A growing body of research supports the idea that the young people of today feel that they have been let down by the institutions that were supposed to serve them, especially with regard to government responses to climate change, and a lack of suitable career prospects paired with historical rates of education inflation. Our media reflects this sentiment with the boom of the Dystopian genre in the early 2000s as well as doomerism in literature and social media. What we think of the future is tied very closely to how we feel about the present.
The collective pessimism towards the future of our world is marked by climate anxiety, economic uncertainty and risk to society. We already know that eco-anxiety is one of the only psychoterratic emotions that leads to people being less likely to take collective action against climate change. It’s clear that when looking towards the future, we all could do with a little bit of hope to combat the growing dread.
For a little bit in the middle, around the mid-to-late 2010s, futurist thought played around with the concept of fully automated luxury communism. The idea was to take the exponential technological advancement we were seeing and stretch that to its most well-meaning maximum by seeing how it could serve humanity instead of just causing layoffs. The idea lost interest with time because it still had elements of consumerism and existential threats such as AI dictating how humans live. Think of Wall-E. So clearly, we needed an alternate alternate future to replace this one.
Enter: solarpunk. The term solarpunk was first coined in a blog post from 2008: “
[...]I have never escaped the vision of personal flying machines that cobbled their lift and energy requirements together from a combination of helium-filled glider wings, wind power, and a prop driven by good old bicycle pedals, chains, and gears. You can’t get a whole lot more solarpunk than that.”
If you haven’t gathered already, the “solar” comes from the most popular form of renewable energy today, and the “-punk” comes from a sense of rebellion against the status quo. It envisions a world where we use energy from renewable resources as part of a larger norm of building a lifestyle with nature rather than fighting against the wilderness to bring about civilization.
Most artworks associated with this genre have commonalities— picture large windmills against a never-ending carpet of green, with people farming under the sun using min-drones and futuristic-looking gear. A living-building-style settlement peeks in from the side, with deer and birds wandering, unafraid. Currently, solarpunk is largely an aesthetic rather than a full-blown movement, but it is gaining traction as a vision for a more sustainable and equitable future.
One of the core tenets of Solarpunk is the end of capitalism, identifying it as intrinsic to sustainability efforts. The ‘currency’ system in Becky Chambers’ award-winning ‘Monk and Robot’ series, for example, is ‘digital pebbles’. They are simply a symbol of appreciation - you input a number to transfer to someone based on how much their action meant to you. Say you start off with 0 pebs, you can still give an unlimited amount of pebs out and ask for supplies, food, etc. You will have a peb balance that is public, but a negative amount is not necessarily frowned upon. It just means you may be temporarily stuck or need help, and most people sport negative balances at some point in time.
It’s not perfect, but it’s to challenge our established ways of living. Breaking the box of the zero-sum game, solarpunk proposes alternative economic models that foster collaboration and shared prosperity in place of competition and scarcity. You might be thinking,so one can give out unlimited pebs, and you don’t even need pebs necessarily to get things. Then, how is it that can you trust that people wouldn’t take too much? This is another core principle of solarpunk: collective action, trust and collaboration. Solarpunk society has already dismantled the structures that incentivise us to distrust one another and look for personal gain, hence they have transitioned into a society that believes in closely-knit communities, mutual aid and respect as well as interconnectedness with one another.
It also gives a direct response to our expanding cities, polluted and cramped. Solarpunk futures tout decentralisation - not in the way of suburbs but micro-communities that use sustainable transport enabling connectivity. This allows for localized, human-scale development in harmony with the natural environment. The genre seems to disagree with those who look at anthropogenic climate change and believe that humans are and will always be a destructive force to the purity of nature or the life of the ecosystem. Solarpunk draws inspiration from indigenous wisdom paired with creative innovation with ecological coexistence as the primary intention. How we could coexist varies from text to text, encouraging diverse context-based solutions- “There is no right way to do Solarpunk.”
That said, one will often see technology inspired by existing renewables or simple machines. For example, pinball-sized solar panels, DIY biohacking and a lot of cool bicycles. Another one of the aims is appropriating scientific thought, tech and innovation into a social justice frontier away from its growing association with profit, fear and billionaires. Energy, which is the question of the hour, can be harnessed using technology, and many solarpunk creators also believe in the decolonisation of energy hence local, practical and green tech must be at the forefront.
This brings us to the vital component of both social and environmental justice. Rokeya Begum’s Sultana’s Dream exemplifies the spirit of solarpunk in many ways: a focus on queer futures, space for caste-abolished society along with other hierarchies, and an eco-feminist perspective to the literature.
All of this said, many critique the genre as vague, and having no real substance or practical application. They feel solarpunk worlds to be unrelatable, and sometimes even wholly unattainable. Even those who believe in it are found to sometimes see it as a source of strain or unending effort, or simply only possible for “some people, under the right circumstances”. A study analysing comments from the Solarpunk subreddit showed that users also show a high level of belief superiority, which is closely linked with people trying to impress their worldview upon others, which runs the risk of an uncritical, flattened and stagnant propagation of a complex idea.
Unfortunately, we just haven’t gotten that far yet. However, we can hope to see more artists and architects adding to the genre because of its inclination towards actively creating a world that works for everyone rather than just demolishing what doesn’t. Even if a perfect solarpunk utopia may be out of our reach yet, the genre gives more space to discuss less radical, more immediately feasible aspects of solarpunk. By scaling up concepts like decentralisation of systems of livelihood or resurgence of low-energy or jugaad technology and applying them to the world, skeptics, too, can see the appeal of participating in discussions around the genre.
It seems only fitting that solarpunk is constructed slowly by the careful contributions of many over time and across the globe. As novel possibilities unfold for climate optimists, let’s see if we can bring hope back in trend again.
Netra Kothari
