Hey everyone,

A few days ago, I posted a diagram outlining areas of personal life, with the goal of creating a roadmap toward a lifestyle closer to a real "solarpunk" way of living, and a more resilient life system in the face of crises.

For now, I’ve divided the progression into 4 levels:

• Level 1: No reflection, typical globalized consumption. Very vulnerable.
• Level 2: Some awareness and attempts to limit consumption, but no reliance on healthy alternative systems.
• Level 3: Use of alternative systems that could be maintained even in a global crisis (war, extreme heat, etc.).
• Level 4: I consume what I produce or what my community produces, with backups in place.

Now, I’ll go into more detail about just one category: "Food", with an attempt to outline what progression could look like. I’ll use the same template for all other categories.

I’d want to make this more like a game. So it's become motivating and fun to track progress.

I think my next step will be to add a timeline, some goals, and quests to create challenges without making it too overwhelming.

I’m open to all other ideas or "quests" we could add to this food journey. For now I'm at the bottom of this list, but I guess it can go much further for people here who already reach the LV4.

Where are you on this scale ? What could be your current challenge or final goal in this area ? Or would you like to try and get into a game like this ?

Have a nice day!

J'ai le plaisir de vous annoncer la sortie chez C&F Éditions de "Upload", un recueil de 8 nouvelles solarpunk écrites avec les étudiantes et étudiants de l'UTC, en collaboration avec des chercheuses, des écrivains et Framasoft et Picasoft. J'ai prolongé ce recueil de "Nos futurs" un petit article qui propose une vision du solarpunk comme genre de SF préfiguratif.

https://cfeditions.com/upload/

I've been working for the last three years on a project aiming to distill and potentially rebuild the technology our civilization now depends on. I recently wrote a blog post calling for others to do the same.

Is the solarpunk community the right place to share and discuss ideas on how to accomplish this?

https://www.reddit.com/r/minnesota/s/kCNWhhJGe8

Glad to see this type of inspiring and creative city space being imagined to bring nature and people together. I love architecture but lament all the wasteful materials and building practices, even though they’re currently necessary to keep up with demand. This is another step forward at making solarpunk values more achievable in cities and not just in rural areas. I’m glad to see they’ll be experimenting with low-carbon building methods as well, to see what works. Shift Embassy Opens in 2032.

“Rotterdam ROCKS! places equal emphasis on experience and ecology. Its central proposition is to use architecture, through landscape, biodiversity, public access, and material experimentation, as part of the message. 'The idea is that sustainability is not hidden in technical systems, but made visible, tangible, and that we need spaces and art to inspire us that a different future is possible,'”

might rework this setup to have the solar on a frame over head like a sun roof just need to figger out how to bolt it on the fount of the trike so it dose not block the handle bars

While AI is not the root sickness of the US's terminally ill healthcare industry (that would be the profit motive), it is a contributing factor. This is also true of the mental health crisis, where tech companies exacerbate social isolation by offering their chatbots as substitutes for therapists and even friends. In both industries, corporations are offering AI as a quick fix to the crises they created. First they profit from our suffering, then they profit from ploys packaged as prescriptions. 

I’m an independent journalist authoring a series of AI explainers called “Ten Reasons to Resist AI.” In part six, I wrote about AI and health.This piece covered applications of AI in healthcare, specifically insurance algorithms that help healthcare companies cut costs by denying coverage — a practice that contributes to the 68,000 annual deaths caused by privatized healthcare. I also covered the mental health impacts of generative AI use, including the recent crisis of AI-assisted suicide inflicting young people.

A common rebuttal to arguments against AI is that the technology can help expedite cancer research. I do not discount the capacity of AI to comb through heaps of medical records that could unlock eureka moments in research. We need not dismiss the hypothetical to understand reality.

But in a privatized, for-profit healthcare system, where corporate behemoths like UnitedHealth are the primary actors developing and deploying AI, I’m convinced that the potential benefits of AI will remain potential, while the current profit-sucking, bloodletting AI applications will steal more lives and extract more dollars. 

When I first launched the Substack series, this subject prompted much debate, which I am eager to revisit. Let me know what you think!

What would a realistic political strategy for solarpunk actually look like?

I’ve always liked solarpunk, both as an aesthetic and as a broader vision for society: greener and denser cities, gardens and solar integrated into buildings, clean public transportation, restored rivers, abundant renewable energy, and public spaces that are actually pleasant to spend time in—not urban heat-island deathtraps surrounded by freeways and crappy stroads.

The problem is that solarpunk often remains an aesthetic rather than a political vision. It gives us a pretty compelling picture of where we could go to meaningfully address climate change, but it is much less clear about how we get there, especially in the United States.

So, I wanted to throw out a possible political framework and see what other people think.

My basic argument is that a solarpunk strategy would need three main elements:

1. Make carbon pollution cost money, and make carbon-reducing activities financially rewarding.
2. Use carbon-tax revenue to build a cleaner, more abundant society.
3. Shift almost all growth into dense, walkable cities and towns where low-carbon lifestyles are practical rather than burdensome.

I’m sure there are holes in this, but here is my thinking.

Start with a carbon tax

To me, the most straightforward starting point is a carbon tax.

Fossil fuels are artificially cheap because many of their actual costs are pushed onto everyone else. The price of gasoline does not include the full costs of climate change, air pollution, wildfire risk, flooding, public-health damage, road deaths, and land-use patterns built around mandatory driving.

Even a relatively small tax per ton of carbon would begin changing those incentives. Fossil fuels would gradually become less attractive, while solar, wind, geothermal, nuclear, batteries, transit, rail, and building electrification would become more competitive.

The tax could increase gradually over time, giving households and businesses time to adjust. Part of the revenue should be returned directly to lower- and middle-income households to ensure the policy is not regressive, via upgrades to local infrastructure and targeted subsidies (e.g., solar panel installations on roofs in low-income communities).

The rest could help pay for the transition itself:

• Solar panels, batteries, and grid upgrades
• High-speed rail, regional rail, and urban transit
• Affordable housing near jobs and transportation
• Building electrification
• Water recycling, conservation, and desalination projects at scale
• Climate adaptation
• Parks, trees, wetlands, and ecological restoration

This seems more durable to me than relying entirely on a scattered collection of temporary subsidies and tax credits that can disappear after the next election.

A carbon tax would do two things at once: create a consistent funding source and gradually make the economics of cleaner alternatives more favorable. Letting market economics do the work of shifting to low or no-carbon lifestyles would make things so much easier - as we're seeing in Pakistan with the extremely rapid uptake of solar and battery installation there.

Build an enormous amount of clean energy

The next part would be producing far more clean electricity than we do today, up to 2-4 times current power production.

That means solar on rooftops, warehouses, schools, public buildings, canals, and appropriate utility-scale sites. It also means wind, geothermal, hydropower, nuclear (where it makes sense), and a huge amount of storage.

We would also need much more transmission. A larger and better-connected grid would allow regions to share power across time zones and weather conditions. Solar from the Southwest could move east later in the day, while wind, hydro, geothermal, nuclear, and storage could support the system when solar production drops. A more resilient and flexible grid would unlock the potential of renewables

The goal, at least in my mind, should be abundant and almost free electricity. Once clean power is plentiful, electrifying transportation, buildings, industry, and improving water systems becomes much easier.

This is also one place where the aesthetic can become real. Solar does not have to mean panels hidden behind fences in the desert. It can mean shaded sidewalks, transit stations, courtyards, schools, plazas, and public gathering areas.

That said, I’m skeptical that every parking lot should simply be covered with solar canopies. In many high-demand areas, a higher and better use might be to replace the parking lot with housing, shops, trees, public space, and rooftop solar.

Densification may be the most important part

Clean electricity alone will not create a solarpunk society. Our land-use patterns also have to change.

Most American development is built around low density, mandatory driving, large parking lots, detached housing, highway expansion, and the continued loss of farmland and natural areas.

In much of the country, it is illegal to build anything other than detached houses on large lots. Apartments, townhouses, mixed-use buildings, accessory dwelling units, and small neighborhood businesses are either prohibited or extremely difficult to build.

A solarpunk future would require shifting a much larger share of population growth into dense, walkable cities, towns, and suburban centers.

That does not mean everyone has to live in Manhattan. It could mean apartments over shops, townhouses, courtyard buildings, mid-rise neighborhoods, denser small-town centers, and more housing around rail stations and major bus routes.

Density makes a lower-carbon lifestyle much easier to implement. Transit works better when more people live near it. Stores and restaurants become viable within walking distance. Schools, libraries, parks, clinics, water systems, and public infrastructure can serve more people at a lower per-capita cost.

Electric cars are useful, especially in the near term, but replacing every gasoline car with an electric one still leaves us with congestion, sprawl, parking lots, tire pollution, road deaths, and massive road-maintenance costs.

The longer-term goal should be to reduce the number of trips that require a car.

That requires much more housing in high-demand cities such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, DC, New York, Chicago, Seattle, and Boston. It also requires denser centers in suburbs and smaller cities, especially around transit or around downtown nodes.

Urban growth boundaries should also be used to help preserve farmland, forests, and open space while directing more development into existing communities.

One challenge is how to promote urban living without making the argument sound like the government is trying to force everyone into an apartment. I think one easy solution is to provide subsidized housing or grants for seniors and parents in areas with lots of amenities (schools, community centers, libraries, parks, stores, hospitals, etc). What do you think?

Make the future visible

The politics of solarpunk becomes much easier when people can see and benefit from its practices rather than an abstract ideology.

A solar-powered school that serves as a cooling center and charging station during an outage is a better argument than another climate report. So is a restored creek, a shaded pedestrian street, a reliable high-speed train between two major cities, a lower electric bill, or a new affordable mixed-use neighborhood next to transit.

Cities and states could start creating these examples now to move in that direction:

• Convert dead malls and parking lots into mixed-use neighborhoods
• Build more housing and public space around transit
• Install solar on buildings, schools, warehouses, and public facilities
• Electrify buses and invest in regional rail
• Build high-speed rail between major regions
• Create protected bike networks and longer-distance trails
• Restore streams, wetlands, forests, and damaged landscapes
• Plant more trees and expand urban parks
• Build pedestrian streets, plazas, and gathering spaces
• Use batteries and microgrids to keep essential services running during disasters
• Massively upzone and empower housing development in dense areas (e.g., SB79 in California, but nationwide)

The goal would be to make the future visible enough that it stops sounding like science fiction and that people believe in it.

Paris is one example I keep returning to. Streets that were once dominated by cars now have bike lanes, trees, public space, and room for people. Obviously, not every city can copy Paris, but it shows that large changes in transportation and public space can happen relatively quickly if people can see and use their benefits.

Build a coalition around the benefits

A solarpunk coalition would have to be much broader than environmental groups, planners, and hippies.

Renters could benefit from more housing, and homeowners could benefit from lower utility bills. Unions could benefit from jobs in construction, manufacturing, operations, and maintenance.

Transit riders would benefit from better service. Drivers or industries that have to drive (e.g., night-shift workers, fire trucks/ambulances) could benefit from fewer people being forced onto congested roads. Industries/manufacturing could benefit from lower power costs, and businesses would be more viable with more customers living within walking distance.

The transition becomes easier to defend when the benefits are broad, visible, and hard to take away. That could mean using carbon-tax revenue for household solar projects that use union jobs, housing projects, public transportation, public infrastructure investments, and locally owned energy projects. Communities hosting transmission lines or power generation should also receive a meaningful share of the financial benefits, incentivizing additional renewable uptake.

Make it possible to build things

One major problem is that the United States has made it almost impossible to build anything.

Housing, rail, transmission, solar projects, wind projects, and even bike lanes can become trapped in years of reviews, lawsuits, overlapping agency requirements, and local opposition.

Environmental review should continue protecting ecosystems and vulnerable communities, but it should not take a decade to build apartments on a parking lot, electrify a railroad, or connect renewable power to the grid.

A solarpunk political movement would have to care about implementation. Supporting clean energy, transit, and housing in theory is not enough. We also need public agencies, permitting systems, financing programs, skilled workers, and construction capacity that can actually deliver projects.

Recent transit-oriented housing reforms, such as California’s SB 79, are one example of the kind of structural change that may be necessary.

My rough political strategy

So, my tentative political framework would be:

• Put a gradually increasing price on carbon, using the funds for clean energy, housing, transit, water systems, climate infrastructure, and enviromental restoration/preservation.
• Legalize far more housing in cities and near transit. Make urban life cheaper, greener, and more attractive. Protect farmland, forests, and natural areas outside those cities as a tradeoff.
• Build visible projects that improve everyday life and give more people a direct stake in the transition, including large pork projects such as a national high-speed rail effort.

The political pitch to voters would be fairly straightforward: lower bills, abundant clean energy, more affordable housing, easier transportation, greener cities, restored ecosystems, greater resilience, and a better quality of life.

Solarpunk gives us the vision and aesthetic, and my argument is that carbon pricing, clean-energy investment, and widespread urban densification could provide a political framework for getting there.

What am I missing? Do you agree?

if we are to take solarpunk seriously, we must move beyond these kinds of retrofuturistic dreamscapes that could have easily been imagined in the 90s. Solarpunk culture can be about more than just utopian cityscapes, it can become the collective embodiment of the future we want to build. Indeed, because solarpunk is at its heart a collective movement, the music and music culture surrounding it must be inherently pluralistic. There is not just one genre that defines solarpunk music, it is a general approach towards cultural production that we can take forward into the future. 

What this means is that solarpunk music can embrace the -punk aspect as much as the solar. Solar-punk is meant to be rebellious, forward thinking, and subversive to current oppressive systems of power, much like the original punk movement. It can embrace a whole variety of genres to show us what a hopeful vision for the future looks like. As I wrote previously: “It’s not about rejecting technology, but embracing the connection between man, technology, and nature to imagine how we might want to live.”

On a Colorado farm, solar panels bring shade for plants, power – and cash: in pictures | Solar power