030. • Urban greening is spreading with, for example, New York, seeing an increase of 100,000 trees between 2005 and 2015.
  • lukan 2y ago
    Well, comparing the pictures of solarpunk with my perceived reality I sadly have to disagree. (solarpunk is about a bit more than having 30% of energy with solar and wind)
    • ETH_start 2y ago
      Where I live there is a lot of green urban spaces, and solar is rapidly expanding, so maybe my experience is different.
      • lukan 2y ago
        I live quite rural, so I also see green and solar, but all in all I see way too many dirty old tech and concrete.
• deleted 2y ago
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• lionkor 2y ago
  Nice art, but now imagine a large number of very modern nuclear reactors, hidden away in industrial areas like other industry, generating massive amounts of power, consistently. And of course, capturing all its toxic outputs and barreling them up, to be re-enriched at least once. At that point it's a trash handling problem, which pretty much every single other form of energy completely ignores. What happens to old solar panels, old wind turbines, what happens to the exhaust gases and particles from burning coal, etc? What happens to old batteries?
  • atoav 2y ago
    What happens to final nuclear waste products? Is the 10.000 years of storage paid by future generations or paid right now?
    • lionkor 2y ago
      What happens to the products of lithium battery waste, or gases and products of coal mining and burning?
      • atoav 2y ago
        What is their halflife time?
        • lionkor 2y ago
          The half life of what, CO? Pretty long lmao
  • brettermeier 2y ago
    What happens when we can't cool them down anymore? https://www.wired.com/story/nuclear-power-plants-struggling-to-stay-cool/ https://www.wired.com/story/nuclear-power-plants-struggling-...
• demaga 2y ago
  I love the term "hopepunk" mentioned in the article! I feel like lately horrors, thrillers, dystopias and such are on the rise in all media. So it's very nice to see creators who are optimistic about the future, at least about fictional one.
• Voultapher 2y ago
  As much as it sounds like a nice future, I've come to the painful realization that solarpunk triggers the same trap that the "Technology will save us" mind virus lures us into. A future where we get to keep doing the same destructive practices that abundant evidence suggests are the prescription for the termination of life on earth. Concepts like "Abundance without waste" are like saying "Humane torture", sorry that's an oxymoron. We have absolutely zero idea how to maintain current lifestyles for N billion people across tens of thousands of years. 10k years of heavy mining to replace solar panels will poison this world, and that's just the tip of the iceberg of problems with ideas like solarpunk.
  • AstralStorm 2y ago
    The worst part of the aesthetic is the actual cost of building in it. Solarpunk designs are notorious for being expensive to make, compared to native ones they try to crib off of. Some of it could be reduced with say 3D printing, or more advanced ground engineering. Some of it requires particular local conditions. See, solarpunk is distinct from classic futurism in that it is supposed to be both bespoke and green. Zero waste is not the goal. None of it scales... Which degrowth advocates think actually helps. The question of cost brings out its shadow - colonialism in a green paint. Someone pays the costs of manufacturing, mining and transport.
    • berkes 2y ago
      Why must everything always "scale" in order to be good? That's a very limited view, IMO. I've come to love working in my garden, producing fruit, vegetables, eggs, honey. None of it has to scale. Our 8 chickens provide our six households with eggs. My 6m2 vegetable patch gives me enough veggies for my household and some more (to give away). My three hives produce enough honey and wax to sell off and give away. None of it scales. None of it is optimized. None of it has to. My time spent on these "chores" is free, because I recharge and enjoy that time. I am aware this isn't "self sustaining". But it does relieve from my footprint a lot. I'm not contributing to bio industry, contributing much less or non at all to food dragged all over the world. All of it while gaining mental energy, joy and happiness. We could easily start doing more of this. It doesn't have to be absolute and "everything or nothing". I mean, I drink coffee, for example that won't grow here. But only a little, because all the tea that I can and do grow, brings my coffee "needs" down to a handful of coffees a week. I don't want it to scale or be made efficient, because it would remove a lot of the joy I get from it.
• aa-jv 2y ago
  I will buy my first solar oven this year and I often wonder why we don't harness the suns power more often, more locally, in our daily lives. It seems to me that a parabolic reflector has the power to do a lot of good things - recharging batteries, powering pumps, etc. I just wonder - why isn't it more widespread as a solution? There is a lot of energy out there - we just don't seem to be harnessing it ..
  • Ekaros 2y ago
    Because we are very used to having option of using energy now. Not when it happens to be sunny enough. Or waiting for days potentially when there is heavy overcast for days...
    • aa-jv 2y ago
      Still seems to me to be an under-appreciated resource. Although, I admit, I've been waiting until Spring to buy a solar oven, so I guess I'm manifesting this reality.
• jdboyd 2y ago
  What tend's to bug me about most now to near future solarpunk depictions that I see is that it tends to assume that we will be all spread out into nothing larger than a small village. I'm not sure that solar/wind/hydro powered suburban sprawl is the way to go. I'd like to see more imaginings of solarpunk urbanism.
• grumpy-de-sre 2y ago
  The idea of Solarpunk has been resonating with me for a while now. I'm not completely sold on some of the community aspects (a little too hippy) but it's an incredible breath of fresh air compared to the cyberpunk dystopian bullshit that we are being force fed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0R8GlENvhLI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0R8GlENvhLI I'm an Aussie living in the EU, and if anything is going to eventually tempt me to go back it's going to be ridiculously cheap solar energy. I think the odds of building any kind of utopia there are pretty remote but I think massive scale green steel smelters (+ other metals), green ammonia facilities, and expansion of desalination (combined with indoor agriculture). If Aus doesn't completely fumble the ball, I think there's a really good opportunity for another "mining boom". Had a lot of fun listening to Saul Griffith explaining that solar energy and electrification is inherently deflationary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFr87rZyr3o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFr87rZyr3o
  • dfex 2y ago
    Aussie in AU here - I think about this opportunity a lot too, but sadly it will not be our government that delivers this outcome if the current nuclear vs. solar/wind debate (like these are mutually exclusive outcomes) is anything to go by. I had high hopes that Andrew Forrest might be the one to pull this off after watching him deliver this [1] Boyer lecture 4 years ago, but as far as I'm aware this none of this has materialised. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwfS3A_IXYc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwfS3A_IXYc
    • grumpy-de-sre 2y ago
      Yeh I loved twiggy for a while there but then he went all in on the hydrogen bullshit, and now those hydrogen projects are getting wound down before completion (aka fumbling the ball). In general I think the east coast and the national energy market is cooked, I'm not sure how, and when the pioneering spirit died but it did. On the non-fatalistic side EV and rooftop solar uptake are great, so who knows? On the other hand I'm much more optimistic about WA, they seem to be quietly making the correct decisions as far as I can tell. Expansions in desalination, huge battery projects, green industry (ammonia up in the pilbara [1], and inroads into the lithium supply chain in kiwana). Let's see how this all shakes out, and hopefully the public rejects the pro fossil fuel / nuclear bullshit. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYY9miC2Y2A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYY9miC2Y2A
• sirodoht 2y ago
  London School of Solarpunk for people in England: https://www.instagram.com/solarpunkldn/ https://www.instagram.com/solarpunkldn/
• deleted 2y ago
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• hofrogs 2y ago
  For those interested I recommend this channel, Andrew here has a lot of videos exploring various ideas/concepts of how things might function in a solarpunk society: https://www.youtube.com/c/Andrewism https://www.youtube.com/c/Andrewism
• torginus 2y ago
  I just thought a bit on this and this idea sounds very much another chapter in the 'left'-leaning 1%er rich socialite tradition of romanticizing poverty. The actual grounded reality of solar power is that small scale solar powerplants are mostly popping up in the southern hemisphere, and their existence is justified by true need, note some first-world champagne socialist's desire for a green economy. Countries in the southern hemisphere tend to be poorer, have lesser quality governments and infrastructure, meaning the continuous supply of electricity is not a given. At the same time, these places get a lot more sunlight, and need constantly running ACs, as in sweltering hot weather, having an air conditioner can be a life or death decision. I'm pretty sure the availablity of reliable power and constant tolerable indoor temperatures has been a godsend to these places and will show up as a major economic booster in the years to come. Thus the recently falling prices and rising availablity (of mainly Chinese) panels, inverters, and batteries has been a godsend for these places. If you look on youtube, there's an absolute ton of videos showcasing solar installs in places like the Middle East and Africa, which would satisfy the definiton of 'solarpunk', as in, communities only weakly tied to central infrastructure. Meanwhile, places like the US or Europe, don't suffer from energy scarcity, comparatively get less sunlight and have expensive, and overly complex permitting processes.