"Solarpunk seeks to make gardening as exciting as a zombie apocalypse". The literary genre is becoming a movement

We have been tracking the environmental mutations of science-fiction for a while here on A/UK. And in particularly, we like the vibe around Solarpunk - itself a reaction to cyberpunk (think Bladerunner and The Matrix). The group 'Solarpunk Anarchists' says that "solarpunk is a (mostly) aesthetic-cultural and (sometimes) ethical-political tendency which attempts to negate the dominant idea which grips popular consciousness: that the future must be grim, or at least grim for the mass of people and nonhuman forms of life on the planet."

Worth putting that hat on, at least for a while. Here’s another definition, taken from the YouTube video embedded above:

Solarpunk is a shining vision of a positive future, grounded in our existing world, that emphasizes the need for environmental sustainability, self-governance and social justice. It's a movement dedicated to human-centric and eco-centric ends. It looks beyond the limitations of capitalism and beyond the current rift between humanity and nature.

It’s a futurism that focuses on what we should hope for rather than on what to avoid. Solarpunk recognizes that climate change, the consequences of centuries of damage, aren’t averted in the future. Yet it still manages to incorporate hope. A future where we’ve got a lot of work to do, but we’re doing better.

We’re using technology for more uplifting ends. Like seed bombing drones and solar ovens. Solarpunk emphasizes real-world application.

It’s all about what we do here and now, from DIY projects to larger organization. Solarpunk is also very aesthetic. It uses a lot of nature motifs and takes inspiration from art nouveau, upcycling and Asian and African styles and artistic movements.

Attractive. Even in that passage, you can see how the literary style and the eco-political stance are coming together. We’ve found an amazing article in Mangal Media called “Solarpunk, Climate Change and the New Thinkable”, by Joey Ayoub, which excellently draws out what Solarpunk’s act of imagination can do for climate politics.

Solarpunk sits at the intersection of possible positive futures and likely negative ones. It is a recognition of humanity’s wide-ranging damage upon the natural world and inevitably, upon itself. Solarpunk is also a reaction to the cynical and dystopian imaginaries that have come out of the fear of climate change. It is a way of tackling ecoanxieties and an invitation to complement the important work of climate scientists.

Just as climate scientists have sought to warn the world about the dangers of climate change, Solarpunks are offering alternative visions to the helplessness often generated by such warnings. Solarpunk, then, is a challenge to the modern adage that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism, to which I can add ‘and growth-oriented economies’.

It seeks to make imagining the end of capitalism easier, to make alternatives more reachable to the popular imagination, and to build community resilience in the process. Just as it is very easy for a child to imagine a zombie apocalypse due to the popular proliferation of such stories, Solarpunks seek to build a world where children can imagine better futures, and actively participate in making them true, or at least truer.

“Permablitzing”: Solarpunk has a word for it

Solarpunk often create new words to speed up the re-imagining of our world. One such word is 'permablitzing', a contraction of permaculture and blitz, the German word for lightning.

Permablitzing usually involves groups of people meeting up to "typically create or develop a community or household edible, wildlife-friendly garden, according to a permaculture design. Permablitzes can also involve sustainable non-food growing projects." The latter can include almost anything from sustainable engineering to herbalism, aquaponics, mycology, geology and so on.

As a word, permablitz stands in sharp contrast to 'blitzkrieg' (lightning war), a reference to the German bombing campaign against the United Kingdom during World War II. Whereas a blitzkrieg obviously spreads death, a permablitz seeks to do the opposite. 

Part of the idea of permablitzing is also its speed - quickly learning ways to undo or mitigate the damages of pollution, soil degradation, climate change, and so on - while also focusing on building community networks.

A Solarpunk story can then feature permablitzing and set it in various settings. How would permablitzing look like in London or Nairobi or Kolkata today, and how could it look like in Hong Kong, Buenos Aires or Cairo in the year 2050? What would the political economy of these places look like, and how would they need to change (if at all)? Could permablitzing help individuals and communities navigate the effects of climate change? If not, what is it good for?

This brings me to a grievance that is often addressed at the climate movement, one which I think speaks to a common failure of imagination within the activist community. In his essay "What If We Stopped Pretending?", Jonathan Frazen argued against a popular tendency in the climate movement to avoid being seen as 'alarmist' by the wider public.

The climate movement, he argues, continues to rely on false hope of salvation which 'can be actively harmful.' His argument could be summed up in this paragraph: 

If you care about the planet, and about the people and animals who live on it, there are two ways to think about this. You can keep on hoping that catastrophe is preventable, and feel ever more frustrated or enraged by the world’s inaction. Or you can accept that disaster is coming, and begin to rethink what it means to have hope.

The question isn't, then, between hope and hopelessness, but between a hope rooted in understanding our reality and a false hope rooted in denial.

Funnily enough, Frazen's conclusion is in line with Solarpunks' argument: "Kindness to neighbors and respect for the land—nurturing healthy soil, wisely managing water, caring for pollinators—will be essential in a crisis and in whatever society survives it."

The added value of Solarpunk here is merely a recognition that these regenerative practices would benefit from a whole plethora of stories about what the world could look like - if only to undo the damage caused by the disproportionate influence dystopian stories have had on our imagination.

To use the example of the child who can imagine zombie apocalypses more easily than they can imagine a world where they would want to grow up in, what Solarpunk seeks to do is make gardening as exciting as a zombie apocalypse. A Solarpunk story can even include Zombies. It would just focus more on the communities coming together to support one another and are actively building a post-Zombie world.

A Solarpunk world can incorporate elements of fantasy as well and use that "same deep well", to quote Margaret Atwood again. The difference however is in the added urgency behind such an expansion of the imagination.

One could read Lord of the Rings without feeling the need to adopt its 'lessons' to our present and future contexts because J.R.R. Tolkien sought to create a mythical past to be enjoyed in the present. We imagine Middle Earth knowing that it is not our Earth, but we allow ourselves to be captured by its possibility nonetheless.

A Solarpunk version would seek to reproduce, for example, the Elvish sanctuary of Rivendell and adapt it to the Anthropocene. It could look like a mixture of Rivendell and Wakanda, with some Ghibli elements sprinkled all over. 

Star Trek… is pretty Solar Punk

Finally, to illustrate another example of Solarpunk, I think it would be useful to look at Star Trek. While Star Trek predates the movement it has elements that we might describe as Solarpunk, or at least proto-Solarpunk. In Season 4 Episode 2 of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Jean-Luc Picard visits his hometown in France sometime in the 24th century.

The contrast between his agricultural hometown and his high-tech world is symbolised by his brother Robert, who is a bit of a Luddite in comparison to Jean-Luc's world as captain of the Federation Starship USS Enterprise. Robert runs the family vineyard and refuses to have a replicator (a matter-energy conversation technology that can produce almost anything including food) because he believes they made life "too convenient." 

Robert's anti-technology attitude isn't Solarpunk as Solarpunk seeks to use technology for more uplifting ends. But the very existence of an agricultural community in the 24th century is. Solarpunk also seeks to build a multiplicity of worlds that can cohabit, in sharp contrast to how technology in most modern societies is treated as an end in itself.

In that 24th century French town, high-tech coexists with low-tech and the latter (Robert) still has something to offer the former (Jean-Luc). This contradicts the myth that growth has to be linear, that any technological 'improvement', no matter how insignificant, is worth revolving our entire economies around and worth spending enormous amounts of resources developing.

In that world, technologies far more advanced than modern cell phones exist side by side with naturally cultivated wine, theater, card games and countless cultural events from across the galaxy's many civilizations. When he's not being the embodiment of high-tech human genius, everyone's favorite android Data performs Shakespearean plays, paints or just plays with his cat.

Writing in MUSE, William Flores wrote that we deserve to move "towards a post-scarcity, solarpunk, Star Trekkian future." Towards the end of his essay, he quoted Jean-Luc Picard explaining 24th-century life to a group of time-travellers from 20th century Earth: “The economics of the future is somewhat different. You see, money doesn’t exist in the 24th century. The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity.”

That is, in essence, the case for Solarpunk.

More here. And finally an excellent Guardian article on the coming wave of cli-fi - climate fiction.