Innovative Project Is Growing Crops Beneath Solar Panels in Kenya
The project, officially called “Harvesting the sun twice,” is designed to assess whether or not agrivoltaic systems could be successfully used in rural East Africa.
By combining the land dedicated to solar panels with the land dedicated to agriculture, it is possible to avoid some of these pitfalls. Growing plants beneath elevated solar panels protects them from the sun in hot, dry places and helps the soil retain moisture, the University of Sheffield explained. The strategy has worked successfully in Global North countries like France, Germany and the U.S., but has not been tested in the Global South, according to SEI and The Guardian.So far, the results have been promising, The Guardian reported.
In Kajiado, cabbages cultivated under 180, 345-watt solar panels were a third larger and healthier than the control group. Eggplants, lettuce and corn also fared better in the panels’ shade.
Just saw a post about how rich people pat themselves on the back for using green washed products, (and that buying used should be priority)
which is a great observation
But it also ignored the fact that things wear out, deteriorate, or just shouldn’t be bought used. (Underwear, just one example)
Plus, there are lots of things in everyday life that just gets used up too fast to buy used all the time
So, yes, buying used should be your first choice.
But when it comes to stuff like soap, food, and necessary single use items….
Yes
Buying organic, small, biodegradable, etc. should also be priority for those who can afford it*
*not everything low waste is more expensive.
For example
Soap nuts are biodegradable and work great as laundry detergent. They’re not expensive, use 0 plastic, and don’t require extra time or effort beyond using hot water for your laundry.
And that’s just one example I can think of at the top of my head, there are many swaps you can make in your life that are actually less expensive, if you are willing/able to put in the effort
More examples:
Buying in food dry/in bulk is much cheaper than most other options. Some foods like beans take a little extra effort to pre-soak, but it’s worth the extra savings.
For people with periods, you can make your own pads out of scrap fabric, there are plenty of tutorials online/youtube
For people with periods (continued) silicone period cups are reusable and last for years
Gardening (no, you do not have to spend top dollar on supplies)
Buying soap in bar form (not just hand soap or body wash but dish soap, shampoo, and conditioner as well)
No, you don’t have to feel guilty about taking showers
Yes, you can reduce your waste without access to recycling
It takes research, creativity, and most importantly, each other, but we absolutely can and must make changes if we are going to see a better world in our lifetime.
Do not be fooled that we can save the world without making changes ourselves, be the example you want to see in this world
Just saw a post about how rich people pat themselves on the back for using green washed products, (and that buying used should be priority)
which is a great observation
But it also ignored the fact that things wear out, deteriorate, or just shouldn’t be bought used. (Underwear, just one example)
Plus, there are lots of things in everyday life that just gets used up too fast to buy used all the time
So, yes, buying used should be your first choice.
But when it comes to stuff like soap, food, and necessary single use items….
Yes
Buying organic, small, biodegradable, etc. should also be priority for those who can afford it*
*not everything low waste is more expensive.
For example
Soap nuts are biodegradable and work great as laundry detergent. They’re not expensive, use 0 plastic, and don’t require extra time or effort beyond using hot water for your laundry.
And that’s just one example I can think of at the top of my head, there are many swaps you can make in your life that are actually less expensive, if you are willing/able to put in the effort
but like any revolutionary social movement it requires active involvement to achieve the change you want to see. Here are some handy resources for getting more involved:
Food Not Lawns- project to help communities feed themselves without capitalism
Food Not Bombs - same idea as above but less emphasis on growing food
In terms of building online infrastructure to actively combat capitalism, using and helping to develop open-source, community run software & websites like the sunbeam city mastodon instance should be a priority. This is a good alternative to google for searching.
In terms of building real world solarpunk infrastructure as resistance to actively combat capitalism, the organisations linked above are honestly invaluable - especially Food Not Bombs. I’d also add the Industrial Workers of the World (a democratic workers’ union for anyone in the world without hiring/firing power) as well as tenants’ unions - like ACORN in the UK. Finally, find or start a community garden.
I just asked DISCO Diffusion for a ‘Solarpunk walled city at sunset’ for a talk I’m giving. It painted Dubrovnik(!) harbour with a wind turbine in the middle of it.
I’ve got some Asian leafy green-themed coaster art for the Salut 7 coaster show at Nucleus Portland! These are Mustard Greens, Choy Sum, Napa Cabbage, and Bok Choy Check out the gallery on May 18!
Well well well, if it isn’t #marchofrobots again. I’m feeling a bit more motivated this year but keeping expectations for myself low so I don’t burn out. Wish me luck Here’s a propagation buddy featuring some oregano
To you and your loved ones Also if you, like me, procrastinated with your holiday cards and are planning on sending them out post-holidays, I’ve got packs of these up in my store~ Link below. The physical cards won’t say they’re from me, of course lol
Coasters for the Salut! 6 show at @nucleusportland , opening 6/31! Going with a mushroom/fungi theme with a focus on those used in Asian cuisine. The ones you see here are Reishi, wood ear, bamboo, and straw mushrooms. As the mushrooms grow taller, so too do their containers. Happy AAPI Month~
Solarpunk Action Week has been ongoing twice a year since 2019, with every week looking bigger and better than the last. People all over the world are planting gardens, learning new skills, building things, reducing waste, spreading information, taking direct action, and getting their neighborhoods and workplaces organized. We, your humble hosts, have consulted the auguries and scheduled Solarpunk Action Week 2021 for:
April 25th to May 1st!
Mark your calendars, kids
What is Solarpunk?
Solarpunkis a movement in speculative fiction, art, fashion and activism that seeks to answer and embody the question “what does a sustainable civilization look like, and how can we get there?” The aesthetics of solarpunk merge the practical with the beautiful, the well-designed with the green and wild, the bright and colorful with the earthy and solid. Solarpunk can be utopian, just optimistic, or concerned with the struggles en route to a better world — but never dystopian. As our world roils with calamity, we need solutions, not warnings. Solutions to live comfortably without fossil fuels, to equitably manage scarcity and share abundance, to be kinder to each other and to the planet we share. At once a vision of the future, a thoughtful provocation, and an achievable lifestyle.”
And what is Solarpunk Action Week?
Solarpunk Action Week is a week dedicated to taking radical environmentalist and anticapitalist action to make the world a better place. Previous Action Weeks have seen people starting gardens, learning new skills, making and repairing things, reducing waste, spreading information, getting involved in community organizing
All you have to do participate is begin or continue with an environmentalist, anticapitalist project and talk about it in the #SolarpunkActionWeek tag; it’ll get a lot of signal boosts to connect with other people around the world doing the same. &and follow along on Mastodon at @[email protected]
- - -
The previous Solarpunk Action Weeks saw a lot of individual actions, and those were incredible to witness, but we’re at our most powerful when we come together, so your homework for the next 6 months between now and the end of April is: Get organized! If we were able to do so much as individuals back in March, just imagine what you could get done rolling into Solarpunk Action Week with a crew ready to go
If you’re new to organizing, here are some great places to get started:
And I’m sure people will link to all sorts of other great projects and resources in the rebagels, so keep an eye on the notes!
If you’re already part of a union or a tenants’ association or what have you, even better! Get them in on it.
What can I do?
So many things! You can check out the #SolarpunkActionWeek tag to see what others have done in the past for inspiration. The two dinguses organizing these events have got resource tags full of just so many things you might could do and how to get started on them, hereandhererespectively. And here are some other fun ideas:
“We have always lived in slums and holes in the wall. We will know how to accommodate ourselves for a time. For, you must not forget, we can also build. It is we the workers who built these palaces and cities here in Spain and in America and everywhere. We, the workers, can build others to take their place. And better ones! We are not in the least afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth; there is not the slightest doubt about that. The bourgeoisie might blast and ruin its own world before it leaves the stage of history. We carry a new world here, in our hearts. That world is growing this minute.“
Sailcargo doesn’t expect to replace the massive industry. But as companies look for ways to reduce emissions, it can offer a solution that works now. Because it doesn’t use shipping containers—goods are loaded on pallets—it also has some logistical advantages. “Some of these fast vessels have to wait at port often up to two weeks, because they’re dependent on the port infrastructure,” says Doggett. “They need the big crane to unload the container. We do not—we can unload ourselves.”
Doggett, who started sailing on tall ships as a 13-year-old, started thinking about the potential to revive traditional cargo shipping more than a decade ago. In 2014, she and two partners launched the company and later began working on building a traditional vessel from scratch. While traveling, Doggett had also run across the Vega. The ship, built in 1909, had been retired in the 1960s, as fossil-fueled container ships started to dominate trade routes. It was headed for the scrapyard when a family of Swedish shipbuilders rescued it and spent years restoring it; Doggett, who loved the design, stayed in touch with them and eventually made a deal to buy it.
The amount of space available on the rooftops of Walmarts, Targets, Home Depots, Costcos, and other large stores and shopping malls in the continental U.S. is staggering. Environment America estimates that it amounts to 7.2 billion square feet, or about the size of El Paso, Texas. Even tiny little Rhode Island has 279 stores that span at least 25,000 square feet each.
From one perspective, these shrines to consumption represent the root cause of our climate catastrophe. But there’s a potential silver lining: These stores can make up for at least some of that damage by opening up their vast rooftops to solar development. At best, blanketing these stores in solar panels could reduce the need to site solar farms in rural areas where they often face opposition from neighbors and can threaten endangered species.
Here’s the Solarpunk bit!
David Hughes, an environmental anthropologist at Rutgers University, has a more radical idea. When Grist spoke with him last fall, he suggested that when the owners of these large flat rooftops fail to take advantage of their solar potential, they should forfeit their rights to do so to the community or municipality. Hughes bases his argument on a law from the 1800s called the Homestead Act, under which the government offered up plots of land (stolen from Indigenous peoples) to white settlers to cultivate. But if the homesteaders failed to do anything “useful” with it within five years, the rights to the land reverted back to the government. Hughes argues that the Homestead Act could be repurposed for progressive priorities today, ensuring that when a company doesn’t take advantage of the resources at its fingertips, the local community can.
An excellent proposal! The sort of thing local solarpunks could and should be agitating for in their local town halls and meetings!!
The Ocean Is Starting to Lose Its Memory, Scientists Warn
“Ocean memory, the persistence of ocean conditions, is a major source of predictability in the climate system beyond weather time scales,” researchers explain in a new paper led by first author and climate researcher Hui Shi from the Farallon Institute in Petaluma, California.
“We show that ocean memory, as measured by the year-to-year persistence of sea surface temperature anomalies, is projected to steadily decline in the coming decades over much of the globe.”
“The Ocean, now without memory…” would make a good opening line to a solarpunk story.
Rundown apartments reborn as food-forest coliving Agritopia
In 2007, Ole and Maitri Ersson bought the rundown Cabana apartment complex in the city and immediately began to de-pave parking spaces to make space for what today is a huge permaculture coliving space and urban food forest.
Today, the Kailash Ecovillage has 55 residents who all help farm where there was once pavement, grass, a swimming pool, and an overgrown weed patch.
Grist for your Solarpunk retrosuburban/domestic/family/care worldbuilding mills
Marimo are one of nature’s most alien spectacles. They are impossible-looking spheres made of algae, smoothed and toppled by currents in lakes, piling up on the floor like green puff balls. Marimo’s spherical form is what makes them so unique. Otherwise, sipping on faint sunlight beneath the water’s surface, they burp oxygen into our atmosphere just like any other plant.
…
Researchers from UWE Bristol’sUnconventional Computing Lab have proven that marimo can be harnessed to do more—autonomously roaming lake beds to monitor water conditions like temperature and oxygen content—if only they are outfitted with the proper super suit.
The team dubs their invention a “marimo-activated rover system,” or MARS for short. (…) The team fit marimo into a 3D-printed exoskeleton that’s roughly the size of a baseball. As marimo produce energy from sunlight, they exhale oxygen. Normally, this oxygen would simply float to the top of the water’s surface. But inside MARS, that oxygen bubbles up to get trapped inside a cage.The pressure of these bubbles hits the cage in such a way that they create torque, zigzagging the MARS forward much like a hamster ball.
Of course, the MARS design does propose that we voluntarily place more plastic into our waterways. Philips notes that this plastic is still of far lower environmental impact than building a more typical drone would be, and it could biodegrade over time. Plus, it’s hard to imagine any machine that could last as long as a MARS ball because the system has no moving parts, and its “battery” might last centuries: The oldest living marimo is over 200 years old.
Based in the coastal town of Shoreham-by-Sea, England, artist Louise Durham creates towering wooden sculptures of reclaimed sea defense timber and vibrant stained glass. She embeds stripes and circles in a full spectrum of color within the totem-style works, which when illuminated, cast kaleidoscopic shadows on their surroundings. “It is all about the light,” she says. “That’s the magic of glass and the magic of all living things.”
A social ecological storytelling game where you and your friends build a better world.
It’s too easy to imagine the end of the world.
Much easier, sometimes, than imagining a pathway to a better world.
That’s why we made Solarpunk Futures — to practice collective visioning about our real-world struggles for a better world through a mix of sincerity, laughter, and creative storytelling.
Solarpunk Futures is a 10-minute rules-light role-playing game where players imagine the pathways to a desirable world from the perspective of a utopian future. Through dialogue and collaborative worldbuilding, collective and visionary narratives emerge of a new society, along with plausible scenarios for how to get there.
With your help, we can share the lush solarpunk aesthetic with more people and help inspire a social ecological politics rooted in care and freedom!
Solarpunk futures was created by Solarpunk Surf Club an arts collective who create and curate egalitarian platforms for surfing the waves of still-possible worlds.
