#it's a solarpunk future

[emotopunkpipeline]

I 100% truly believe that the next step in human evolution is to ever strive towards a communal and stateless and interconnected society. Where we use our most advanced adaptation, our brains and their cognitive and regulatory abilities, to elevate the existence of ourselves and every being on this earth. We learn that our greatest powers are our abilities to connect and nurture and protect and analyze and improve, not to produce. To connect. To understand. That is how we grow and move forward. We can imagine that future.

[justalittlesolarpunk]

It’s solar and wind and tidal and geothermal and hydropower.

It’s plant-based diets and regenerative livestock farming and insect protein and lab-grown meat.

It’s electric cars and reliable public transit and decreasing how far and how often we travel.

It’s growing your own vegetables and community gardens and vertical farms and supporting local producers.

It’s rewilding the countryside and greening cities.

It’s getting people active and improving disabled access.

It’s making your own clothes and buying or swapping sustainable stuff with your neighbours.

It’s the right to repair and reducing consumption in the first place.

It’s greater land rights for the commons and indigenous peoples and creating protected areas.

It’s radical, drastic change and community consensus.

It’s labour rights and less work.

It’s science and arts.

It’s theoretical academic thought and concrete practical action.

It’s signing petitions and campaigning and protesting and civil disobedience.

It’s sailboats and zeppelins.

It’s the speculative and the possible.

It’s raising living standards and curbing consumerism.

It’s global and local.

It’s me and you.

Climate solutions look different for everyone, and we all have something to offer.

[solarpunkfool]

I am trying to choose to hope. 

I am choosing to imagine public transportation. 

Grocery stores with attached soup kitchens to decrease food waste. 

Neighborhood meal- and garden-sharing programs.

Green spaces connecting to other green spaces.

The rainforest ADVANCING, churning up dry soil and turning it dark and healthy. 

The sky filled with birds and the sea with fish, their populations increasing. 

The air and water clean. 

Emissions-free vehicles on roadways, with speeds governed, and safe streets for tricycles, bicycles, dogs, deer, and stray soccer balls.

Solar panels on every public building, over every parking lot. 

Beehives and wildflowers on the open berms between roadways. 

The total lack of gunshots around the world, and instead the sound of shovels, digging holes to plant fruit trees by public sidewalks. 

[gnome-punk]

Image text: "I'm so sick of living life on survival mode. I want to live in creative mode."

[nonsense-repository]

[eleanor-arroway]

times, places, and practices that I want to learn from to imagine a hopeful future for humanity 🍃

the three sisters (squash, beans, maize) stock photo - alamy // anecdote by Ira Byock about Margaret Mead // art by Amanda Key // always coming home by Ursula K. Le Guin // Yup'ik basket weaver Lucille Westlock photographed by John Rowley // the left hand of darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin // photo by Jacob Klassen // the carrier bag theory of fiction by Ursula K. Le Guin // article in national geographic // the dawn of everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow // braiding sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer // the birchbark house by Louise Erdrich // photo by John Noltner

I'm looking for more content and book recs in this vein, so please send them my way!

[chr0mocolor]

Know your kind of PUNK - Updated Version

[nestedneons]

By xidpix

[auntieashleydark]

I like solarpunk as a theme or concept, but most solarpunk art doesn't quite work for me. For the most part, you've got Manhattan, But With Lots Of Trees or Happy Cottagecore With Robots.

What's missing, for me, is a sense of connection with where we are now. Both of the standard solarpunk visions present a world that has already been completely transformed. There's no hint of what it took to get from now to then, no evidence of what people had to overcome, to sacrifice, to pull humanity out of its ecological nose-dive.

I'd love to see a solarpunk city depicted in the process of being rebuilt. Show me old buildings being torn down, and new ones being built from the salvaged materials. Show me a tower with hanging gardens and wind turbines that's clearly a modified, pre-existing structure. Show me a lovely green zone that's still expanding into a reclaimed industrial park.

Maybe it's just me, but depictions of good futures fell like pure, unattainable fantasy without a connection to the present. For me, hope comes with imagining the path that gets us there.

[nitewrighter]

Disclaimer: This isn't about which is the most 'correct' or 'hopeful' or 'moral' choice. This is about FICTION and is purely about which interests you the most on an aesthetic and/or narrative level. Kill the cop in your head and just pick the subgenre that makes brain go brrrr.

[mostlyghostly42]

there needs to be libraries for video games

like how libraries have computers for anyone to come in and use for free, you should be able to go in and play any game you can find on the shelves on a video game console available in the library for free

the consoles should also be powered by solar power n stuff as well

[oraculojasmineiro]

[justalittlesolarpunk]

There is hope. I promise. Young people just won their case against the state of Montana. Ecuadoreans braved escalating political violence to vote against oil drilling in the Amazon. Brazilian deforestation is down by enormous amounts since Lula took office. They’ve invented hydropanels that synthesise pure water from the air. People are farming in solar parks. A ship just launched for its maiden voyage using rigid sails designed to mimic wind turbine blades. EV sales are taking off, and, more crucially, cities are re-assessing their very relationship with the car. By the 2024 Olympics the river Seine will be safe for people to swim in again. More and more people are replacing their gas boilers with heat pumps. Solarpunks are growing crops in their back garden and distributing them to their neighbours. Great tracts of land are being given back to nature. Young people are channelling their energies into meaningful careers. Pilots are leaving the aviation industry. Yes, the world is dark and terrible and full of awful dangers that keep you up at night, but we are a huge movement that grows every day in numbers and power. Your small actions matter. Our collective triumphs are increasing. Things are going to get harder, extreme weather will be more common, but with ingenuity, resilience and crucially, COMMUNITY, we can build an equitable world on this strange, tired old planet. See you in the future.

[solarpunkfool]

I'm still over here dreaming.

Dreaming of making raised garden beds out of reusable pallets (the heat-treated kind) and giving them away.

Dreaming of neighborhood meal-trains for families in need. Just had a baby? Surgery? The loss of a loved one? Your doorstep is now covered in casseroles and cookies. Yes we know you're gluten-intolerant, all the food is safe for you.

Dreaming of having my son's friends over after school and just... letting them be here. Your favorite snacks are in the fridge, your favorite comics are on the shelf, the dogs are so happy to see you. I'm sorry your grandma doesn't understand that you like boys. Your mom's at work still? That's ok, I've got her number, if she has to stay late we're having spaghetti and meatballs for dinner.

Dreaming of every mother attending every trans-child's wedding.

Dreaming of my kiddo growing up and not just LOVING women and girls but RESPECTING them and VALUING them, getting to see other men in his life setting the BEST examples.

Dreaming of parking lots covered in solar panels.

Dreaming of not needing parking lots.

Dreaming of teaching kids about bees.

Dreaming of clean water and air. Dreaming of streets safe for tricycles and dog-walking. Dreaming of fruit trees in neighbors yards, and bringing them pies in the fall.

[gnome-punk]

Artist credit:

[cognitivejustice]

When we think of sustainable materials, bamboo, cork, recycled stone and reclaimed teak often come to mind. These building and surface materials are used extensively in both residential and commercial projects, enough to solidify them as the eco-friendly future of established architectural practices.

But what if we went even further? Creative and experimental designers worldwide are embracing much more unusual sustainable materials in a wide range of projects, be these sturdy floorboards and insulating panels, or small-scale decorative elements such as lamps, trays, vases and other furnishings. With designs hailing from Singapore and Indonesia, as well as distant studios in Italy and Palestine, here are the materials of tomorrow.

Mogu’s mycelium floor tiles

Mushroom filaments may not seem like the sturdiest base for hardwearing floors, but the Italian designers behind Mogu would argue otherwise. Transformed into resilient tiles appropriate for luxury residences and even commercial spaces, the mycelium structure is topped with a layer of bio-based resin, granting it resistance to scratches and abrasions rivalling traditional flooring materials.

Orange peel and pine needles make up the sustainable lampshades by Caracara Collective

Turning orange peel into useable furnishings and décor pieces is no small feat, yet the people behind the circularity-focused Caracara Collective in Finland have mastered this singular art. Inspired by the abundance of the natural, inherently sustainable materials around them, the designers created a series of lampshades made of orange peel, as well as pine needles from discarded Christmas trees.

As the collective puts it: “It takes around 20 squeezed oranges to create one lampshade. In other words, each lampshade is the by-product of someone drinking two litres of orange juice.”

Markos Design’s Ostra lamp, made of discarded oyster shells

Discarded oyster shells are similarly repurposed on the island of Cyprus, transformed by Markos Design into Ostra, a ceramic-like biomaterial. Ostra is worked into statement lamp designs, naturally hardwearing thanks to the oysters’ high concentration of calcium carbonate, which also lends cement and concrete considerable strength.