What is Solarpunk - An Intro with resources:
So solarpunk is an artistic aesthetic, literary genre, and social activism.
The artistic aesthetic tends to focus on the elements of solarpunk (discussed later) in an uplifting, colorful, and hopeful presentation. While it has no set limitations, popular aesthetics are art nouveau and studio ghibli styles.
The literary genre is "protopia" in style. It shows a pragmatic utopia while addressing present day social concerns. Some of it shows the ideal within a hopepunk and/or cozycore plot. Others have higher conflict and show the current social concerns being addressed and remediated.
The social activism side seeks to bring about that protopia world in the present day. The focus is to bring about a post-scarcity world where everyone has the basics of life covered while emphasizing increasing time for rest, luxury, the arts, culture, and community.
While these themes …
What is Solarpunk - An Intro with resources:
So solarpunk is an artistic aesthetic, literary genre, and social activism.
The artistic aesthetic tends to focus on the elements of solarpunk (discussed later) in an uplifting, colorful, and hopeful presentation. While it has no set limitations, popular aesthetics are art nouveau and studio ghibli styles.
The literary genre is "protopia" in style. It shows a pragmatic utopia while addressing present day social concerns. Some of it shows the ideal within a hopepunk and/or cozycore plot. Others have higher conflict and show the current social concerns being addressed and remediated.
The social activism side seeks to bring about that protopia world in the present day. The focus is to bring about a post-scarcity world where everyone has the basics of life covered while emphasizing increasing time for rest, luxury, the arts, culture, and community.
While these themes are covered in other movements (many of which are not opposed and work well with solarpunk), the solarpunks themselves seek to use modern day (and near future) technology to assist in this post-scarcity world. Technologies such as automation, renewable energies, and economies of scale - currently utilized by various ruling classes - to instead be used by the working class. Further efforts are made within degrowth (removing technology for technologies sake, and consumption for consumption's sake).
While not solely limited to anarchic politics, many of the approaches are non-hierarchical in nature and when they are hierarchical, they often focus on local political structures, decentralized, and distributed, with cooperation between various local groups for a national and inter-national co-op structure.
Long and short, solarpunks were tired of being warned of the present dystopia of cyberpunk without solutions to overcome that dystopia. They yearned for positive stories and art that showed a direction to pursue. And they wanted to act in the now to bring about that change.
Solarpunk is not the only movement towards protopia and progressive social change. And it should not be the only movement. But it adds its take on how to approach remediating current social and environmental and material crises.
The areas of focus are (but not limited to):
Post-scarcity: Food, Water, Shelter, Healthcare, Education, Transportation, and Energy (energy is focused on renewables, efficiencies, and lower energy requirements)
Arts, beauty, aesthetics, culture
Rest, leisure, community bonds, and protection for individual rights
Some good places to start are:
- What is Solarpunk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHI61GHNGJM
- Mutual Aid by Dean Spade: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/dean-spade-mutual-aid
- Solarpunk Manifesto (not the only one and by no means authoritative, but something to muse on): https://iandennismiller.github.io/solarpunk/manifesto/english.html
- Solarpunk Notes Toward a Manifesto (more voices are better than one): https://hieroglyph.asu.edu/2014/09/solarpunk-notes-toward-a-manifesto/
- Solarpunk: A Reference Guide: https://medium.com/solarpunks/solarpunk-a-reference-guide-8bcf18871965
- Solarpunk Lemmy Instance: https://slrpnk.net/
- Solarpunk Discord Server: https://discord.gg/C76x3bWXEA
Some sample solarpunk projects:
- Seed Libraries, Tool Libraries, Library Economy, Libraries in general
- Community Gardens, Community Farms & Ranches, Backyard / Apartment Gardens
- Community Free Fridges & Pantries, Peer-to-peer food exchanges, community kitchens and restaurants
- Maker Spaces, home fabrication - cnc machines, 3d printers, sewing and textiles, home welding, home carpentry
- Repair Cafes, Right-to-Repair, making higher quality items that last a long time and can be maintained
- Community and Peer to Peer support and mental healthcare, mutual aid groups, community support and protection groups
- Solar and wind and other renewable energy at a small scale, localized decentralized energy grids, community prep and resiliency
- Art and literature and music and dance.
- Tenant co-ops, removing shelter and homes as an asset class, "non-profit" housing development
- Community Health Insurance schemes, "Non-profit" insurance. Direct negotiation with local doctors, specialists, etc.
- Public Transit, Trains, Subways, Light Rail, Bicycles, Personal Electric Vehicles (PEVs), pedestrian access, city design and planning
Beware:
Green Washing - Just cause its pretty doesn't mean its sustainable or solarpunk or non-exploitative.
Beware Capitalist Co-option - They like to sell back everything, including the concept of tearing down Capitalism
- Compare this advertisement that looks like solarpunk: Dear Alice by Chiboni: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-Ng5ZvrDm4
- To the "decommodified" version (pay attention to how they changed the name from "Donations" to "Commons" - moving away from capitalist propaganda of "charity" and into an actual mutual aid approach: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqJJktxCY9U
Solarpunk is a vibrant and living philosophy, style, and approach. It's not the end all be all and its not meant to be the end all be all. It has it's issues and legitimate criticism. But its an approach that generates hope and it committed to dealing with actual issues using actual pragmatic solutions within the constraint of actual ethics.
During a time when we're all beat down and exhausted and fearful - solarpunk pushes back and says Fuck That. I'm going to live. I'm going to be happy. And I'm going to work to ensure that everyone else lives and is happy.
