attemptingsustainability

[attemptingsustainability]

If you’re genuinely interested in learning more about settler colonialism and answering questions like “wait what does land back look like?” “What can I do?” and “What are the contexts informing this and why do Indigenous people reject being part of the US/Canada?” there are free syllabi online which can answer these questions (they will not answer it directly, the point is to get you to think for yourself and ask more questions that can lead you to thinking more deeply about this and how you can personally take action towards better practices of solidarity) 

Here’s the Standing Rock Syllabus: 

https://nycstandswithstandingrock.wordpress.com/standingrocksyllabus/

Allyship and Solidarity Guidelines of Unsettling America:

https://unsettlingamerica.wordpress.com/allyship/

Towards Decolonization and Settler Responsibility:

https://unsettlingamerica.wordpress.com/2016/10/04/towards-decolonization-and-settler-responsibility-reflections-on-a-decade-of-indigenous-solidarity-organizing/

Sample Syllabi of the DEcolonization Resource Collection:

https://nationalhistorycenter.org/decolonization-resource-collection-sample-syllabi/

Further Readings:

https://decolonization.wordpress.com/decolonization-readings/

These are limited resources that mainly deal with North America and English-speaking countries, because that’s the context I am coming from. If you have resources from other regions and other languages, I welcome them here, or anything from your local context. 

[attemptingsustainability]

GIVE ALL CITIES SOLAR PANELS AND ELECTRIC PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION 2020

[attemptingsustainability]

The Problem with Solarpunk

I love solarpunk. I love the idea of being agressively, radically positive. I love the earth. I want to see it thrive. I love that people get together to fight and create positive change for the environment.

But yall are really botching this.

Any “solarpunk” community ive been in online is rife with academia, elitism, and disregard for poor people. Its making the movement stale and sick.

Posting academic articles isnt solarpunk. Partificating over words and “should-we-could-we” isnt solarpunk. Defending shit people because they wrote some half decent academia isnt solarpunk.

Solarpunk is throwing wildflower seeds on your neighbors monoculture lawn. Its reduce/reuse/recycle. Its grafting food tree stems onto the trees in your neighborhood. Its planting food in the median. Its planting food in parks. Its climbing up trees and joining protests to stop pipelines.

We should glorify stuff like this!!! Encourage action!! Solarpunk is about making the world a better place, goddamn what the people say.

Solarpunk should look like ecoterrorism. It should look like dirty hippie punks giving a fuck about the environment. It shouldnt look like an article passed around to no avail, no action.

[attemptingsustainability]

Before we can live in a world of vertical gardens covering stained glass skyscrapers, we need to build a world of backyard garden boxes made of reclaimed wood. Before we can cover every rooftop with solar panels, we need to equip every home with solar smokeless cooking made of scrap metal

The appeal of those green cityscapes in the pretty pictures isn’t just that they’re hi-tech and clean, it’s that they sprout from a society that values compassion, the environment, and human lives more than it values profit. We need to build that society first, and we need to build it from the ground up with what we have available

The solarpunk future is for our grandchildren. Our job is to pave the way for it

[attemptingsustainability]

There are a lot of times I feel like just…flipping the vegan script.

It’s not ‘polyester’ it’s plastic

It’s not ‘vegan leather’ it’s plastic

Its not ‘faux fur’ it’s plastic

Plastic is a pollutant and causes far more damage to the environment both now and in the future than leather or wool.

Please stop telling me that the Plastic Lyfe is the only life, it is not. My leather shoes will last a decade where pleather is lucky to last 12 months. Leather (and wool) decompose and are renewable. Plastic is neither of those.

[attemptingsustainability]

I know it’s trendy right now to say that adopting more of an eco-friendly lifestyle is pointless because the only way to save humanity is to destroy capitalism, but we should remember that many of those lifestyle changes help us build skills and social networks that would be important in a post-capitalism future. 

For example, if we’re going to end reliance on factory farming, it would really help for more people to learn to garden and grow food. Same for other hands-on skills like cooking, crafts, home repair, tech repair, etc. Even small things like using re-usable water bottles and bags or thrifting/swapping items to cut down on waste would be regular features of a post-capitalist society, so making them more widely practiced now is a great thing. 

Systemic changes are necessary for sure, but they *will* involve lifestyle changes too, and it’s important to do your part to create that from the ground up. We don’t get to a better system by destroying the old one, but by building up the new one. 🌱

[attemptingsustainability]

Programmers are the greatest browsing community (SO mostly)…We can singlehandedly save the planet.

[attemptingsustainability]

fucked up how cooking and baking from scratch is viewed as a luxury…..like baking a loaf of bread or whatever is seen as something that only people with money/time can do. I’m not sure why capitalism decided to sell us the idea that we can’t make our own damn food bc it’s a special expensive thing that’s exclusive to wealthy retirees but it’s stupid as hell and it makes me angry

[attemptingsustainability]

I cant believe this is controversial, but disabled people are more important than cutting single use plastic. Bring back straws, don’t ban inhalers and let us continue using the products that help us stay alive and healthy.

[attemptingsustainability]

Anyway if y'all are interested in sustainability I recommend looking up your city's plans for sustainability. I just did and my city has a 160+ page document discussing their plans, motives, and possible outcomes for their sustainability plans.

[attemptingsustainability]

Anarchist tip: if you need some piece of equipment, or anything really, look up if there are any alternatives designed in or otherwise for exploited countries. People have invented many of the necessities for renewable power, medicine, machining, internet - all the comforts of modern life really - in ways that are low-tech, small-scale, often made of recycled or abundant materials, using little to no electricity, and best of all, absurdly cheap

Like a microscope and centrifuge made of paper that cost less than a dollar together, and a non-electric sun tracker for solar panels that costs about 1/30 what a commercial sun tracker does

Great for squats, occupations, communes, mutual aid, personal independence, etc.

[attemptingsustainability]

🌱Gardening/House Plants in Low Light Living Spaces

🌿With No Windows:🌿

There are some plants that can tolerate extremely low light, probably because they evolved in jungles and dense forests. Try out a pothos or a spider plant as beginner house plants. They key is following a watering schedule for each plant.

If you can get one, a growing light will allow you to grow some vegetables or herbs. Growing lights are expensive, but the rest of the settup can be pretty dang cheap. A 5 gallon bucket and some PVC pipe or pieces of wood screwed together to hang the light off of should do it to get started.

Also don’t forget to make sure YOU have enough light to thrive. I recommend having at least two light sources, one of them with a daylight bulb, and another with a warmer toned bulb. Some fairy lights too can make an entire room feel much better to be in, even if they’re from the dollar store.

🌿With One Window:🌿

Growing some food just got much easier! Make sure you’re using that window for edible plants. Even if your window doesn’t get much direct sunlight, that’s okay! Your plants will just grow a little slower than they might in a sunnier window, but that’s okay!

Get lots of house plants. Having some natural light in your room opens a lot of options about what can survive there. Have fun experimenting!

🌿With Two or More Windows:🌿

Sometimes the best window for growing what you want to use in the kitchen isn’t the kitchen window. It’s worth it to go to the other room for your ingredients because they’ll grow much better.

Different herbs need different amounts of light. Put ones that are better with less light in the windowsills that don’t get much sun to practically utilize your space

[attemptingsustainability]

Solarpunking Apartment Living

Here are 5 ways I came up with to begin reaching for a solarpunk lifestyle while living in an apartment-style living space where you may not have a yard or permission to make changes to the property. Help me out by adding on more ideas!

1. Plants! I’m talking plants that clean the air such as peace lilies as well as growing your own herbs and/or veggies. If you have a window, even a tiny one without a sill, you can easily grow a simple herb garden.

2. Recycle everything! It’s not just your plastics, but make sure your toilet paper rolls are going to recycling, your boxes, your paper waste. Take the extra effort to find a recycling plant near you if one isn’t provided by your living accommodations.

3. Reduce your waste! Solarpunk is all about sustainability, and plastic water bottles are not sustainable. Begin to accumulate multi-use items such as washcloths rather than paper towels, a reusable water bottle, cloth grocery bags, etc.

4. Solar power! Maybe you aren’t able to use solar power for all your electrics, but there are great desk lights, phone chargers, and other great devices you can begin accumulating.

5. Repair your things! A solarpunk future embraces both technology and green living, and to have the best of both worlds you need to keep your things in top shape. Don’t forget to clean the dust out of you computer or out from underneath your fridge, and keep up with your car maintenance. The less often you need to buy new products and the less energy they have to use struggling to work, the better for everyone!

[attemptingsustainability]

One of the things I find most helpful about solarpunk is that it gives me a positive ideal to work towards. Of course solarpunk is at its core about dismantling capitalism, averting the worst consequences of climate change, and fighting systems of oppression, but always focusing on the negatives we are trying to end is a lot harder on my mental health than looking to a positive ideal to reach for.

The world we live in is already rough on mental health. People are isolated from each other and from nature, overworked, underpaid, locked in hierarchical systems, and facing social problems that are massive in scope and well-entrenched. Imagining a positive eco-socialist future is already a radical and punk action.

[attemptingsustainability]

[attemptingsustainability]

Tacky quote to live by

[attemptingsustainability]

If every working-class person in the world decided this afternoon to install solar panels on their roofs and started biking instead of driving, the ice caps would still melt and the human race would still die off. It simply isn’t possible to end climate change while working within a system that sends all your products overseas in massive supertankers wrapped in unrecycled plastic that will be thrown in a landfill the moment it hits land - and practices like that aren’t going to go away because of your purchasing habits.

Nor are we gonna hit some magical point where using clean energy and reducing waste are suddenly the cheapest or most profitable option and so all the world’s big companies fall over each other to switch over. That has never been the case and never will be - the “free market” isn’t going to save us.

The fact of the matter is, this system needs to be torn down if our species is to survive. We don’t have time to delay the revolution anymore. Capitalism is extinction.