The space to discuss Solarpunk itself and Solarpunk related stuff that doesn't fit elsewhere.
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Sharing this here, because tumblr and reddit have login-walls and I don't want this gem to get lost.
This is really beautiful! I think it's pretty common if you're switched on to the damage we're doing to our world, but it's important to remember that reducing climate change is not just about avoiding disaster, but building a utopia too. Thanks @NafiTheBear@pawb.social !
Man, I love this. It feels of a piece with "A Psalm for the Wild-Built."
@ilinamorato @NafiTheBear you can tag the artist, @the_lemonaut ;)
Ohhh I didn't know they are on mastodon I hope it was OK of me to repost it, but tumblr really started to throw me a login page recently, which hides half of the comic.
@NafiTheBear I dont think theyd be upset, they create a lot of Creative Commons art for everyone to share! :)
This is lovely. Thanks for sharing!
I like the art a lot already. Can't wait to see more.
They've been doing a bunch of cool solarpunk art for a bit, and they've started releasing it CC-BY (I think) including on wikimedia commons, which is great because otherwise the solarpunk category over there was mostly a bunch of AI art and proposed flags. (I'd added some of my photobashes so it wasn't just AI representing the genre, but I'm very glad to have them contributing art with a lot of intent behind it.) I think a lot of the planning for their scenes comes from the solarpunk prompts podcast these days.
I think a lot of the planning for their scenes comes from the solarpunk prompts podcast these days.
I remember seeing a post on here about that podcast and added it to the list of podcasts I'm listening to.
They’ve been doing a bunch of cool solarpunk art for a bit, and they’ve started releasing it CC-BY
Huh I didn't know that. I'll make sure to keep out an eye for their work. Btw was looking through your website and I like how thought out your photobashes are.
Also as an aside since it seems you put a lot of thought into this kind of stuff do you have any thoughts on how much of a solarpunk future can run on only renewable material? I see a lot of art that focuses on solar panels and stuff but I've recently been thinking that it might not be possible to have too many of those long term because repairing them probably would require a complex supply chain and extraction process that we probably would have to move away from as society gets transformed.
Thanks!
I do have thoughts on that! This might be a little jumbled as it's mostly off the cuff, but I think how much a society can be run only on renewable materials will depend on how much they're willing to change their whole default framework, and what they're prepared to give up in the short and long term to do it. Degrowth and library economy concepts would certainly apply. (I really like library economy stuff because I really like reuse).
I think there's an abundance of resources, from existing usable items to raw materials which have already been extracted already accessable to us out in the world.
Right now there's this default pipeline from extracted raw material to new (ideally fragile/flimsy/disposable) products to landfill. A library economy on steroids might include both tons of long-term reuse of whatever's already been made, but also recycling of available materials that have already been extracted. There'll always have to be new manufacture but ideally it'd be much reduced and anything made new would be designed to last and to be fixable. But that takes a ton of commitment on a societal level to using less and to sorting and distributing everything that already exists. It means mining junkyards and landfills for already-extracted raw materials and generally changing how we do things.
When it comes to energy, I think there's a sort of hurdle we have to get over - first we need to get most of our energy to renewable, then we can optimize for long term repairability. There's a lot of interesting recycling processes ramping up for solar panels, and as I understand it, there are less-efficient designs that are more fixable. So for the short term, I suspect whatever designs get the job done we use, and after that, we can start adjusting for long term.
My art tends to be of a society that's as obsessed with reuse and externalities as ours is with money. They're a society of scavengers and fixers and makers. That handwaved cultural change is sort of what I've chosen for my spec fix suspension of disbelief. Most of the tech I include already exists, but examining what a society that makes all its decisions around reducing harm would do with them is what I really enjoy.
Honestly I love the direction you are going with this. I agree with you about the abundance especially if the people in this world have culturally shifted so that most things do get shared. And I do think that in a real life transition we would definitely see a lot of people scavenging and recycling stuff and relying on each other for daily needs.
I also think it would be cool to see how much of nature we can use to enhance existing technology or maybe even create a whole new tech tree that is run with mutual relationships with different organisms. Like there was a group of scientist that found bacteria that produce concrete when exposed to water and another group that is working on a chemical computers. What if we reinforce buildings by planting trees that grew around them, worked with some animals to build stuff that benefits both them and us at the same time, or used organic computing (maybe using slime molds) to do complex, long term, calculations without the need for electricity and it being much less fragile.
The thing is that for what I'm describing it wouldn't be something that we fully realize in our generation but I do think it would lead to a society that could sustain itself indefinitely if we chose to live below the regeneration rate for the material or organisms we chose.
Edit: I was thinking about this only because I watched some stuff by Ronald wright and it has stuck quite a bit. specifically this if you are interested: https://youtu.be/S1ypWcqnojM (tried invidious but didn't work)
Edit2: Also there are a few things I disagree with like his views on population control and his belief on the reliance of governments for change but his analysis is spot on.