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solarpunk
noun: soh-ler-puhngk
an optimistic environmentalist subgenre of speculative fiction, art, and design that envisions future life on Earth transformed by the use of sustainable energy, close co-existence of human beings with nature, and progressive sociopolitical values.
One might expect that selling a clean energy future is a slam-dunk. I mean, who’s a fan of smog-spewing smokestacks and oil spills? Turns out, a surprisingly large number of us.
Part of the problem is that the status quo cheerleaders aren’t typically the people most impacted by that smog and spilled oil. After all, those fossil fuels have made many people rich and those people aren’t likely to live in the largely low-income neighborhoods that abut smog-spewing refineries. Which brings us to the next part of the problem: Fossil fuel companies have done a masterful job of ginning up controversy around renewable energy alternatives. They’ve propagated the myths that wind turbines kill large numbers of birds (domestic cats, buildings, and cell towers are far more lethal), that solar panels only work on sunny days (they produce more electricity on sunny days but still work on cloudy days, even when there’s some snow on them), that jobs will be lost (true, but oil and gas workers can be retrained for the many often safer jobs required by a clean energy transition), and so on.
The fact is that we humans tend to find comfort in what’s familiar … even if what’s familiar is making our planet increasingly dangerous.
Enter solarpunk. Solarpunk helps those of us without the imagination of Christine Chu to get a taste of a future that is just being built. Chu is co-founder of Solarpunks, innovators who are building out the world they want to see, starting with creative industries. “We think it’s wild that the world isn’t already running on the free, abundant energy provided by the sun,” the Solarpunks website tells us. As a demonstration, the group delivered a concert in Brooklyn, NY that was fully powered by the sun to make clear that this future they imagine isn’t out of reach.
Solarpunk provides a term and an aesthetic, but it’s really just about encouraging people to imagine a better, more equitable future.
Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, a marine biologist and the founder of Urban Ocean Lab, dismisses the debate about whether fear or hope is mostly likely to spur climate action. Instead, she wants us all to ask ourselves what we want, and how we can build it. “What are we going to do so that we don’t need hope?” she asks. Maybe not solarpunk, per se, but something rooted in the same idea: Don’t get stuck in where we are. Instead, picture where we want to be, and then get to work. Solarpunk provides a term and an aesthetic, but it’s really just about encouraging people to imagine a better, more equitable future.
Where our imaginations might fail, solarpunk steps in, with drawings and stories that leapfrog over the hard work of the transition and keep our gaze on the horizon of what can be.
A spokesperson for Expedition Air, a Canadian company that makes products from carbon-captured material, told a BBC reporter that it had tapped steampunk to help people visualize their work: “As soon as we started doing work with artists to demonstrate how captured carbon material can be incorporated into such a variety of products, we started to receive enquiries from companies and larger brands that want to integrate our material into their existing product lines.” The company relied on its Artists in Residence program to make the concept of carbon capture visible and tangible.
Solarpunk isn’t about a technological utopia — people remain at the center of the ethos. Advocates insist that solarpunk is less about capitalism and consumerism and more about cooperation. The power of solarpunk is, and always will be, people.
