I’ve been following this tag pretty much through its inception, I’ve seen here and there people throwing ideas and chipping on how the solarpunk world should be. I’m not trying to put anything new, but rather to give a nice summation of the two most popular ideas I’ve seen. The two worlds as I’ve seen them can be described as The Jeffersonian Yeoman and a Socialist Utopia (please do not make a negative association).
The less popular one is The Jeffersonian Yeoman. As a world I’ve seen it described and it appears to be more of Libertarian/Wild West type, than it’s Socialist counterpart. In it people live lives independent of the community - they generate their own electricity (via green means), they produce their own food (aquaponics), they supply their own water, The world of the Jeffersonian Yeoman - as I’ve said it before - is a Libertarian Utopia. There is very little government, almost no taxes and almost no social welfare and negligible government regulation. However this is Solarpunk and thus it is optimistic. While the individual tends to be much more important than the community, The Jeffersonian Yeoman is raised better than the modern person. He is moral, he follows the law, he helps those down on their luck, because he feels a personal responsibility to help those less fortunate.
The second and more popular version is the Socialist Utopia. In it, as the name implies, the government and community take much more active roles. In it you can usually see things like Universal Income, communal housing and eating centers. Charity and care for the downtrodden is still done by people, but a much more heavy emphasis is put on social programs and the welfare state. Communal projects also tend to be much more common - where the community as a whole would do something - where is the Jeffersonian would be less likely to engage in such activities.
I like both of them in their own unique way and hope to see them explore, Solarpunk is such a nice idea.
no, listen, when I say I want to integrate more specific solarpunk stuff in my life, i don’t mean to ask for yet again new “aesthetic” clothes that now you have to buy or make to show your support of the movement (screw that i’m consuming enough as it is), or more posts about impossible house goals, or whatever, I’m asking you what my options to build a portable and eco friendly phone charger are, im asking you viable tiny-appartment edible plants growing tricks on a budget, im asking tips to slow down when my mind and society tell me im not fast enough, i don’t need more rich art nouveau amateurs aesthetics or pristine but cold venus project, okay, i know i should joins associations where I am tho i’m constantly on the move, thanks for that, just, you know, can we get a bit more practical ??? how do I hack my temporary flat into going off the grid for the time i’m here
Hello! ☀️ Here are a few practical suggestions for stuff you can do:
Not everybody has the chance to, but if you have the option to change your power supplier, do so. It might seem obvious, but people underestimate the power we have. We can vote with our dollars for the world we want to live in. Also, check what company is behind the green power supplier of your choice and try to find one who is not part of a big coal or fracking company.
you bury a little robot - it’s not a real robot, it doesn’t have limbs, but maybe a face, and a voice and/or messaging capability - and it tells you about the soil health and what plants you can successfully grow in said soil, and it has little pockets that hold a multitude of different seeds suited for your climate and when the soil is suitable the pocket/s open and the seeds come out, and it tells you which seeds it just planted, and how often you should come and water the spot and
you can wear the little dude as a backpack on your walks/hikes
there’s no rule saying you can’t just solarpunky things now
i had an idea; rescuing one of those robots from the piggies and converting it into a living, moving food-bank, because if you’re planting in a public space you can’t stop anyone from taking what you have but on the other hand why would you want to stop anyone from doing that because feeding our neighbors is good actually
you bury a little robot - it’s not a real robot, it doesn’t have limbs, but maybe a face, and a voice and/or messaging capability - and it tells you about the soil health and what plants you can successfully grow in said soil, and it has little pockets that hold a multitude of different seeds suited for your climate and when the soil is suitable the pocket/s open and the seeds come out, and it tells you which seeds it just planted, and how often you should come and water the spot and
Last year I dug the grassweeds on either side of the steps at my father’s house and established a flower bed that he could appreciate while he was sitting on the porch. One of my biggest concerns was that an old bleeding heart that my mother had planted when I was a kid had been ‘built over’ and imprisoned behind lattice when the porch was renovated. I felt awful seeing it trying to survive without enough light and very little water, so I removed the lower lattice and dug it up early in the spring. I didn’t know if it would survive, but it did ok last summer. And this year . .
it is full sized and full of flowers! Surrounded by daffodils, iris, and bluebells, ready for another 40 years of life.
Well, I decided to risk it and plant out some warm weather crops today. The cool weather stuff (lettuce, radish, and peas) that we planted on Apr 30th is just barely sprouted. It feels like that stuff should be up a little more by now. Today I put up wire trellis for tomatoes and pole beans. Planted a moderate number (12) of Beefsteak tomatoes and about a third of the row of pole beans. I don’t want them all starting to bear in late July, I’d rather have more coming on in September.
I had my little jar of saved eggshells to put in the tomato holes, pliers and shears jammed in my pockets, and a good hat. Also plenty of sunblock. Once I got started I just kept going and put in the cabbages and pumpkin seeds, too. The wide-open garden turns into a maze of poles and wire after a while, but it will look good when it’s full of green vines.
After this was as far as I could take it today, I messed about with flower beds a bit, trying to get rid of one awkward corner of lawn. The spot to the left where I let my daughter plant flowers is getting shaded out by a silver maple, so she needs a sunnier spot. Then I took the little curly willow rootlings that I’ve been keeping in a sunny window and planted them near the creek. Six planted - if two or three survive that will be ok.
I just want to get to the point where I can have a day like this and NOT need to help with schoolwork in the evening. Oyyyyyyy.
For the past couple of years, I’ve been working with researchers in northern Greece who are farming metal. In a remote, beautiful field, high in the Pindus mountains in Epirus, they are experimenting with a trio of shrubs known to scientists as “hyperaccumulators”: plants which have evolved the capacity to thrive in naturally metal-rich soils that are toxic to most other kinds of life. They do this by drawing the metal out of the ground and storing it in their leaves and stems, where it can be harvested like any other crop. As well as providing a source for rare metals – in this case nickel, although hyperaccumulators have been found for zinc, aluminium, cadmium and many other metals, including gold – these plants actively benefit the earth by remediating the soil, making it suitable for growing other crops, and by sequestering carbon in their roots. One day, they might supplant more destructive and polluting forms of mining.
The three plants being tested in Greece – part of a network of research plots across Europe – are endemic to the region. Alyssum murale, which grows in low bushes topped by bunches of yellow flowers, is native to Albania and northern Greece; Leptoplax emarginata – taller and spindlier, with clusters of green leaves and white petals – is found only in Greece; and Bornmuellera tymphaea, the most efficient of the three, which straggles across the ground in a dense layer of white blossom, is found only on the slopes of the Pindus (its name comes from Mount Tymfi, one of the highest peaks of the range).
What I have come to understand about these plants is that, by virtue of their evolutionary history and their close association with the soil, climate and wider ecosystem in which they have emerged, they embody a certain kind of knowledge: an understanding and accommodation with the places they have found themselves in. Humans have sought out deposits of rare metals for thousands of years, and developed ever-more violent ways of accessing them, but these plants have been around far longer, and have found more equitable and regenerative ways of doing much the same thing. Perhaps we have something to learn from them.
Hyperaccumulators are far from being the only non-humans that we might learn from, as scientific research in recent decades has shown us. Take slime moulds: strange, unicellular creatures somewhere between fungi and amoebae, which turn out to be very good at solving some very hard mathematical problems. Researchers at Lanzhou University in China have shown that Physarum polycephalum, a particularly lively slime mould, can solve the “travelling salesman” problem – a test for finding the shortest route between multiple cities – faster and more efficiently than any supercomputer humans have devised.
Cows, sheep, dogs and other animals have been shown to predict earthquakes in advance of tremors which register on seismographs. Squids and octopuses, we have learned, spread their neurons out through their bodies in ways that allow their limbs, and perhaps other faculties, to act independently of a centrally controlling mind. Spiders store information in their webs, using them as a kind of extended cognition: a mind outside the body entirely. A new conception of intelligence is emerging from scientific research: rather than human intelligence being unique or the peak of some graduated curve, there appear to be many different kinds of intelligence with their own strengths, competencies and suitabilities.
We’re also discovering all kinds of abilities which suggest whole worlds of being and awareness among non-humans we were previously unaware of. Plants, it turns out, hear and remember. In one experiment, they demonstrated the ability to respond with chemical defences to the particular sound of caterpillars munching on their leaves, even when it came from a tape recorder. In another, mimosa plants – which curl their leaves up when disturbed – learned to ignore being dropped a short distance when it proved harmless, and to react in the same way when tested days or weeks later, having in some way internalised this experience. Meanwhile, beneath the forest floor, we have become privy to the commerce and conversations of trees as they trade nutrients and information between families and species through the networks of fungi which connect their roots, in ways we are only just beginning to understand. These, too, are kinds of intelligence: and among other things, they are the way other species have learned to survive life-threatening events.
In the struggle to mitigate and adapt to climate breakdown – and all the other entangled crises we face – we are starting to recognise that other ways of knowing and acting on the world, from indigenous knowledge systems to changes in our own consumption and patterns of life, are vital to surviving and thriving on a hotter, wetter and more conflicted planet. We know too that this survival is dependent not only on our own abilities and inventions, but on the survival of the other species we share the planet with. The collapse of biodiversity which is already occurring makes it harder for us to hold back the collapse of whole ecosystems on which we too depend: for the pollination of crops, for disease resistance, for safe and sufficient food, for protection from fires and other natural disasters. We will flourish together, or not at all.
The deep knowledge that is possessed by animals, plants and others – their intelligence, we should begin to say – is another reason why we must preserve and protect them. But more than this: we should be listening to them, learning from them and working with them. The hyperaccumulator plants, for example, show us there are other ways of getting what we need from the planet; they also remind us that there are limits to what we should extract, as to turn them into another agroindustrial resource like soya beans or palm oil would be just as damaging. The knowledge that there are other ways of being intelligent on this planet should force us to reassess the centrality and usefulness of our own. Other worlds are not only possible, they have been growing around us all along.
The Hosta Collective is about making our world more inclusive, sustainable, and accessible for all. We want to be a resource to connect and share knowledge for those who care about their environment but feel left out of other communities. This will be a space with no shame, just solutions and support. We all deserve a place in our world and our future.
Feel free to share or submit stuff! Or tag us if you want! This is a more a community based movement than a strict organization, after all.
So this is the thing I have been working on! I want to kind of make a collective sort of resource and support for people who love the environment, nature, and sustainability, but feel left out due to disability, mental and/or chronic illness, neurodivergence, ect.
So many of us are out there and love our natural world but struggle to access it. So the hope is to kind of make a hub where we can find resources and knowledge to make that easier.
(And maybe if someday it leads to being able to learn how to make accessible sustainable communities with one’s found family… that would be pretty damn cool. Because we all know the current societal system is anything BUT sustainable for pretty much 99% of people.)
Anyways… give a follow if you want and feel free to share if you know folks who would be interested in stuff like this!
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.
have i posted this before? yes. am i doing it again because it’s still one of my favorite series? also yes. You should read it. it is quite good.
it’s post-post climate apocalypse (so like things are working again), an aroace lead, lots of swordfighting, actually really good ships (and this is coming from someone who is in fact aroace) and lots of historical references.
People kept asking for a masterpost. This one isn’t complete, and I will be adding more to it as the series continues.
This is literally one of my current favorite series - highly recommend (chapter one is a bit slow, but it really picks up after that)
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description, grabbed from where this is cross-posted on ao3:
“After the Calamity of Climate, a nation calling itself Arcadia has arisen on what was once the west coast of the united states. Dedicated in theory to democracy and rule of law, it also has strong theocratic leanings - a single, powerful religion, worship of Gaia, the Earth, has replaced the religions we know today, an elaborate gambit by the founders of Arcadia to ensure the mistakes of the past are never repeated. Arcadia is recovering, rapidly, from a protracted war with a predatory social darwinist neighbor.
Our story follows Ash Roanoake, a veteran of the Arcadian Guard and that war, and his work as an Adept of the Druidic Circle of Inquisition, as well as the story of River Damien - a refugee, pulled out of the smoking ashes of the enemy state, and now attempting to become an Inquisitor of Gaia in her own right. She reckons with past sins - and is drawn to a power struggle within the Inquisition, alongside her mysterious mentor, who seems to follow an interpretation of the Gaian religion entirely his own.”
Tear gas burns the eyes, nose and skin. Without access to first aid, there’s not much you can do but run for cover and try to wash it out with water – or cry it out. The air was thick with the acrid gas as the global financial crisis hit Greece in 2008, which set in motion a debt crisis the country is yet to recover from. In December, young Greeks faced off with riot police in Athens’ Syntagma Square and anger towards failed economic policies came to life in billowing plumes of yellowy smoke.
While tear gas may cause temporary sensory deprivation, it can also lead to moments of clarity. Or, so it was for writer Paul Mason. As Mason watched events unfold on the streets of Greece, he cast his mind back to September that year: wandering around with a TV news crew outside the headquarters of the collapsed investment bank Lehman Brothers, as newly redundant employees put their possessions in cardboard boxes and went home for the last time. He thought too about how he’d seen the internet reshaping society since his time as a tech journalist.
Mason began to connect the dots: this crisis isn’t going away. This train of thought led him to his provocative book Postcapitalism: A Guide to our Future. Mason offers a terminal diagnosis of the current order and a glimpse of what a new world might look like – and its seeds are already visible all around us.
Want to join the food revolution? Build yourself a flatpack urban farm
Forget flatpack furniture. Also forget traditional agriculture. Coming soon to a city near you – it’s the flatpack farm. At least, that’s the ambition of Mikkel Kjaer and Ronnie Markussen, a pair of young entrepreneurs who run Human Habitat, a Danish “urban design lab”.
“We wanted to make urban farming even smarter,” says Markussen over a coffee in central Copenhagen. The duo’s aim, he says, was to design a unit that would increase food security in cities, lower the ecological footprint of food production, create jobs and easily adapt to changes in the urban landscape.
What they came up with was the so-called Impact Farm – though it’s much more fun to describe it as a flatpack farm. That’s because it’s built using an assembly-kit of ready-made components that arrive in a saved-from-scrap shipping container. Put them together and you’ve got a two-storey vertical hydroponic(or soil-free) farm, which certainly beats a Billy bookcase.
Designed to be self-sufficient in water, heat and electricity, the farm requires a footprint of just 430 sq ft – though once the shipping container has been unpacked and the farm installed, the production area stretches to 538 sq ft. Crops include greens, herbs and fruiting plants.Human Habitat was born when childhood friends Kjaer and Markussen discovered they shared a similar goal. “We wanted to reconnect people to food by giving them a green space that brings nature back into our cities,” says Kjaer. As a student of development economics at Roskilde University, Kjaer had become interested in “small-scale solutions to the most fundamental of problems – providing food”. Markussen, meanwhile, had trained as a carpenter and worked on ambitious projects such Upcycle House, which was constructed using recycled and upcycled building materials.
Since curbside newspaper boxes don’t get a lot of action selling papers anymore, a new urban intervention puts them to use as something else: convenient compost bins.
“The boxes are so commonplace in the city, and I wanted to subtly tweak them to make people stop, look twice, and think about what they are seeing versus what they expect to see,” says designer Debbie Ullman, who created the New York Compost Box Project.
Placed next to community gardens, the boxes serve as a place for anyone to recycle food waste as they walk by. “The idea is to make it possible for busy New Yorkers to drop their scraps whenever it’s convenient for them, 24/7.”
This is cool! My initial question was who would use the compost, but the article says they’d be near community gardens, or alternatively could have a lock code so anyone who knows the code can take some for their own garden. My other question is who would maintain the bins? I’m no compost expert, but I understand it’s best if it has balanced food waste and dry matter (twigs etc) and is turned occasionally - would there be someone in charge of that?
by Sean Quinn, Jason Easter, Nick Benner, Yasser Salomon, Jon Martin
A vision indeed, this mega-tower inspires us to think of how agriculture can be integrated into buildings and cities. However, with its location being prime real estate and hazelnuts as one of the suggested crops, it does little for the maturation of the vertical farming dialogue.
Gardening in the western world involves taking measures against certain pests – such as rabbits, deer, or beetles – nibbling on crops. But we don’t have to worry about elephants merrily trampling our carefully-tended produce. But certain villages in Africa are faced with this dilemma every day. One environmentally friendly (and “elephant friendly”) solution is to install beehive fences to deter the majestic beasts from wandering inside. It turns out the old stereotype of elephants being afraid of tiny creatures is true – and it’s a profitable trick for farmers.
If you could create your perfect living situation, what would it look like?
Right now most people’s choices are limited to single-family homes, apartments, or condos. But what if the choices weren’t limited? What if you could stitch together your ideal scenario?
It’s about time I talk about the righteous anger all solarpunks have with capitalism and how all subversive action is necessary action, all mutual aid is essential mutual aid, how it’s okay to be pissed at the system in which we live. Peace, love, and understanding can be afforded to people, not to the system which exploits them. This isn’t the hippie movement 2.0, non-violence isn’t always an answer, especially when violence is counted as property damage.
In short, feel that righteous anger, it’s justified. We’re solarpunks, that doesn’t mean we’re pushovers, to attack the state we must speak its language.
People are starting to care about the environment, and that’s wonderful… but there’s a catch. Always is, isn’t there? It’s a mix of aestheticism, marketing, and research suppression. More often than not, most entrepreneurs and companies are out to make a quick buck off of people who think that reducing waste or using renewable materials is active environmentalism. It’s not their fault for having the wool pulled over their eyes, that’s how so called “green capitalism” is designed, blaming others for being fooled is just victim blaming. Another tool of separation by the ruling class is greenwashing.
But where’s the point in what I’m saying? It’s not gonna stop anytime soon. The point is to potentially educate those who fall for these these things, as I’ve stated before, they’re victims of marketeering and (probably) propaganda propelled forward by the ruling class. In the end, putting green in front of whatever is being sold doesn’t make it true. Don’t be a victim, be what they fear most, educated.
That’s all for tonight (currently 7:22 American Central time zone as I’m typing)
I’d love for you to share this, with how many (ugh) liberals are on Tumblr, I wouldn’t be surprised if I got backlash for blaming capitalism, but anyway, this has been @punkofsunshine, have a good one and stay safe.
Why Solarpunk Gives Me Hope for the Future ft St Andrew
When we look out into the murky depths of our future, it’s hard not to despair. The scars of capitalism run ragged through our minds, bodies, and environments. The uncertainty of a world in climate chaos is driving many into a state of apathy. Inaction and status quo politicking is so prevalent among the ruling class that it’s easy to believe in neoliberal hawk Margaret Thatcher’s assertion that “there is no alternative.” Well, there is. It’s beautiful, vibrant, and gives me hope for a juster, more ethical, and more ecological future. It’s called Solarpunk. Today, we’re going to dive into the visions of Solarpunk, uncovering what it is, what it looks like, and how exactly it can be implemented right now to construct a radical eco and human-centric present.
Solarpunk. A burgeoning movement blending aesthetics and politics that envisions a future which answers the question: “What kind of world will emerge when we finally transition to renewables?”
Loving how the core question of solarpunk is constantly being re-iterated.
“What does a sustainable civilisation look like, and how can we get there?”
I just read this article earlier today and I absolutely love the little Margaret Thatcher throwdown that occurs.
That aside, it’s a nice little article, short, sweet, and to the point. Would highly recommend reading when you have the time.
Hello my lovely humans, welcome back to what I like to call informal essays. Today brings together two very important topics to me, food and conservationism. This is going to be longer than my last post and is going to involve some sidetracking as well.
I came up with this topic while looking at all the spices I was using to make butter chicken for dinner tonight and wondering how much the price was going to go up when shit really hits the fan, if we could have such dishes like this again, etc. So, essentially my anxiety spiral led me to doing research and wanting to discuss the intersectionality of culinary arts, climate science, and farming. In our current state, beef reigns supreme in terms of climate change contribution, the most eaten meat in the world is actually chicken, which is significantly less harmful than beef or pork, and yet beef and pork have the greatest climate impact and are highly susceptible to diseases (poultry is as well, don’t get me wrong). In general animal farming is a big contributor to climate change, crop farming is as well…
Crop farming, which I talk about here, also emits a lot of fossil fuels, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and pollutes ground water, depletes soil, and flows downriver along with cow and pig manure, thus killing fish, crustaceans, marine reptiles, and mammals who live in or around the sea. This combination of disregard after disregard for natural ecosystems leads us into where we are now. The Midwest is on the cusp of desertification, there’s been no agriculture reform or sign of actual change, which is why we need to take it upon ourselves to start vertical farming, hydroponics, and soil-less farming on an industrial scale. Not only is it more efficient, it’s better for the environment in every possible aspect, even using less water and requiring very little usage of fertilizers, but how do you replace animal farming? Answer: You don’t, you just get rid of it, the least amount of impact out of any animal is the chicken, so it may be able to stay, but cows and pigs cannot be farmed en masse anymore, it’s dangerous for our environment and our health, so they must be used all at once, and composted (with the rich preferably). It sounds cruel, I know, but there aren’t many better options. Of course the meat and dairy industries will try to interfere like they always do, but we knew that would happen anyway.
Moral of the story, our modern agriculture industry is profit focused and not based around the health or well-being of us or our planet, causing both a rise in greenhouse gas emissions, water and land pollution, and is just generally bad for us in the dietary respect.
Anyway, that’s all for today babes. This has been @punkofsunshine have a good one and stay safe.
Hey guys, I’m back, I had a little reprieve from posting or even checking my blog. I wanted to address the themes of solarpunk, the direction it’s moving and if it’s considered too idealistic for our modern, cynical society.
Short Answer: Yes
Long Answer: No, not entirely
Yes, solarpunk may have optimism embedded in it, but that’s mostly to ward off despair. Despair is easy to fall into as an activist or even an entire movement, so the focus is mostly on environmental impact and restoration, mitigation of ecological collapse, etc. First and foremost however, solarpunk is a political movement and no political movement is entirely optimistic for the future, otherwise they wouldn’t exist to attempt to make a change. As a new movement, we all have to decide our direction, our appeal, etc and like I’ve said before, utopian visuals are a nice goal, but we must focus on what we can change now and not what the next generation will attempt to do down the line.
There are many things we can improve on as a movement, like drawing attention to it (either artistically or politically, preferably both), getting involved with local to state government, or even subversive action (not recommended, but very effective in certain circumstances). Whatever that can be done to push the movement into the public eye, do it, not only for yourself, but because it’s the right thing to do.
Anyway babes, that’s all from me today. This has been @punkofsunshine have a good one and stay safe.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the whole art nouveau thing, but I’d like to take a step back and analyze how the aesthetic should reflect the movement. While it is nice to have an end goal in mind, the message should be “We need to work together so the earth doesn’t become uninhabitable in our lifetime.” and not “Hey, pretty pictures of green cityscapes, but also here’s the message based around a few different political philosophies that you have to look into.”
In short I’m saying, we need to put the punk firmly in solarpunk so it reflects upon the movement as one with ideas and ideals as opposed to overly utopian in nature. A nice change would be moving away from cityscapes and focusing on architecture that feels handmade, adding in the punk principle of DIY into the aesthetic while also keeping the greenery would make something totally unique and reflect the movement better than the current iteration does. Changing the aesthetic would also drive home the point that we’re constantly evolving as a movement, constantly growing and changing.
As I’ve said before, with growth comes new challenges. If we want our message to be fully understood and not just ogled at because it’s bright and pretty, we need to make it easier to understand off the bat and not as easy to twist into something harmful where someone could say “If [X group] weren’t around, we could have this future!” Visuals are a powerful medium, we sincerely want them to reflect our intent as well as provide a message that we’re not going away, ever. So now, I ask you artists to rethink the future of this look and imagine one which is more akin to a cobbled together house with solar panels and a water pump out front as opposed to a green apartment complex in a retrofitted city. One of these is achievable in our lifetime and I know you know which one.
That’s all for today (tonight really) babes. This has been @punkofsunshine, have a good one and stay safe.
Okay, shit, I never expected this to blow up like it did, I would like to add a few things.
Thing number one, (basically a summary) yes the art-nouveau thing has its place, it’s nice to have an end goal in mind, but right now we have to think pragmatically and semi-realistically otherwise the movement won’t go anywhere and will be stuck in fantastical visions of the future. We must be fluid and shape the movement into something we want to see it become, a pathway for the future.
Thing number two, thank you so much for all the constructive criticism and additions to the post. It’s really helped spread a message in the solarpunk community (at least on Tumblr) and builds a bigger platform for people with similar ideas to stand on. It’s extremely helpful for stay at home activists like myself (not that I don’t want to participate in direct action, but I have a job and nothing happens in rural Illinois) these blog posts are the best way for me to express myself as a neurodivergent person. Most of the time it’s incredibly hard for me to put my thoughts into words in an eloquent way until I start writing.
That’s all for this little addition babes, have a good rest of your day/night.
At every level, insects and (arachnids) are around us, whether it be a fruit fly or those fucking stink bugs that we get in the house everysingle winter, they’re around us whether we like it or not. Chitinous critters corral themselves into crannies or cowardly fly cross the room when we’re trying to kill them, but what if we used these cool carapaced creatures to our advantage instead of them being a general annoyance, no i’m not talking about beekeeping or honeybees or even those bee hotels that don’t really work, I’m talking farming them, cooking them, seasoning them, dehydrating them, etc. We’ve all heard that insects are the purest form of protein as a joke when someone accidentally swallows a bug, but this little joke is actually true, specifically with crickets. Crickets contain 2-3 times more complete protein than a beef steak on the same weight basis and contain no cholesterol and fat, on top of it all they contain more iron and contain fiber as well. That’s not even including the ecological benefits, such as water usage, waste disposal, carbon emissions, and runoff from improper animal waste disposal.
Part II: Pollination
Like I said above, I don’t condone owning honeybees, not out of a moral stance or anything, they’re ecologically unsafe, they compete with native bees and usually end up winning due to sheer numbers. I’m talking about mason bees and growing habitats for them, yes growing habitats, mason bees use reeds to make their hives, so grow some pop grass (horsetail reed) and watch the magic happen, preferably not too close though. Spending money on those bee houses isn’t a good idea anyhow, they’re a breeding ground for diseases and mostly get occupied by native wasps, which isn’t a bad thing, having natural predators around a certain area is a very good thing, but they’re not pollinators, which is the focus right now.
Part III: Permaculture
Insects and arachnids are essential members of our ecosystem and play a vital part in keeping it balanced, whether it be a common fly laying eggs on a carrion for decomposition or a butterfly doing its butterfly thing of being pretty and drinking nectar, they all serve a purpose, even the annoying bastards like mosquitoes or those fucking stinkbugs. Some may even serve a culinary purpose in the future, like meal-worms, crickets, and grasshoppers being the most common forms. These little creatures make a significant impact together, just like us.
This has been it for me babes, this has been @punkofsunshine ,I’ll be checking in tomorrow. Have a nice night.
Lunarpunk is the sister aesthetic to solarpunk, but darker, I was actually surprised to see it has it’s own flag presented below. The basis is people moving to the moon and waiting for the earth to heal while in colonies, there would be tons of difficulties with low gravitational pull, constant unfiltered radiation from the sun, and probably even keeping warm, very compelling in my opinion.
It looks much like the solarpunk flag, but unlike the solarpunk flag, lunarpunk doesn’t have a political movement attached
Tidalpunk
Tidalpunk is basically humans moving to the sea because the land has been left unhealed for so long, it’s almost uninhabitable, so people are living on or under the sea until the land is able to start healing again/ Expansion in population has led to housing out at or under water that’s Eco-friendly and doesn’t harm wildlife, sadly this one doesn’t have a flag. Luckily it has an aesthetic though.
Sustainable, ocean-based living? Yes please, makes me wish I knew how to swim though. To be perfectly honest I’m out of ideas on this post, so if you have any more ideas, please feel free to re-blog with what sub-genres relating to solarpunk you could find. I’m certain there are niche ones that I haven’t found yet.
As always, this has been @punkofsunshine, see ya’ll soon.
just curious on why you say that the lunarpunk flag has no political movement attached? since any sort of -punk movement is inherently political as an opposition to capitalism, and the above flag has pretty obvious ties to anarchism
How I’d like to describe lunarpunk is as a narrative device and aesthetic, it’s an offshoot of the solarpunk genre, yes, but it has no movement of its own. Lunarpunk is solarpunk, but with aesthetic and attitude changes. Lunarpunk is more gritty and dark than solarpunk, but shares the same message in the way that we must treat the earth better if we want to live on it and that includes an opposition to capitalism, authoritarianism, etc. However it has no characteristics of a defined political movement as it’s using the solarpunk message solely.
Lunarpunk is the sister aesthetic to solarpunk, but darker, I was actually surprised to see it has it’s own flag presented below. The basis is people moving to the moon and waiting for the earth to heal while in colonies, there would be tons of difficulties with low gravitational pull, constant unfiltered radiation from the sun, and probably even keeping warm, very compelling in my opinion.
It looks much like the solarpunk flag, but unlike the solarpunk flag, lunarpunk doesn’t have a political movement attached
Tidalpunk
Tidalpunk is basically humans moving to the sea because the land has been left unhealed for so long, it’s almost uninhabitable, so people are living on or under the sea until the land is able to start healing again/ Expansion in population has led to housing out at or under water that’s Eco-friendly and doesn’t harm wildlife, sadly this one doesn’t have a flag. Luckily it has an aesthetic though.
Sustainable, ocean-based living? Yes please, makes me wish I knew how to swim though. To be perfectly honest I’m out of ideas on this post, so if you have any more ideas, please feel free to re-blog with what sub-genres relating to solarpunk you could find. I’m certain there are niche ones that I haven’t found yet.
As always, this has been @punkofsunshine, see ya’ll soon.
I once again am boosting my playlist because I think it fits the movement perfectly in attitude. It has a lot of different cultural influences and has some nice ambient music in there too including a track from @thecarboncoast
I hope you enjoy! This has been punkofsunshine, have a good one and stay safe.
Focusing on too many things at once is a problem I face personally, couple that with the need to take everything upon myself and low stress tolerance and you have a disaster waiting to happen. If you face the same problem as me, I’d highly suggest making a group of specialized people and solve small problems locally, whether that be growing food, hooking up satellites for free WiFi, setting up a Food Not Bombs chapter in your area, or even cooperation in local to state government. We all have our talents, honing yours can change a life, but it takes all of us to change the world in a significant way. To rebuild a structure, parts must be torn down, the more you tear down periodically, the better the structure is going to be, however it must be reinforced. You cannot expect a house to stand without a plan for a structure, we are the supports that make the wall, the roof, and the floor. The foundation is what we believe in, and what the foundation is, is hope. Hope for a future that can be, with action, collaboration, and resistance against the hierarchical, overbearing, and exploitative power structures that currently exist.
This has been my first post in a while, so I’ll see ya’ll again in probably a month to commemorate my first post on this site “A Beginner’s Guide to Solarpunk” which absolutely blew up my account, to be truthful I’m proud of how far we’ve all come with our small internet based movement reaching new heights and our voices getting louder in the ears of politicians and capitalists alike. We’re here to stay, don’t forget about it.
This has been @punkofsunshine, have a good one and stay safe.
In terms of aesthetic, genre, and political movement, Solarpunk is very new. Anarchism has been around formally since 1809, but perhaps even before. So in terms of egalitarian ideologies, Solarpunk is the peppy, bright-eyed child in the egalitarian/collectivist political sphere, but at this point it’s our best hope in terms of getting out of the choke-hold we’ve been in for so long. Having hope in the future doesn’t make a movement less serious, it makes the people involved fight harder than those on the sidelines. Solarpunks are the scholars and players, we study and we play in our down time. I know I do at least, I have connections all across my community, even into city government and partially into county government, so pulling a few strings would be easy, but I also do things that aren’t so legal. In the spring and summer, I’m an avid guerrilla gardener and graffiti artist. Not that I’m any good at graffiti, but I get the message across in biodegradable spray paint and chalk. One of these days I’m going to talk face-to-face with our energy council and treasurer and discuss a bill to add clean rooftop energy to all the small stores in my city, but that’s just me.
What drives us is hope, we’re tired of feeling trapped under a sense of impending doom, we’re tired of feeling trapped under capitalism, and we’re tired of the evils of the world winning because it’s profitable. We’re angry, we’re smart, and we’re strong, much stronger together than any bourgeois pigs. Even if we have to work within the red tape, we will prevail because we’re working together and I think we can all get behind that goal.
