# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The tiny-house movement (also known as the small house movement) is an architectural and social movement that advocates for downsizing living spaces, simplifying, and essentially "living with less." According to the 2018 International Residential Code, Appendix Q Tiny Houses, a tiny house is a "dwelling unit with a maximum of 37 square metres (400 sq ft) of floor area, excluding lofts." The term "tiny house" is sometimes used interchangeably with "micro-house". While tiny housing primarily represents a return to simpler living, the movement was also regarded as a potential eco-friendly solution to the existing housing industry, as well as a feasible transitional option for individuals experiencing a lack of shelter.

This distinction is important as many people look to place tiny houses on empty lots, however if a tiny house lacks any one of the necessary amenities required for a dwelling unit then it is an accessory structure and must be placed on the same lot as a primary structure per the 2018 International Residential Code. There are a variety of reasons for living in a tiny house. Many people who enter this lifestyle rethink what they value in life and decide to put more effort into strengthening their communities, healing the environment, spending time with their families, or saving money.

In the United States, the average size of new single family homes grew from 1,780 square feet (165 m ²) in 1978, to 2,479 square feet (230.3 m ²) in 2007, and further still to 2,662 square feet (247.3 m ²) in 2013. Increased material wealth and individuals with high incomes are common reasons why home sizes increased.

The small house movement is a return to houses of less than 1,000 square feet (93 m ²). Frequently, the distinction is made between small (between 400 and 1,000 sq ft or 37 and 93 m ²), and tiny houses (less than 400 sq ft or 37 m ²), with some as small as 80 square feet (7.4 m ²).

The precursor to the Tiny House was the shotgun shack, a small, narrow single-story building in widespread use among urban black Americans from the late 19th century until the Great Depression of the 1930s. Although few of these houses had more than two bedrooms, they provided accommodation for entire blue collar families in Southern United States cities like New Orleans.

Henry David Thoreau and the publication of his book Walden are often quoted as early inspiration. The modern movement is considered by some to have started in the 1970s, with artists such as Allan Wexler investigating the concept of choosing to live in a compact space. Early pioneers include Lloyd Kahn, author of Shelter (1973) and Lester Walker, author of Tiny Houses (1987). Sarah Susanka started the "counter movement" for smaller houses which she details in her book The Not So Big House (1997).

Jay Shafer...built his first tiny house in Iowa, in 1999, and lived in it for five years. It was a hundred and ten square feet [10 m ²], with a steep gabled roof and a porch.

Tiny houses on wheels were popularized by Jay Shafer who designed and lived in a 96-square-foot (8.9 m ²) house and later went on to offer the first plans for tiny houses on wheels, initially founding Tumbleweed Tiny House Company, and then Four Lights Tiny House Company on September 6, 2012. In 2002, Shafer co-founded, along with Greg Johnson, Shay Salomon and Nigel Valdez, the Small House Society. Salomon and Valdez subsequently published their guide to the modern Small House Movement, Little House on a Small Planet (2006) and Johnson published his memoir, Put Your Life on a Diet (2008).

With the Great Recession hitting the world's economy from 2007 to 2009, the small house movement attracted more attention as it offered affordable, ecologically friendly housing. Overall, it represented a very small part of real estate transactions. Thus, only 1% of home buyers acquire houses of 1,000 square feet (93 m ²) or less. Small houses are also used as accessory dwelling units (or ADUs), to serve as additional on-property housing for aging relatives or returning children, as a home office, or as a guest house. Tiny houses typically cost about $20,000 to $50,000 as of 2012.

Tiny houses have received considerable media coverage including a television show, Tiny House Nation, in 2014 and Tiny House Hunters. Bryce Langston from New Zealand created and hosts a YouTube channel that features international tiny homes and eco-friendly living, called Living Big in a Tiny House

Tiny houses on wheels are often compared to RVs. In Canada and the United States, these are called park model RVs if they do not exceed certain size specifications, namely 50 m ² (540 sq ft) in Canada and 400 sq ft (37 m ²) in the United States. However, tiny homes are held to state/provincial/territorial building codes. Park model RVs are held to standards set by the Standards Council of Canada or RV Industry Association (RVIA). Tiny houses are built to last as long as traditional homes, use traditional building techniques and materials, and are aesthetically similar to larger homes.

This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it.

While the movement is most active in America, interest in tiny homes has been observed in other developed countries.

In Australia some interest commenced through designers such as Fred Schultz and builders such as Designer Eco Tiny Homes, Designer Eco Tiny Homes is Australia's largest tiny home builder and has been at the forefront of the tiny home movement in Australia since 2016. Owned by Grant Emans and running out of 2 factories in Ulladulla on the south coast of NSW, Designer Eco Tiny Homes employees over 40 people and makes 100 tiny homes per year. In 2022 Designer Eco Tiny Homes opened the world's first tiny home showroom and also added a new tiny home model to its list, which at 9.6 metres long is the longest, tiny home in Australia. and TechnoPODS. T.I.T.A.N. Hills along Victoria's scenic Great Ocean Road, is the world's first master-planned, ecological, off-grid, tiny home subdivision.

In Canada, the legality of tiny homes can depend on the location and whether the home is mobile or stationary. In Toronto, a tiny house requires a building permit and connection to the grid. In December 2019, Edmonton introduced bylaws allowing tiny homes on foundations, removing the former 5.5-metre minimum-width requirement. Some municipalities consider buildings which are not connected to city electricity and sewerage systems to violate their building codes. This has been described by some as an attempt to avoid situations similar to the Leaky Condo Crisis in British Columbia, which resulted in the establishment of stricter building codes. Similarly, some mobile tiny homes have been rejected from spaces designed for RVs due to the property not meeting the same criteria the vehicles are held to. An "eco-village" of homes under 600 square feet (56 m²) in Okotoks known as the Homestead Project was proposed in 2017 but met opposition from some Okotoks residents. In August 2019 the council voted not to consider the project further after deciding to honour a petition with 3,000 signatures opposed to the development.

In September 2019 in France, the "Ty Village" has open its door at 6 km from the nearby University of Saint Brieuc in the department of Bretagne.

In Germany, the community of Vauban created 5000 households on an old military base in Freiburg. The planned density of the building on that area is of 50 dwelling units per acre. Also in Germany, British architect Richard Horden and the Technical University of Munich developed the Micro Compact Home (M-CH), a high-end small (76 sq ft or 7.1 m²) cube, designed for 1-2 persons, with functional spaces for cooking, hygiene, dining/working, and sleeping.

In New Zealand, company-built units are called mobile homes and tiny houses on wheels. As of 2021, it tends to be a grass-roots initiative with many bespoke and customized. Bryce Langston, a film-maker with a passion for small space design, permaculture, and downsized, eco-friendly living has created short, documentary-style videos on small space living for YouTube via his channel and website 'Living Big in a Tiny House'.

In Barcelona, Spain, Eva Prats and Ricardo Flores (Flores & Prats) presented the 300-square-foot (28 m²) House in a Suitcase.

In Sweden, a chef couple launched a Kickstarter and then began a new forest to table movement called Stedsans in the Woods out of tiny home cabins for rent in a Swedish forest. They share the blueprints for their A Frame cabins.

In the United Kingdom, Tiny Eco Homes UK has developed several customisable tiny house models starting at £26,000. Dozens of the homes are being used as primary residences across the UK and mainland Europe. Abito created intelligent living spaces apartments of 353 square feet (32.8 m²) in Manchester; Tiny House Scotland has created the Nesthouse; a 23-square-metre (250 sq ft) modular move-able small eco-house to explore the possibilities of sustainable small-scale living in a highly insulated timber framed structure with some Passivhaus principles ensuring very low energy usage. The estimated cost for the Nesthouse is €55,000. Northern Ireland has also seen a small but growing community of tiny house owners, although the planning rules do not specifically accommodate tiny houses, meaning that "the planning process (for a tiny house) would need to be looked at on a case-by-case basis".

In Brazil, Tiny Houses Brasil is the first mini-house factory in the country, in a shed on a farm in Porangaba, São Paulo. The company develops projects and builds mini houses on wheels. The tiny houses are customized and built by hand with values of R$90,000.

The popularity of tiny houses has led to an increase in amateur builders which has raised concerns regarding safety among tiny house professionals. In 2013, the Tiny House Fair at Yestermorrow in Vermont was organized by Elaine Walker. An attendee at the event, Jay Shafer, suggested promoting ethical business practices and offering guidelines for construction of tiny houses on wheels. Walker continued this effort in 2015, creating the non-profit organization, American Tiny House Association.

In addition, RV parks do not always allow tiny houses unless they meet the criteria required for RVs. Tiny houses on wheels are considered RVs and are not suitable for permanent residence, according to the Recreational Vehicle Industry Association. From RV Business, "The RVIA will continue to shy away from allowing members who produce products that are referred to as "tiny houses" or "tiny homes". (However, the RVIA does allow "tiny home" builders to join as long as their units are built to RV or park-model RV standards.)"

Lower court decisions in the US have struck down zoning laws related to size that were an obstacle to tiny housing. One of those cases was League of South Jersey, Inc v. Township of Berlin, where the court found that a zoning law related to the size of a home did not protect citizens, so the law was struck down. These decisions are still far from being the majority, but they help in allowing the propagation of the tiny housing movement.

In 2014, the first "tiny house friendly town" was declared in Spur, Texas; however, it was later clarified that a tiny house may not be on wheels but must be secured to a foundation.

In July 2016, Washington County, Utah revised their zoning regulations to accommodate some types of tiny houses.

Increasingly, tiny houses have become larger, heavier, and more expensive. The ideal of minimal impact on the environment is not a priority for all home-owners as businesses capitalize on the popularity of tiny homes.[citation needed ]

Tiny houses have been noted as impractical spaces to raise families in. Overcrowding and lack of space have been noted to be detrimental to both physical and mental health, and can affect school performance.

The financial crisis of 2007-08 fueled the growth of the small house movement. In several cities, an entrenched homeless population formed around tent cities, encampments that became semi-permanent housing. Homelessness in these communities was driven by foreclosures and expensive mortgages from the United States housing bubble.

Tiny houses became an affordable option for individuals who lost their homes. With their low cost and relative ease of construction, tiny houses are being adopted as shelters for the homeless in Eugene, OR; Olympia, WA; Ithaca, NY; and other cities. Communities of tiny houses offer residents a transition towards self-sufficiency. Communities such as Othello Village in Seattle, WA, originally lacked electricity and heat. In Seattle, non-profits have stepped in to help provide amenities.

Housing the homeless is said to be cost-saving for municipalities. The long-term viability of tiny houses for homeless people is completely dependent on the structure and sustainability of the model. Strict zoning and land ownership laws make it difficult for this movement to take root. Benefits of access to housing include privacy, storage, safety, restoration of dignity and stability.

In Reno, Nevada, faith-based groups and community advocates have legislated new zoning for housing of homeless people in a tiny home community. Each tiny house would cost an estimated $3,800 to build, as well as an operating budget of $270,000 for case managers to help residents find more permanent housing and a project manager position. A village of 21 tiny homes is planned to open in 2023 for the chronically homeless in Worcester, Massachusetts.

One challenge besides zoning and funding has been a NIMBY response by communities. Communities may weigh concerns over tiny home communities becoming shantytowns or blighted neighborhoods that reduce property values of the surrounding neighborhoods. For cities such as Chicago, tiny houses are seen as an appealing option to close the gap in housing availability. Community planners also have concerns that communities don't devolve into shantytowns such as during the Great Depression in "Hoovervilles".

In California, the city of Richmond has engaged University of California, Berkeley students in the THIMBY (Tiny House In My Backyard) project with a pilot program for developing a model of six transitional tiny homes to be placed in the city. THIMBY, with the support of Sustainable Housing at California, aims to foster an environment that allows homeowners and transitional housing residents to live as neighbors rather than in a landlord-tenant relationship. THIMBY acquires target locations for tiny housing development through surveying interested homeowners offering to rent out backyard space for the tiny housing unit. While Sustainable Housing at California has independently scouted out interested individuals for the initial pilot project, the organization also aims to work closely with the City of Richmond's Tiny House on Wheels ordinance to bolster city-level efforts to provide affordable housing and shelter. This is in line with developing efforts in the San Francisco Bay Area to use micro-apartments and tiny houses in combating the housing crisis and homelessness in the San Francisco Bay Area. Similar efforts of using tiny houses to house the homeless are also ongoing in Oakland through a partnership between the City of Oakland and Laney College. In 2021, the California based nonprofit organization Hope of the Valley funded and built 4 tiny home villages in Los Angeles, the first formal, legally uncontested tiny home project in the region. More informal efforts to build tiny homes for homeless communities had been made in the past by citizens in Los Angeles, but were ultimately seized by the city due to concerns over sanitation.

In the co-authored research article The Psychology of Home Environments, it's argued that the drive behind the tiny house movement is centered around desires of modesty and conservation, in addition to environmental consciousness, self-sufficiency, and wanting a life of adventure.[irrelevant citation ] In building tiny houses, there is often a misalignment between the needs of the occupant(s), and the expressed design from the creating team. This reality is used as a call for architects and design teams to work with psychologists to build tiny homes that are better suited towards the needs of the occupant(s). In understanding these considerations, it is important to note that not everyone is suited for a tiny house.

Smaller homes are less expensive than larger ones in terms of taxes and building, heating, maintenance, and repair costs. The lower cost of living may be advantageous to those with little savings, such as people aged 55 and older. In addition to costing less, small houses may encourage a less cluttered, simpler lifestyle, and reduce ecological impacts for their residents. The typical size of a small home seldom exceeds 500 square feet (46 m ²). The typical tiny house on wheels is usually less than 8 by 20 ft (2.4 by 6.1 m), with livable space totaling 120 sq ft (11 m ²) or less, for ease of towing and to exempt it from the need for a building permit.

The increased utilization of small houses as second homes or retirement houses may lead to development of more land. People interested in building a small home can encounter institutional "discrimination" when building codes require minimum size well above the size of a small home. Also, neighbors may be hostile because they fear negative impacts on their property values and have concerns about increased taxes.

More broadly, these sentiments of "othering" homeless and unhoused persons have culminated into a broader movement of NIMBY-ism, or "Not in My Backyard."

The advent of NIMBY-ism occupied much of community organizing and housing advocacy dialogue in the 1980s, so much that some coined it "the populist political philosophy of the 1980s." In many ways, NIMBY philosophy functions through the "spatialization of stigma," allowing residents and homeowners to reallocate and redefine neighborhoods and local communities and, consequently, which individuals should be allowed to occupy such an area. While modern U.S. society has statistically experienced a growing need for human services and welfare, researchers have acknowledged that "The stigmatization of persons and places are thus mutually constitutive of community rejection and organized resistance to human service facility sitting." In effect, community resistance to housing advocacy and affordability measures further exacerbates the dwindling number of public resources and social services available to vulnerable and displaced homeless persons.

Concerns over the efficacy of tiny homes for homeless people persist. Some critics have argued that, similar to other forms of anti-homelessness legislation, tiny home villages are fundamentally carceral, designed to push its tenants into less public spaces near city outskirts in an effort to invisibilize homeless people, rather than provide long-term stability.

By treating homelessness as a non-familiarized issue, residents and homeowners are effectively exempt from community obligations towards the well-being and sheltering of other community members experiencing homelessness. Despite the framing of housing as a fundamental rights-based issue, community perspectives have evolved towards a more economic, individualized form that correlates a person's home-ownership and housing to their values and ethics, employ-ability, and general ability to provide for themselves and their families. As such, the inability of both private and public sectors to supplement the widening gap of affordable housing options and shelter is, in some ways, conveniently explained by an individual's supposed inability to ensure living stability, maintain financial independence, and solidify their position within the society at large.[citation needed ]

Tiny homes are threatening increased grid defection because of their inherently low energy demands due to their small size. Their customized builds and smaller energy demand often lend themselves toward dependence on rooftop photovoltaics such as roof-mounted solar panels. Especially with the continuously decreasing price of solar panels and batteries, tiny homes are examples of existing and commercially proven alternative off-grid housing.

Each space and house will have their own energy consumption profile and generation demand. Consequently, they must size their power equipment accordingly. The needed size of battery systems to store captured energy or grid-supplied energy that will be used during times without power production from the rooftop solar, such as when there is inadequate insolation, depend on the generation capacity (as to not under or oversize the battery bank), the type of batteries used, their individual capacity (A⋅h), the discharge rate allowable per cycle (%), the size of loads (W), how long they will be run, and how many days of storage are needed. Battery sizing calculators are available online to simplify this process. Additionally, battery balancers, sensors that can read and recalibrate the available capacity, or state of charge, between different battery cells, can be added to extend the life of a battery system to prohibit voltage offset or non-ideal current flow, potentially damaging or capacity reducing to batteries over time. Batteries are rated in terms of ampere-hours with their discharge rate and capacity set by the manufacturer at a specific current and total amount of time, as voltage differs with temperature and power will vary with rate of discharge.

To fully convert a tiny home for living capacities off-grid, other power electronic power equipment is necessary, such as a charge controller, an inverter to power AC loads or down-regulators for DC loads, and proper protection devices such as circuit breakers and fuses. Specific sine inverters may offer simultaneous grid power hookup, called ' grid-tie inverters' in case of insufficient energy generation locally. Grid-tie inverters are of academic interest and are being studied by utilities for their impacts and potential benefits to voltage regulation, infrastructure implications, protection schema requirements, economics, and optimum policy regarding integration for implementation into the electrical grid with the rise of distributed generation, namely residential supplied solar power.

Tiny homes range typically between 100 and 300 square feet (9.3 and 27.9 m ²). Considering the small size of tiny homes in comparison to that of average-sized homes, energy costs are invariably smaller; moreover, tiny home power grids are typically sourced from solar panels, which decreases the amount of publicly produced energy necessary to sustain the home. More importantly, the price difference of using solar power on a tiny home in comparison to an average-sized home, not decrease significantly the homeowner expenses. Thus, the variation of energy emissions and cost necessary for output between a tiny home and average-sized home varies notably. While a tiny home is sustained to operate on 914 kilowatt hours a year, producing on average 1,144 pounds (0.519 t) of carbon dioxide, an average-sized house requires 12,733 kilowatt hours, which releases close to 16,000 pounds (7.3 t).

Consequently, tiny homes inevitably require the consumption of less energy to support the homeowner. As a result, people living in tiny homes typically limit the accumulation of materialistic items. The limited space of a tiny home insists that owners sacrifice the idea of abundant materialism. It also allows homeowners to re-evaluate their personal habits, which subsequently translates into awareness regarding environmental sourcing. The concept of a "tiny" home reflects all aspects of the chosen lifestyle; a minimized space necessitates minimal consumer spending while the limited amount of surface area provided decreases the rate and level of energy consumption.

Human beings have been the main contributors in recent environmental changes. One critical proponent of these changes relates to infrastructure; buildings affect both human beings and the environment. However the costs tend to effect the environment while the benefits are exclusive to humans. The intention of building new infrastructure is to guarantee its sustainability for a long period of time. As a result, the less environmentally intentional a facility is, the more it will depend on consumption of natural resources. "Part of the very definition of a tiny home is that it be constructed with environmentally conscious and renewable materials." Most tiny homes are designed to receive their services in ways that are less environmentally exhaustible. Electrical grids and public utilities are a distinguishable way tiny homes receive various water, electric and plumbing services. This detail is critical for consideration when individuals move from average sized homes to tiny homes because it allows individuals to both save money while using less environmental resources. Another important environmentally conscious feature relates to toilets. Some tiny homes are equipped with incinerator toilets which get rid of waste by burning it rather than flushing. By eliminating toilet flushing, the amount of water used in a household significantly decreases. An alternative feature is a compost toilet which works by decomposing the waste using evaporation to remove it. Therefore, not only are tiny homes energy efficient, the makeup of these homes are also intended to be environmentally friendly. Subsequently, in order for new materials to be both utilized in construction and sustainable for long periods of time, the production of such materials are dependent on various chemicals; this added step removes additional resources from the environment. An alternative to this is the usage of recycled materials. The tiny homes designed by a group in Texas consciously avoid using new materials in their construction. Because 30-40% of energy consumption is expended by human beings, it has been argued that infrastructure is best fit to include the consumption of humans within its blueprints.

Individuals who live in tiny homes are directly connected to the environment primarily because of the close proximity between tiny homes and the surrounding ecosystems. Through constant contact, the homeowner is given the opportunity to better understand the functions of nature. Such an understanding allows for an increase in environmental awareness.

More so, the design of tiny homes are subject to individual modification; the style, level of sustainability, intricacy, materials used, and modifications are all determined by homeowner preferences.

Homelessness is a critical issue in the United States. According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, about 550,000 individuals were experiencing homelessness on a given night in 2018. Over half of those individuals were able to sleep in different types of shelters while roughly thirty-five percent were unable to reside in a sheltered area. Despite the little information provided on this issue in popular media, homelessness has the capacity to affect the environment dramatically. According to the Environmental Council of Sacramento, homelessness is a contributor to environmental deterioration. For example, waste [litter, drug paraphernalia, etc.] produced by the homeless accumulates around their living spaces which tend to be near waterways, sewage systems, or parks. This leads to the contamination of the surrounding ecosystem. The Environmental Council offers steps towards conserving the environment while simultaneously dealing with the issue of homelessness. These steps include the cleaning of various water systems and public spaces in order to provide both clean water and clean areas for all individuals of the community. One of these steps also includes governmental intervention in establishing sanitary and safe spaces for the homeless in order to prevent further environmental destruction. Luckily, systems for just that are beginning to form though the tiny house movement.

A critical form of combating chronic homelessness is the establishment of tiny house communities. Those behind such establishments aim to help individuals solve their housing problems and offer a space where individuals can connect with others who find themselves in similar circumstances. Creating these communities requires a variety of support, however the end goal is ultimately shared. The primary actors behind the building and funding of tiny homes for the homeless are non-profit organizations. Their goal is not only to give homeless people a place to live, but also offer them resources to help them in all aspects of their lives. Building communities of tiny homes for the homeless is a group effort involving the homeless, cities themselves, and housing patrons. Through their efforts, the issue of homelessness in itself, along with its effects on the environment, are being continuously combated and improved.

The tiny-house movement has inspired several reality television series:

Sarah Susanka, Kira Obolensky, The Not So Big House: A Blueprint for the Way We Really Live, Taunton (1998), ISBN 1-60085-047-2

Lloyd Kahn and Bob Easton, Shelter, Shelter Publications (1973), ISBN 978-0394709918

Ryan Mitchell, Tiny House Living: Ideas For Building and Living Well In Less than 400 Square Feet, Betterway (2014), ISBN 978-1440333163

Andrew Heben, Tent City Urbanism, The Village Collaborative (2014), ISBN 978-0692248058

Vail, K. (2016). "Saving the American Dream: The Legalization of the Tiny House Movement". University of Louisville Law Review, 54(2), 357-379.

Ford, J., & Gomez-Lanier, L. (2017). "Are Tiny Homes Here to Stay? A Review of Literature on the Tiny House Movement". Family And Consumer Sciences Research Journal, 45(4), 394-405. doi:10.1111/fcsr.12205.

Furst, A. (2017). Finding Space: Understanding How Planning Responds to Tiny Houses for Homeless Populations. Master's thesis. McGill University School of Urban Planning.

Turner, C. (2017). "It Takes a Village: Designating 'Tiny House' Villages as Transitional Housing Campgrounds". University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform, 50(4), 931-954.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The tiny-house movement (also known as the small house movement) is an architectural and social movement that advocates for downsizing living spaces, simplifying, and essentially "living with less." According to the 2018 International Residential Code, Appendix Q Tiny Houses, a tiny house is a "dwelling unit with a maximum of 37 square metres (400 sq ft) of floor area, excluding lofts."

# data[].attributes.body
non-conventional, frugal innovation, often termed a hack

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Connect with Us

Aquaponics is a sustainable method of raising both fish and vegetables. It is popular with individuals, entrepreneurs, educators, missions and governments. Furthermore, with this type of indoor farming, you grow substantially more food with less water, land and labor than traditional agriculture.

What is aquaponics?...a resilient farming system that provides wellness and better nutrition.

Aquaponics is a form of agriculture that combines raising fish in tanks (recirculating aquaculture) with soilless plant culture (hydroponics). In aquaponics, the nutrient-rich water from raising fish provides a natural fertilizer for the plants and the plants help to purify the water for the fish. Aquaponics can be used to sustainably raise fresh fish and vegetables for a family, to feed a village or to generate profit in a commercial farming venture, year 'round, in any climate.

Aquaponics is a great example of year 'round, indoor farming. It can be done anywhere, providing fresh local food that is free of pesticides, herbicides and chemical fertilizers. It is safe, easy and fresh!

Home - A home food production system can grow hundreds of pounds of fish and all the fresh vegetables that a family needs.

School - In education applications, aquaponics is an excellent model of natures biological cycles.

Food Banks and Missions - Feed people in need: Aquaponics is an ideal way to provide fresh, nutritious food to those in need

Commercial - Commercially, aquaponics is a rapidly growing industry as entrepreneurs realize that aquaponics and controlled environment agriculture can provide high quality, locally-grown fresh food on a 'year round basis. Large commercial aquaponic farms are providing fresh food to grocery store chains, hospitals and institutions. MicroFarm Aquaponic Systems are perfect for a family or retirement business.

Indoor Farming

Looking into indoor farming? Check out Nelson and Pade's highly productive Clear Flow Aquaponic Systems ® to grow more food in indoor agriculture.

Natural and Sustainable

Aquaponics is a completely natural process that mimics all lakes, ponds, rivers and waterways on Earth. The only input into an aquaponics system is fish food for aquaponics. The fish eat the food and excrete waste, which is converted by beneficial bacteria to nutrients that the plants can use. In consuming these nutrients, the plants help to purify the water. You cannot use herbicides, pesticides or other harsh chemicals in an aquaponics system, making the fish and plants healthful and safe to eat.

Benefits of Aquaponics

Use 1/6th of the water to grow 8 times more food per acre compared to traditional agriculture!

All natural fertilizer source from fish waste.

No reliance on mined and manufactured fertilizers.

Efficient, sustainable and highly productive.

Produce is free of pesticides and herbicides.

Fish are free of growth hormones and antibiotics.

Allows continuous production of food.

Produces both a protein and vegetable crop.

Integrated system is sustainable and earth-friendly.

Eliminating soil eliminates soil borne diseases.

When combined with Controlled Environment Agriculture, you can grow year 'round in any climate

What Can You Grow?

The fish and plants that you select for your aquaponic system should have similar needs as far as temperature and pH. As a general rule, warm, fresh water fish and leafy crops, such as lettuce, greens and herbs will do the best.

Most commercial growers raise leafy crops, but you can grow all kinds of plants in aquaponics. At our demonstration facility at Nelson and Pade, Inc.®, we have raised lettuce, swiss chard, kale, collards, herbs, peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, beets, radishes, carrots, green onions, leeks, beans, peas, kohlrabi, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, sunflowers, edible flowers and aloe. We even have tropical fruit trees in our aquaponic systems! Yes, we grow bananas, limes, oranges, lemons and pomegranates year 'round in aquaponics!

Links to additional information and articles:

General:

Commercial:

Aquaponics in Education:

Learn more about Aquaponics:
Aquaponics Master Class® and online courses from Nelson and Pade, Inc.®

Read More from the Aquaponics Journal®

Nelson and Pade, Inc.® began publishing the Aquaponics Journalin 1997 and continuously published it through the beginning of 2013. There are a total of 62 issues, all of which are available as a downloadable .pdf collection. The Aquaponics Journal ® chronicled the start and growth of the aquaponics industry and has now become an online news source for anyone looking to expand their knowledge of aquaponics.

Read a selection of articles from throughout the 16 years of quarterly publication. These articles are presented to share information and articles from the Aquaponics Journal ® and to showcase the diversity of content and contributing authors.
Aquaponics Journal® - Select Articles

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Sustainable, Profitable Indoor Farming of Aquaponics Fish and Plants

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Aquaponics is a sustainable method of raising both fish and vegetables. It is popular with individuals, entrepreneurs, educators, missions and governments. Furthermore, with this type of indoor farming, you grow substantially more food with less water, land and labor than traditional agriculture. What is aquaponics?...a resilient farming system that provides wellness and better nutrition.

# data[].attributes.body
Some words on the origin and the term "solarpunk"

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
DIY: Die schönsten Ideen zum Selbermachen

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Do it yourself! Mit unseren kreativen Anleitungen, einzigartigen Ideen und Inspirationen für jede Jahreszeit machen Sie sich schöne Deko für Zuhause einfach selbst!

# data[].attributes.body
Please, write three words which describe your vision of the future world here:
Go to www.menti.com and use the code 9908 3813

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Do you know what's great about DIY projects? Everything. When you make items yourself, you can choose projects that suit your tastes, create them in your choice of colours/textures, and then use them to your heart's content.

Whether you're aiming for efficiency, decoration, fun, or self-sufficiency, there's a list of 30 awesome DIY projects just waiting for you.

30 DIY Projects Your Should Try

Pick a few that you might like to try out:

1. Bird Feeder Wreath

A circular mold, wide ribbon, some birdseed, and some melted suet are all you need to help feed our feathery friends over the winter months.
Find out how to make it here!
2. Upside-Down Tomato Planter

Just save your plastic soda bottles, cut the bottoms off, ease in a tomato plant seedling, and pour in some earth. Then hang it up, water it regularly, and watch your tomatoes grow! This also works well for herbs and peppers.)
Find out how to make it here!
3. Yogurt Cheese

Place a few layers of cheesecloth in a colander, pour in plain yogurt, and let it drain overnight: you'll have creamy cheese when you wake up the next day.
Find out how to make it here!
4. Yarn-Wrapped Painted Jars

Wrap some yarn or twine around a jar, paint it, and peel the yarn away once it's dry: you'll be left with a gorgeous luminary for tea lights or candles.
Find out how to make it here!
5. Baked Salt Dough Tags

Perfect for Valentine's gifts, baby/bridal showers, or any other occasion.
Find out how to make it here!
6. Leafy Stepping-Stones

It's easy to make beautiful stepping-stones for your garden with large leaves (like rhubarb), cement, and a trowel.

⌄ Scroll down to continue reading article ⌄

⌄ Scroll down to continue reading article ⌄
Find out how to make it here!
7. Shoe Holder Planter

Use an old over-the-door shoe holder to grow all kinds of plants. This is great for growing herbs outside your kitchen, or on a balcony wall.
Find out how to make it here!
8. Tea or Coffee Cup with a Message

Grab a teacup and a Sharpie marker, write a message on the inside bottom of a cup (or on the side of it), and bake for 30 min at 350 F to make the writing permanent. Great for bridal party gifts!
Find out how to make it here!
9. Pebble Placemat

Use a hot glue gun to glue flat beach pebbles to circles of felt or wood. These placemats are perfect to use beneath teapots and warm serving bowls, and they look great at garden parties.
Find out how to make it here!
10. Needle-Felted Toys

Use a barbed needle and some wool roving to make Waldorf-style toys for kids of all ages.
Find out how to make it here!
11. Waterless Snow Globe

Grab an empty jar, a dollhouse miniature, some glue, and fake snow, and you'll have a water-free snow globe decoration.
Find out how to make it here!
12. Hanging Garden Basket

A wire basket, some moss, and some seedlings are all that's needed to create a gorgeous hanging basket of edibles. Try a mix of lettuce, herbs, tomatoes, or even strawberries!

⌄ Scroll down to continue reading article ⌄

⌄ Scroll down to continue reading article ⌄
Find out how to make it here!
13. Reusable "Swiffer" Pads

If you know the basics of knitting or crocheting, you can create your own reusable pad covers for your sweeper.
Find out how to make it here!
14. Lip Balm

Make your own amazing lip balms with carnauba or bee's wax, a carrier oil (olive, almond, etc.) and your favourite scent/flavour.
Find out how to make it here!
15. Floor Stencils

Instead of throw rugs, consider dressing up old wooden or concrete floors with painted stencil designs.
Find out how to make it here!
16. Laundry Detergent

Just in case you run out of laundry soap (or want to make a cost-effective detergent in the scent you like best), make your own with a few household ingredients.
Find out how to make it here!
17. Cake Stands

Use industrial-strength adhesive to glue thrift shop glassware together to make cake stands and pedestal bowls.
Find out how to make it here!
18. Nail Polish Key Identification

Use different colours of nail polish on your keys so you can easily tell them apart. Just remember which colour you used for each door!
Find out how to make it here!
19. Cassette Tape Wallet

You might have never played a cassette tape, but chances are you've seen them lying around. Transform one into a wallet for a bit of retro fabulousness.

⌄ Scroll down to continue reading article ⌄

⌄ Scroll down to continue reading article ⌄
Find out how to make it here!
20. Painted Garden Stones

Keep track of what you've planted where by painting large stones for your garden.
Find out how to make it here!
21. Wood-Burning Camp Stove

All you need is a large tin can, a few metal tent pegs/stakes, and a drill to make this camp stove.
Find out how to make it here!
22. "Fairy" Garden

Great for small spaces or as a project with your kids: grab an old bucket, drawer, or bowl, add some earth and small plants. Then tuck in some miniatures, and you have a tiny, perfect garden.
Find out how to make it here!
23. String Lanterns

It's amazing how easy it is to make these elegant string-globe lanterns! All you need is twine, corn starch, glue, balloons, and spray paint. Easy peasy.
Find out how to make it here!
24. Suitcase Dog Bed

A vintage suitcase transforms into a dog bed with a little TLC and some fluffy pillows.
Find out how to make it here!
25. Jar Garden Mini Terrarium

Fill empty jars with pebbles, soil, moss, and small plants for mini gardens you can place around your home. Feel free to add in some miniatures for extra impact!

⌄ Scroll down to continue reading article ⌄

⌄ Scroll down to continue reading article ⌄
Find out how to make it here!
26. Wallpaper Dresser

Furniture gets an updated look with a fresh coat of paint and some strips of wallpaper in complementary hues.
Find out how to make it here!
27. Clothes Hanger Jewelry Storage

Add a few eyelet screws to a wooden coat hanger and voila: instant jewelry organization.
Find out how to make it here!
28. Bath Salts

Epsom salts or coarse sea salt is mixed with your favourite essential oils and a few drops of food colouring to make luxurious bath treats.
Find out how to make it here!
29. Paint Swatch Wall Art

Can't decide what colour to paint your wall? Why not choose "all of them"? This decor was created from free paint colour swatches (available at any home reno store), pinned to the wall with straight pins.
Find out how to make it here!
30. Recycled Leather and Wood Shelves

We could all do with more storage space, and you can create some pretty fabulous shelves with some recycled wood, a couple of thrift shop belts, and a few nails.
Find out how to make it here!
Final Thoughts

Hopefully, some of these will inspire some creativity at your end, and if you find yourself in a hardcore DIY headspace, a great place to find more projects is on Pinterest: either do a search for your craft of choice or just type DIY into the search field to see what piques your interest.

Featured photo credit: Unsplash via unsplash.com

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
30 Awesome DIY Projects that You've Never Heard of

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Do you know what's great about DIY projects? Everything. When you make items yourself, you can choose projects that suit your tastes, create them in your choice of colours/textures, and then use them to your heart's content. Whether you're aiming for efficiency, decoration, fun, or self-sufficiency, there's a list of 30 awesome DIY projects just waiting for you.

# data[].attributes.headline
Urban Farmers Trade Goods and Stories at ‘Crop Swaps’

# data[].attributes.subject
Urban Farmers Trade Goods and Stories at ‘Crop Swaps’

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Send any friend a story
As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Anyone can read what you share.

Give this article Give this article Give this article

Lila Skye, far left, and other city farmers swapped goods this month in her driveway in Richmond, Calif. Credit... Jim Wilson/The New York Times

OAKLAND, Calif. - The Bay Area is a culinary never-never land, a place where aspiring apiarists hire beekeeping coaches, and even 7-year-olds can discuss the virtues of Himalayan salt.

That is why, on a recent Sunday, a motley group of gardeners bearing windfall harvests of habanero chiles, persimmons and prickly pear cactus fruit gathered for a "crop swap," an urban agricultural ritual in which city farmers get together to share their surplus bounty.

At the weekly event at Pollinate Farm & Garden, an urban farm supply store here, Haven Bourque, 49, a communications consultant, had brought homegrown basil, Japanese eggplant and late-season tomatoes from her garden, which she exchanged for broccoli, bok choy and yellow cherry tomatoes.

The crop swap is a sort of farmers market that operates on the barter system. It allows Ms. Bourque to diversify her pantry while socializing with neighbors. "It forces you to be creative," she said. "As a culinarian, I want that flavor," she said.

Neighborly exchanges of goods are nothing new, of course: In the early days of the Plymouth Colony, for instance, the Pilgrims traded English tools, clothing and other items for the Indians' beaver fur and corn, said Patrick Browne, the executive director of the Pilgrim Hall Museum in Plymouth, Mass.

Bullet Train to Nowhere: Construction of the California high-speed rail system, America's most ambitious infrastructure project, has become a multi-billion-dollar nightmare.

A Piece of Black History Destroyed: Lincoln Heights - a historically Black community in a predominantly white, rural county in Northern California - endured for decades. Then came the Mill fire.

Warehouse Moratorium: As warehouse construction balloons nationwide, residents in communities both rural and urban have pushed back. In California's Inland Empire, the anger has turned to widespread action.

But today's trades reflect food trends coursing through the body politic: At the PDX Food Swap in Portland, Ore., for example, participants share homemade vegan nut spreads; kombucha starters; organic strawberry and cabernet sauvignon jams; brined nasturtium flower buds, considered poor man's capers; rosemary-infused butter; and homemade rhubarb liqueur.

The Bay Area, with dozens of swaps, is arguably the center of crop-swap culture, in which the so-called sharing economy meets urban agriculture. But swaps are found around the country, including the ATXswappers in Austin, Tex.; the Mile High Swappers in the Denver area; the BK Swappers in Brooklyn, N.Y.; and the Port City Swappers of Wilmington, N.C., whose offerings include hummus made from pickled North Carolina peanuts.

At swaps, planting pointers and other local intelligence can be gleaned: In Oakland, gardeners compared notes on getting rid of aphids without using pesticides and on growing vegetables in the current drought. (Sample tips: For the garden, use water from the children's minipool and excess water caught in plastic buckets in the shower.)

The swap concept in California received a lift recently with two pieces of legislation signed by Gov. Jerry Brown: the Neighborhood Food Act, which gives tenants and members of homeowner associations the right to grow food for their own consumption, with certain restrictions, and the Urban Agriculture Incentives Act, which encourages cities to create zones in which landowners can get property tax breaks if they put their land into agricultural production.

Birgitt Evans, a co-owner of Pollinate Farm & Garden in Oakland, Calif., with produce available at a recent "crop swap." The urban farm supply store hosts swaps weekly. Credit... Jim Wilson/The New York Times

In 2011, sensing a growing demand for swaps, Emily Han, 36, a writer and recipe developer in Los Angeles, co-founded the online Food Swap Network as a place for people to find an existing swap or set up a new one. It lists about a dozen swaps around Los Angeles.

Ms. Han, an avid forager, prepares for the bimonthly swap she started in the city's Silver Lake neighborhood by hiking through the San Gabriel and San Bernardino Mountains in search of pine needles and fern fronds, which she uses for infusing honey, and roaming city streets to find pink peppercorns, fennel pollen and green walnuts for a liqueur she makes based on an Italian recipe.

The website includes some of the ground rules for a food swap, at which people sign in and meet and greet first, then peruse and sample the merchandise for a set period of time before the official swap begins. The site suggests particular ways to package items, and offers advice like, "Don't get your feelings hurt if someone says no thanks to your swap item."

Ms. Han considers swaps part of the "shareable food movement," along with canning; community-supported agriculture, in which people place regular orders directly from a local farm; and communal shares in pigs and cows. "For a lot of people, it's the next step of eating local," she said.

It is also a way of fostering face-to-face community ties in an online world, said Mark Bomford, director of the Yale Sustainable Food Project in New Haven, Conn. Swaps, he said, have become "a subcultural bonding practice meant not just to exchange goods, but to strengthen community and social networks."

In one of the Bay Area's most impoverished cities, Richmond, Calif., a city north of Oakland famous for shipbuilding during World War II, Trish Clifford, the founder of a group known as the Richmond Rivets, wore a T-shirt of Rosie the Riveter with the slogan "Save Seeds! We Can Do It!"

Richmond has designated the purple tree collard, planted originally by Southern shipyard workers, as its official green, and recently incorporated wellness, including agriculture, into its general plan. Visitors to the main library can check out seeds, including heirloom Italian pole beans and kale. Residents are drawn to seeds and swaps in part because growing produce is less expensive than buying it at a supermarket, Ms. Clifford said.

At dusk on a recent evening, about five dozen Rivets from around the city assembled in Lila Skye's driveway for the Ellis M. Gold Memorial Crop Swap, named for her partner and fellow crop-swapper who died of cancer this year. The mood was jubilant, both because of the Vietnamese cilantro, native currants and other crops being shared, and perhaps equally because of the recent election, in which progressive local candidates defeated those backed by the oil giant Chevron, the city's biggest employer and taxpayer.

As night descended, the swappers, smartphone flashlight apps at the ready, perused a cornucopia of fruits, vegetables and herbs that managed to thrive in microclimates, an oddity of Bay Area life in which columns of fog shimmying through the Golden Gate cause wild variations in temperature, wind and moisture, thwarting newbie gardeners.

Charles Daniels, an 80-year-old retired lawn and garden shop owner, came with apples, sorrel and pepino dulce, a South American fruit that tastes like a blend of honeydew and cantaloupe. As he delivered them, a large spider was inching up another swapper's pink-edged camellia.

"I always grow too much," Mr. Daniels said. "So I need a source for getting rid of it."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Urban Farmers Trade Goods and Stories at 'Crop Swaps' (Published 2014)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Send any friend a story As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Anyone can read what you share. Give this article Give this article Give this article OAKLAND, Calif. - The Bay Area is a culinary never-never land, a place where aspiring apiarists hire beekeeping coaches, and even 7-year-olds can discuss the virtues of Himalayan salt.

# data[].attributes.body
on why and how teach solarpunk stories

# data[].attributes.body
...and why it is good stuff to teach...

# data[].attributes.headline
Could bartering become the new buying in a changed world?

# data[].attributes.subject
Could bartering become the new buying in a changed world?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
London-based nurse Marjorie Dunne joined Barter United Kingdom after spending five days in hospital with coronavirus in April. The group, which she originally joined to get rid of a few unwanted items unearthed during spring cleaning, ended up helping Dunne through one of the toughest times of her life.

"It really helped me out with meals for my family," says Dunne. "I didn't have the energy to cook, I was spending a fortune on online grocery shopping and having meals brought to the house was a tremendous help." Members of Barter United Kingdom, which started on 23 April and had 1,300 members as of early August, swapped curries, roti and cakes for Dunne's dresses and DVDs.

Around the world, people have been turning to swapping, trading and bartering during the coronavirus pandemic, whether to do their bit for the local community, save money or simply source hard-to-find baking ingredients. With economic uncertainty looming and anxiety levels soaring, barter is becoming an emerging alternative solution to getting by - and staying busy - amid Covid-19.

In Gloucester, members of the Fair Shares time bank made food parcels for those hardest-hit by the crisis (Credit: Reyaz Limalia)

'Barter was a natural solution'
The increase in bartering is nowhere better exemplified than in Fiji, which inspired Dunne's London group. The country has a long tradition of barter, known as 'veisa'. It's only grown amid Covid-19, and Fijians have harnessed modern technology to connect even more people.

"I knew that money would be tight to stretch out and even harder to come by. I asked myself what happens when there's no more money? Barter was a natural solution to that," says Marlene Dutta, who started the Barter for a Better Fiji group on 21 April. Its membership is just under 190,000 - more than 20% of Fiji's population. Items changing hands have run the gamut - pigs for kayaks, a violin for a leather satchel and doughnuts for building bricks - but the most commonly requested items have been groceries and food.

"The primary reason for setting up the Facebook group was to help offer a solution to our current economic situation," says Dutta. Fiji's tourism-dependent economy has been hit particularly hard during the pandemic, with an estimated 100,000 people losing jobs in an industry that contributes around 30% to Fiji's GDP and employs around a third of Fiji's total labour force.

"The economic hardships people are coping with are driving the rediscovery of bartering," says Shera Dalin, co-author of The Art of Barter. "The same thing happened during the Great Recession. When times get harder, people turn to barter." Similarly, more than 300 barter organisations cropped up during the early years of the Great Depression in the United States, says Dalin. "American currency was hard to come by during the Depression and barter helped assuage that need," she adds.

While Fiji's barter explosion has affected the whole country, other groups across the world have been working at state, city or community levels.

"I invited all of my friends and it just grew. We had 1,000 people in less than 24 hours," says Veronica Coon, who started her Facebook barter group in the US state of Nevada on 15 March. It now has more than 5,600 members. The most popular items traded have been hard-to-find groceries like flour, yeast and eggs, as well as baby wipes, disinfecting spray and masks.

More than 20% of Fiji's population has joined the Barter for a Better Fiji group to trade goods (Credit: Marlene Dutta)

Bartering time
Along with goods, some people have been trading another precious commodity that they may have had more of recently - time.

'Time banking', which started in Japan in the 1970s, and in the US in 1992, is seeing a jump in popularity. Members of a time bank spend one hour helping another member, and can receive one hour of help in return. People offer and receive things such as piano lessons, painting services or language teaching.

"We have definitely had more interest as an organisation, with four new time banks starting after the onset of lockdown," says Kerri Tyler, community engagement and communications manager at Timebanking UK. Founded in 2002, the group has never seen such a spike before, adds Tyler.

During Covid-19, many UK time banks have been helping the local community. In Gloucester, members of the Fair Shares time bank have been picking up prescriptions, shopping and making food parcels for those hardest-hit by the economic crisis. In Merseyside, the Our Time time bank, whose aim is to tackle social isolation faced by people with mental health problems and help them engage in the local community, has been helping connect isolated people by setting up video calls and quizzes as well as doing regular wellbeing checks on its most vulnerable members.

The reciprocal nature of time banking means people are more inclined to accept help, seeing it as an exchange rather than charity, says Reyaz Limalia, who runs Fair Shares. "A lot of people still have this view that volunteering is charity one person does to another. It's a really demotivating thing for that person who is receiving the help."

Barter expert Dalin notes that those keen to try bartering need to come to it with time on their hands and an open attitude. "Traders need to be patient. Bartering takes more time than buying with cash," she says. "Since bartering is so personal, it's important that traders not have a 'win-at-all-costs' attitude. While it's better to have swaps that are relatively equal in value, the most important thing is that all parties are satisfied with the result."

Members of time banks offer and receive services such as music lessons, painting services or language instruction (Credit: Getty Images)

Bartering business
Bartering isn't just for individuals looking for baking items or help with grocery shopping, however. In 'barter exchanges' for business, participating organisations try to increase their yearly business by 10% to 15% through swapping their services for the services of other businesses.

Businesses are increasingly interested in joining barter exchanges, which have "doctors, lawyers, service companies, retailers - you name it", says Ron Whitney, President of the US-based International Reciprocal Trade Association, a non-profit organisation founded in 1979 that promotes and advances modern trade and barter systems.

Members can exchange their professional services for barter credit, which they can then use to 'buy' the services of another member. Most times it is not a one-on-one trade. For instance, a landscaper would do a $5,000 landscaping job for a local dentist's office. That does not mean he has to trade his labour for $5,000 of dental work; rather, he has an account at a barter exchange ["think of it almost as a credit card account", says Whitney], which is credited 5,000 trade dollars and he can spend that amount on any of the hundreds or thousands of members in that exchange.

Whitney estimates there has been a 20% increase in member sign-ups to barter exchanges during the pandemic. "Barter exchanges are seeing more activity and gaining more interest than ever before because cash is tight, credit is tight," he says.

The limits of barter
The increase in barter has forged stronger community connections for many. But it's unlikely that people will ditch spending in general for a totally swap-filled life.

"[Barter is] a nice way of showing a bit of community spirit and solidarity with people without money changing hands. That is more about the significance of the signal that you're giving than the true economic significance of the transaction," says David Miles, professor of financial economics at Imperial College Business School in London. He adds that the draw of barter is likely the personal aspect of the exchange, especially during the pandemic. "Sometimes the swapping and there not being money changing hands makes it seem a much more communal, gentler, kinder, non-commercial thing about helping people."

Bartering meals is a popular option for those who don't have the time or energy to cook (Credit: Reyaz Limalia)

So although the barter economy is currently strong and strengthening, Miles says barter has a limit. "In almost any country in the world, it only works for a tiny proportion of things," he says. "You're not going to buy electricity by offering to provide a service."

Time-barterer Limalia, too, acknowledges the sometimes-limited scope of bartering, but points out that scaling up is not necessarily the point. "People understand how a small act of kindness can make a drastic difference to somebody else's life," he says. "We're not going to change the world - we're not even going to change the whole city - but, actually, that one hour you give to help somebody else will make a difference to them."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Could bartering become the new buying in a changed world?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Amid economic uncertainty - and a desire to connect as we distance - bartering is experiencing an unprecedented rise. Could it stick around?

# data[].attributes.body
Scorpions

# data[].attributes.headline
Overview of some solarpunk short stories 

# data[].attributes.subject
Overview of some solarpunk short stories 

# data[].attributes.body
Climate emotions

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
From fear and anxiety to hope and healing - a series examining our complex responses to climate change, and how those responses will shape how we act.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
(Image credit: Lost and Found)

I've loved cyberpunk since I was old enough to dig through a second-hand bookstore on my own. But I'm tired, and I know I'm not alone. It's hard to keep waving a flag for a genre that's so often boiled down to a Hot Topic look and recycled stories. Perhaps the final nail in the coffin was the shambling disappointment of Cyberpunk 2077, which CDPR is still determined to keep working on. What many people recognize as cyberpunk today is mostly cosmetic (opens in new tab), and reusing that aesthetic again and again is becoming tedious and meaningless.

"What bothers me about cyberpunk is that it often gets carried away fetishizing the high-tech world it is ostensibly critiquing," says indie designer Phoebe Shalloway. "It makes tech look sleek, sexy, and cool." Shalloway has a different interest: she makes explicitly solarpunk games, which offer a fresh new way to imagine the future. Solarpunk still includes working with technology, but with a positive focus on sustainability, community, and radical change to the world as it is today.

Solarpunk isn't just about recycling and wind power-it also involves progressive new attitudes toward technology that don't involve CEOs calling the shots

Cyberpunk is often married to dystopia because of how it began-in the west it spawned from the Cold War, Reaganomics, and the perceived threat of an Orientalized, globalized future. But the reality is that modern life unironically buys into cyberpunk tropes of tech-fueled consumerism and corporate supremacy.

Ultimately, the way we portray fictional futures has a real impact on pop culture and our imaginations. "When all we see are bleak gritty cyberpunk realities, it becomes a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, where this is the only way we know to imagine the future," Shalloway explains. And as climate change and sustainability become critically urgent issues, more people have become vocal about the need for something different. And that alternative is solarpunk: a vibrant young genre that focuses on sustainability, innovation, open-source technology, and collective action.

The term was coined in 2008 on the blog Republic of the Bees, and is, in many ways, a post-cyberpunk idea that emphasizes positive long-term solutions. It's not the grimdark machine-dominated future that we're so used to seeing.

We can already see glimpses-at least aesthetically-of solarpunk ideas in some popular games. Visually it's similar to the utopian sun-drenched world of Aurora in Ghost Recon: Breakpoint, where tech pioneer Jace Skell introduces a peaceful island filled with creativity, innovation, and sustainable lifestyles (of course, this seemingly perfect place turns out to be pretty problematic). On a more straightforward level, Cities Skylines has a Green Cities expansion that lets players create eco-friendly infrastructure and buildings.

(Image credit: Paradox)

(opens in new tab)

But solarpunk isn't just about recycling and wind power-it also involves progressive new attitudes toward technology that don't involve CEOs calling the shots. In games, it's no surprise that small indie developers are doing the most meaningful work in this area. It's impossible to achieve a new world without also including radical politics-the kind of stuff you're mostly going to see in subculture communities that challenge the status quo, from urban farms and makerspaces to mutual aid groups that focus on hyperlocal problems like food distribution, social outreach, and medical help.

In the popular PS4 game creator Dreams, Solarpunks.net recently shared a soothing Japanese-themed vision of a solarpunk future by user TRIX9. "Imagine for a moment, a world in balance," the description reads. "A vision of the future that seeks to offer a viable alternative to a much fantasized dystopia. An idealistic aesthetic where tech and agriculture coexist." The short clip offers up a luminous, futuristic cityscape with wide sidewalks, abundant greenery, and hints of clean energy in the form of a hot air balloon-a throwback to old-school sci-fi where dirigibles ruled the skies.

Exploring the solarpunk tag on itch.io unearths small interactive fiction projects like Mycelium Child, Epoch of Rest, The Forest Train, and a pixelated student demo, Solare. Mycelium Child, produced for the Extra Credits 2020 "Take Care" Game Jam, is set on a mushroom-laden alien planet that introduces you to slice-of-life experiences in the community. The Forest Train paints a broader atmospheric picture with forest communes called qithyds, well-functioning public transport, and open-source technology and information.

"The extreme negativity of cyberpunk, together with its rule-breaking possibilities is very appealing and can be experienced without facing any consequences in the real world... who doesn't want to be a cool cyborg?" writes Lost and Found, the student team behind Solare, in an email. "Solarpunk is a social counter-design to cyberpunk, because it is one of the few optimistic and realistic visions of the future. [We] want to be able to look towards the future with a clear conscience," they continue. "It is the hope to build a society together that is not destructive and not afraid of different cultural influences."

Phoebe Shalloway's Solarpunkification is a quick 10-minute game where you play a guerrilla gardener trying to transform their city while avoiding the cops. But it's her college thesis project Even in Arcadia that dissects the politics and economics that shape the need for solarpunk-the need for radical change. The game follows a small group of friends at a launch party for Arcadia Gardens on a new planet, described as a "nostalgia theme park" designed to recreate ancient Earth nature. One character, Jack, wishes to leave her privileged place in Arcadia to live on an obsolete planet used as a garbage dump-much to the horror of her husband, Lio, and apathetic tech titan Ozymandias. Arcadia, while pristine and perfect, isn't actually real, and comes at a cost.

In one short "cycle" of the party, Shalloway paints an intense picture of the effects of late-stage capitalism, startup tech culture, and its impact on community and empathy. She was inspired by immersive games like Gone Home and Tacoma, and motivated by real-world phenomena like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and the advent of plastic-eating bacteria.

It's a lot easier to look at our current society and point out what's bad about it than to imagine what a really good sustainable society would look like

Phoebe Shalloway

"A role of artists in our time can be to prepare society for a positive response to the coming changes," she writes in her 2018 senior thesis. "We can make strange our world and behaviors so that we might break out of society's rules and develop new ones. If the bacteria can do it, we can do it, too."

It's this optimistic drive that illuminates solarpunk as a genre for the future, based on problems that we struggle with in the present. Unlike cyberpunk, it's stubbornly idealistic in its pursuit of a more livable world. Collective action and sharing are vital to its message: "to live comfortably without fossil fuels, to equitably manage scarcity and share abundance, to be kinder to each other and to the planet we share."

So why aren't we seeing more solarpunk games? For one thing, it's still a growing subgenre that can be difficult to work in. "From the writer's side it can be intimidating and difficult to try to depict a solarpunk world," Shalloway says. "It's a lot easier to look at our current society and point out what's bad about it than to imagine what a really good sustainable society would look like. But there's a real need for that image."

It's also an inherently anti-capitalist movement, which doesn't fit neatly into the business of game development or how we spend most of our time in games acquiring things-grinding or farming loot and resources is a huge driving factor for many MMOs and RPGs. The challenges of growing a collective farm or dismantling oppressive institutions aren't as viscerally thrilling as an anything-goes battle royale or fighting waves of demons. Most triple-A games are focused on individual player rewards, so it would be challenging to integrate solarpunk principles like community action and mutual aid into a mainstream game.

For devs and players, cyberpunk lends itself especially well to game environments: the moody mega-city, neon lights drenched in rain, and hi-tech mechanics are easily recognizable symbols for a dystopian future where it's easy to slip into the role of anti-authoritarian outcast. More importantly, cyberpunk is founded on capitalism and conflict-its visual language serves to illustrate how megacorporations (or, in stories like Snow Crash, feudal corporate kingdoms) rule the world. "It's really easy to get cynical when you start thinking about capitalism," Shalloway notes, "which is actually exactly why cyberpunk is so much easier of a genre to write for than solarpunk."

Despite its optimism, solarpunk isn't necessarily all sunshine and roses. "Solarpunk can bring the conflicts and even aesthetics of cyberpunk into its worldbuilding too, can have characters and settings that reflect those high-tech capitalist values," says Shalloway. "The difference would be that solarpunk would not fetishize those characters and settings; it would use them as a foil, an antagonist, or something to work away from. It needs to emphasize building something new and different outside of the cyberpunk world."

On the bright side, there are already more hints of socially and environmentally responsible messages creeping into more games. Narrative-driven indie game Venice 2089 is set in the titular city where water is reaching critical levels ( in present-day reality (opens in new tab), the city is experiencing extreme tide activity due to climate change). Crafting/survival game Common'Hood, currently in development, digs into socioeconomics as the player rebuilds a "post-crash community"-still using automation and robots-in a way that harmonizes with the environment.

But perhaps because mainstream games are far more commodified and complex products than books, solarpunk may never get a chance to reach a wider gaming audience. Sci-fi legends like Kim Stanley Robinson are turning to climate fiction to make sense of our increasingly endangered planet-an approach that the novelist describes as " angry optimism."

Perhaps the problem isn't that solarpunk isn't suited to mainstream perception of video games-the problem, then, is that we simply haven't fully realized how angry we should be about our current planetary predicament.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Enough cyberpunk-it's solarpunk's time to shine

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
(Image credit: Lost and Found) I've loved cyberpunk since I was old enough to dig through a second-hand bookstore on my own. But I'm tired, and I know I'm not alone. It's hard to keep waving a flag for a genre that's so often boiled down to a Hot Topic look and recycled stories.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The below was compiled by solarpunks.net the short link for sharing is solarpunks.net/Ref

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Solarpunk may take practical inspiration from Earthships, which are an example of sustainable architecture.[1][2]

Solarpunk is a literary and artistic movement that envisions and works toward actualizing a sustainable future interconnected with nature and community. The "solar" represents solar energy as a renewable energy source and an optimistic vision of the future that rejects climate doomerism, while the "punk" refers to the countercultural, post-capitalist, and decolonial enthusiasm for creating such a future.

As a science fiction literary subgenre and art movement, solarpunk works address how the future might look if humanity succeeded in solving major contemporary challenges with an emphasis on sustainability, human impact on the environment, and addressing climate change and pollution. Especially as a subgenre, it is aligned with cyberpunk derivatives, and may borrow elements from utopian and fantasy genres.

Solarpunk serves as a foil to the cyberpunk genre, particularly within the fashion industry. Both genres create and consolidate post-industrial countercultures; Solarpunk incites rebellion through its depiction of protoenvironmental socioecological relationships, whereas Cyberpunk advances the theme of rebellion through detached secondary environments, which often takes place in tangible dataspheres, virtual landscapes, and dystopian urban environments. Solarpunk draws inspiration from Bohemian style. The convergence of environmentalism and art serve as a framework for both subgenres. Solarpunk's interpretation of social collectivism strongly contrasts the individuality of Bohemian counterculture; Solarpunk recognizes individuality as an integral component of progressivism and identifies sociocultural distinctions as an impetus for change, though Solarpunk encompasses these elements within the greater socioecological scaffolding in a manner that contrasts the Bohemian assertion that individuality alone acts as the sole impetus for change.

The term solarpunk was coined in 2008 in a blog post titled "From Steampunk to Solarpunk", in which the anonymous author, taking the design of the MS Beluga Skysails (the world's first ship partially powered by a computer-controlled kite rig) as inspiration, conceptualizes a new speculative fiction subgenre with steampunk's focal point on specific technologies but guided by practicality and modern economics. Along a similar vein, in 2009, literary publicist Matt Staggs posted a "GreenPunk Manifesto" on his blog describing his vision of a technophilic genre focused on knowable, do it yourself technologies and with emphasis on positive ecological and social change. After visual artist Olivia Louise posted concept art on Tumblr of a solarpunk aesthetic in 2014, researcher Adam Flynn contributed to the science fiction forum Project Hieroglyph with further definition of the emerging genre. Based on Flynn's notes and contributions on the website solarpunks.net, A Solarpunk Manifesto was published in 2019 that describes solarpunk as "a movement in speculative fiction, art, fashion, and activism that seeks to answer and embody the question 'what does a sustainable civilization look like, and how can we get there?'".

While solarpunk has no specific political ideation, it does by default embrace the need for a collective movement away from polluting forms of energy. It practices prefigurative politics, creating spaces where the principles of a movement can be explored and demonstrated by enacting them in real life. Solarpunks practice the movement in various ways, including creating and living in communities (such as ecovillages), growing their own food, and a DIY ethic of working with what is available, including the thoughtful application of technology.

Even stories set in the far future or fantasy worlds portray societal failures recognizable to contemporary audiences. These failures may include oppressive imbalances of wealth or power, degradation of natural habitat or processes, and impacts of climate change. Evidence of injustices, like social exclusion and environmental racism, may be present. Disastrous consequences are not necessarily averted but solarpunk tends to present a counter-dystopian perspective. Their worlds are not necessarily utopian but rather solarpunk seeks to present an alternative to a pessimistic, consequential dystopian outcome. To achieve this, themes of do it yourself ethics, convivial conservation, self-sustainability, social inclusiveness and positive psychology are often present. This perspective also more closely embeds the ideals of punk ideologies, such as anti-consumerism, egalitarianism and decentralization, than cyberpunk which typically includes protagonists with punk beliefs but in settings that are used more of a warning of a potential future.

The integration of technologies into society in a manner that improves social, economic and environmental sustainability is central to solarpunk. It is starkly contrasted to cyberpunk which portrays highly advanced technologies that have little influence on, or otherwise exacerbate social, economic, and environmental problems. Whereas cyberpunk envisions humanity becoming more alienated from its natural environment and subsumed by technology, solarpunk envisions settings where technology enables humanity to better co-exist with itself and its environment.[citation needed ]

Solarpunk is more similar to steampunk than cyberpunk. Both steampunk and solarpunk imagine new worlds but with different primary sources of energy; respectively, the steam engines, and renewable energy. Though, whereas steampunk focuses more on history and uses Victorian era aesthetics, solarpunk uses more Art Nouveau style and looks to the future. Solarpunk also shares some elements with retrofuturism, Afrofuturism, Bionics and Arts and Crafts. The retrofuturist reevaluation of technology, its desire for understandable mechanics, and rejection of mysterious black box technology, and in favor of appropriate technology, are found in solarpunk works. As is the Afrofuturist's counter to mass-cultural homogeneity, the reckoning of injustices, and use of architecture and technology to correct power imbalances and problems in accessibility.

Although solarpunk is concerned with technology, it also embraces low-tech ways of living sustainably such as gardening, permaculture, regenerative design, tool libraries, maker spaces, open-source, positive psychology, metacognition, and do-it-yourself ethics. Its themes may reflect on environmental philosophy such as bright green environmentalism and social ecology, as well as punk ideologies such as anarchism, socialism, anti-consumerism, anti-authoritarianism, anti-capitalism, civil rights, commoning, and decentralization.

A proposed flag of the solarpunk movement.

As an art movement, solarpunk emerged in the 2010s as a reaction to the prevalence of bleak post-apocalyptic and dystopian media alongside an increased awareness of social injustices, impacts of climate change, and inextricable economic inequality. As post-apocalyptic and dystopian was ubiquitous in media, solarpunk became an attractive alternative. Solarpunk is optimistic yet realistic in confronting contemporary problems.

The solarpunk visual identity, as expressed by Olivia Louise and subsequent artists, is compared to Art Nouveau with its depictions of plants, use of sinuous lines like whiplash, and integration of applied arts into fine arts. The ornamental Arts and Crafts movement, an influence on Art Nouveau, is present and its built forms reflect Frank Lloyd Wright's organic architecture. The solarpunk aesthetic typically utilizes natural colors, bright greens and blues, and allusions to diverse cultural origins. Examples of this aesthetic include Boeri Studio's Bosco Verticale in Milan, the depiction of Wakanda in Marvel Studios' Black Panther and Auroa in Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Breakpoint, Cities: Skylines's Green Cities expansion, and some Studio Ghibli movies, particularly Castle in the Sky and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Contrasted to cyberpunk which is portrayed as having a dark, grim aesthetic surrounded by an artificial and domineering built environment which is reflective of alienation and subjugation, solarpunk is bright, with light often used as a motif and in imagery to convey feelings of cleanliness, abundance and equability but, also, alternatively could be used to symbolize something that "subsumes everything beneath it, [an] emblem of tyranny [and] surveillance".

An aerial view of a futuristic, sustainable Berlin - with lots of solar power, trees and greenery, airships, walkable streets, clean water. By Aerroscape & Lino Zeddies.

In literature, solarpunk is a subgenre within science fiction, though it may also include elements of other types of speculative fiction such as fantasy and utopian fiction. It is a cyberpunk derivative, contrasted to cyberpunk for its particular extrapolation of technology's impact on society and progress. Cyberpunk characters are typically those marginalized by rapid technological change or subsumed by technology, while the solarpunk archetype has been described as a "maker-hero" who has witnessed environmental disaster or failures by central authorities to adapt to crises or injustice, often in defense of nature and in ways that allow the story to illustrate optimistic outcomes. Its fictions illustrate feasible worlds that do not ignore the mechanics or ingredients of how it was arrived at.

Previously published novels that fit into this new genre included Ursula K. Le Guin's Always Coming Home (1985) and The Dispossessed (1974), Ernest Callenbach's (1975), Kim Stanley Robinson's Pacific Edge (1990), and Starhawk's The Fifth Sacred Thing (1993), largely for their depictions of contemporary worlds transitioning to more sustainable societies. However, the first explicit entries published into the genre were the short stories in anthologies Solarpunk: Ecological and Fantastic Stories in a Sustainable World (2012) (which was the third part of the publisher's trilogy of short story collections preceded by Vaporpunk and Dieselpunk), Wings of Renewal: A Solarpunk Dragons Anthology (2015), Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation (2017) and Glass and Gardens (2018). In 2018, author Becky Chambers agreed to write two solarpunk novellas for Tor Books and published A Psalm for the Wild-Built (2021) and A Prayer for the Crown-Shy (2022).

In a 2019 Slate article, author Lee Konstantinou stated that solarpunk authors "...proclaim their commitment to "ingenuity, generativity, independence, and community", while going against the "nihilistic tendencies of cyberpunk and the reactionary tendencies of steampunk." He argues that solarpunk is aspirational, as it aims to provide "suggestions for the kind of science fiction or fantasy we ought to be writing". Solarpunk can include elements of mundane science fiction. In a Solarpunk Futures interview with Nina Munteanu regarding her solarpunk novel A Diary in the Age of Water, she said that she added elements of mundane science fiction to add "the gritty realism of the mundane" to the story.[self-published source? ]

In a study of the forty-four most popular American science fiction films, nature was found to be ignored in visions of the future, depicted in cities with monoculture lawns and ornamental gardens. Nature is never portrayed in these films in an innovative or integrated way with future human civilization. At best, nature is simply portrayed as a background motif. The study suggested for artists to "collaborate to imagine how to integrate nature and biodiversity into the depictions of future cities."

is post-apocalyptic, but does include punk elements by having authoritarian medieval European-style governments and a reliance on sustainable technology.

Some, like solarpunk researcher Adam Flynn, worry that solarpunk can risk being greenwashed through aesthetics that give the appearance of sustainability without addressing the root causes of actual environmental issues. Flynn notes how depictions such as "luxury condos with a green roof that price out existing communities and might end up doing more environmental damage" is "fake solarpunk urbanism".

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Solarpunk is a literary and artistic movement that envisions and works toward actualizing a sustainable future interconnected with nature and community. The "solar" represents solar energy as a renewable energy source and an optimistic vision of the future that rejects climate doomerism, while the "punk" refers to the countercultural, post-capitalist, and decolonial enthusiasm for creating such a future.

# data[].attributes.headline
On the political dimensions of Solarpunk

# data[].attributes.subject
On the political dimensions of Solarpunk

# data[].attributes.body
by Andrew Dana Hudson

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Can the new Tumblr-grown aesthetic break through the smog to change the Twenty-First Century conversation?

I. Something Stirs

It is the nature of our era to stymie the exploration of political alternatives. We live in a fog that obscures our possibilities. We are moving very fast, but tumbling without sense of direction or progress. Our political imagination is limited to diagnosing our problems, which we can do endlessly. But talk of real solutions is lost amidst the clamor of global crisis, the drone of social media, and the hushing hiss of neoliberal domination over our institutions of discourse. This disorientation won't last forever, but for now we live in a rotten moment for manifestos.

And yet, the sun does cut through the smog. Something new, bright and promising stirs on Tumblr, a colorful fungus growing away from the gaze of the media or the big web stacks. I struggle to put my finger on just why solarpunk is so compelling, but it is. Perhaps it is the canny optimism, so out of place in a world of crisis. Perhaps because it is because solarpunk is a creature wholly of this decade - native to global network society. I know I'm not the only one to think this: something about solarpunk strikes a chord that stands out amidst the pandemonium.

What is solarpunk? I hesitate to define it, and therefore limit it, for the thousands now exploring its possibilities. Let's tentatively call it a speculative movement: a collaborative effort to imagine and design a world of prosperity, peace, sustainability and beauty, achievable with what we have from where we are. Only in the twenty-teens could a series of social media sketches spark such an ambitious activist agenda - not to mention a literary genre that has rabid fans but has yet to produce any literature.

Whatever solarpunk is, it is deeply political. Politics is the practice of determining the arrangements through which we distribute resources and otherwise relate to each other. In other words, who makes the stuff, who gets the stuff, and how we are expected to treat both people and stuff.

Nearly every piece of solarpunk content I've seen or read suggests that the solarpunk future is a result of nuanced choices about such arrangements, not wild technological advancements. The very name "solarpunk" implies that scientific breakthroughs alone won't fix our environmental, social and economic problems. After all, it posits a world of solar-energy abundance and then argues that we will still have need of punks. No magical tech fixes for us. We'll have to do it the hard way: with politics.

There has been some writing on this already, but, as I craft ideology instead of cosplay, I believe I can best contribute to solarpunk by expanding on some of these notions. In this essay I will explore what I believe to be the political dimensions of solarpunk: the world it finds itself in, the space it occupies, and the possibilities open to it.

Let me say from the outset: the world of solarpunk is this world. The here, the now and the very soon. Burdened with all that that's been slung across our backs. While you might set your solarpunk stories in far off futures or fantasy universes (I won't stop you), great speculative fiction always reflects the fears and aspirations of the time and place it was written. This is what I'm interested in: what solarpunk can tell us about the civilization we have right now, where it's going and what we'll be living through.

I'll also offer up my own ideas about what exactly we should be doing with this strange bloom we've found. Solarpunk feels like a cathartic uncorking of a pent up imagination, and that energy can be channeled in different directions. A genre explores ideas through motifs, variations on a theme. A movement provokes change through iterations of strategy and deed. I love the former, but we need the latter.

My hope is that this essay will inspire a discussion that will help move solarpunk from simple speculation towards meaningful action. This doesn't have to be solarpunk's path. Maybe being a solarpunk will be like another flavor of bohemian. Maybe such a collection of aesthetics can correlate to an ideology, but need not inspire one. The only way to find out is by taking up the question of solarpunk politics.

Area Destroyed by Wildfire Around Water Tower, Texas, 2011, Eric Gay, AP

II. The Rocks We Build On

First, some facts on the ground. Novelist Bruce Sterling, who helped create the original science fictional '-punk' - cyberpunk - says that the future is about " old people in big cities afraid of the sky." This is inexorable. Barring radical cataclysm, the reasonably inevitable trends of urbanization, an aging populace and climate change will set the stage for life in the coming five decades. If you are a human living in the middle of the 21st century, chances are you will be elderly - or surrounded by the elderly. Chances are you will live in a city. Chances are your community, country and supply chains will be plagued by some combination of extreme weather, rising sea levels and droughts.

These are the facts we must build on and around, whether we are making solarpunk fiction, solarpunk fashion, solarpunk infrastructure, or solarpunk political demands. If solarpunk is to back up its optimism with meaningful solutions, or even meaningful notions, we must consciously consider how to respond to each of these trends. Allow me to make some suggestions.

Old people. We only have to look at Japan to see the way an aging population can empty towns and leave both infrastructure and social structure untended. This is an extreme case, exacerbated by Japan's immigration policies, but even in places where the world's young are free move in to fill open jobs and depopulated communities, the elderly will often outnumber the youth. Caring for these elders will require a huge effort, particularly in the developed world. As will attending to their deaths.

Still, longevity is an incredible resource for a society that prizes long-term planning. I believe solarpunk can be an ideology of profound compassion for dealing with the elderly. Its aesthetics speak of a gentleness, and a recognition that color and beauty can bring joy and give life meaning even in the most painful of circumstances. I'm all for solarpunk symphony halls, libraries and city centers, but of all the spaces that have been made drab, brutal and soul-sucking by modern consumer architecture and decor, surely hospitals and nursing homes must top the list. Solarpunk is partly about building infrastructure that can be sustainable into the long term - and that can sustain many generations. What better way to begin than by creating assisted living facilities as stone-sturdy as cathedrals, with sun-streamed stained-glass and ivy-roofed walkways? Places where we ourselves would want to live out our own infirm years, decades later. To borrow a phrase, let us approach geriatrics as if people mattered.

Before we get too sappy, let's remember that living in a society with an aging population also means living under the political power of an elderly majority. The youth have the energy to mobilize, but in the developed world today (and tomorrow) they just don't have the numbers to stage revolutions, win electoral battles or pass radical reforms. Societies of the old are societies of political stagnation. Their politics produce de facto dynasties (Bush vs. Clinton) and decadent paranoiacs (Berlusconi, Putin, et al). The economic agenda of the old is about preserving costly entitlements, hording jobs and wages for workers with seniority, and fighting inflation. The old tend to live off capital assets that decline in value as the economy inflates, while the young today must work to pay off debts that shrink as inflation rises.

As a "punk" ideology, solarpunk must be opposed to the political domination of the old. But we may also have to live with it. We just aren't likely to win the numbers game. Solarpunk's strategy should be to create pockets of progress and imagination within a larger political landscape of decay, deadlock and long emergency. (More on this later.)

In cities. It is a dark truth of environmentalism that wind farms, solar arrays, hydroelectric dams and other triumphs of sustainability require completely engineered landscapes. Building them means ripping up the ground and installing massive amounts of metal and concrete.

Cities are the same. Urban density means transportation efficiency, shared infrastructure, more pooled resources to throw at common problems, and at times a greater sense of community than rural isolation or exurban sprawl. Solarpunk obviously applauds these advantages and puts them to use. But cities are built on great devastation of the natural world. They are structures that consume huge amounts of energy and materials and produce tremendous amounts of waste - even if the suburban alternative is worse per capita. When cities die they leave unwieldy ruins that take yet more resources to break down. Cities are a scar upon the earth.

More to the point, cities don't die. Cities happen where people gather, and people gather in cities. Because of this the cities we have today are largely going to be the cities we have for hundreds of years. They will grow and sprawl where they can. They will retreat from the rising seas where they must. We cannot start anew from scratch (see Naypyidaw below). We must reuse and refurbish the built environment. To paraphrase Sterling, the wreckage of the unsustainable is our frontier. What we build never goes away; often it must be lived in.

Cities also crystalize the social stressors modernity places on us. Solarpunk aesthetics look to loosen that vice with soothing visuals and textures that imply openness and pay homage to the living world. We can even build with materials that are themselves still living and growing with us. That is a beautiful vision, but one we must place in context. While it is useful to imagine comprehensively optimistic futures and fantasies, solar-punk can't be the same as solar-utopia. Punks are an essentially anti-social (or at least counter-cultural) force, rejecting and attacking the norm. In this case that means understanding that the beautiful clothes and buildings solarpunk envisions are likely to be surrounded by something very different - the cracked concrete of decaying infrastructure, the smudged plastic of cheaply made gadgets, the intimidating glass and steel of finance fortresses.

Our canny @Threadbare pointed out to me that too often bright-green design is rooted in the tradition of modernist real-estate development, which sells a vision of places made wholly new. Past mistakes are cleansed. The clean hallways are haunted by render ghosts. It's seductive, and easy to put in a magazine, but anyone who has sat through a planning board meeting knows how unrealistic it is. Solarpunk need not make this same mistake. We know what jugaad is. We know about water hacking, and guerilla gardening, and pressure-washer graffiti. Solarpunk can see the spots where trees have broken through the asphalt for what they are: great places to grow trees.

But on the other side, there is the false seduction of favela ingenuity as well, that charmingly rickety sweet spot where Swiss Family Robinson meets Nat Geo poverty porn. It should go without saying that we should not fetishize slums. Still, it's true that such places use resources more efficiently, that they successfully house millions with a relatively low carbon footprint. But I have two objections. First, a jugaad is a hack by an individual, not a plan by a community. Second, places that don't follow fire codes tend to burn down.

Somewhere between these two approaches solarpunks can pioneer into that 'wreckage of the unsustainable' to remake our cities greener and better. This is a messy task, and we will probably need to have some difficult discussions about just how solarpunk aspires to relate to "the natural world." Can cities ever exist in harmony with nature? Does such a thing as "nature" even exist anymore? Do we need to fundamentally change the way we relate to the natural world? Or can we find sustainability through piecemeal reforms? I don't know the answers, but I do believe that solarpunk shouldn't shy from its urban destiny. Solarpunk is a continuation of the anthropocene.

" Afraid of the sky" should be an easy one, right? Solar power turns climate disaster on its head by making the sky the source of energy abundance, not just superstorms, frozen winters and rains that never come. This is the high concept that drew me to this cause: what more elegant image of our salvation than a solar panel, turning the light that heats our planet beyond comfort into energy, the very commodity for which we set the world on fire? It's a powerful start to an ideology, and one we should rightly smile over. But the reckoning with the sky remains.

I suspect that at some point in the next decade or so, it will truly dawn on us that the increasingly inhospitable climate is of our own making, the result of policy decisions and political failures. That means the sky is no longer morally neutral. A storm on the horizon is not apart from us. A hurricane or tornado is not an act of God. We have no precedent for dealing with such a burden on a global scale. Our climate sins may grow to define us. If we aren't careful, the response of most will be: it's everyone else's fault. And, because blame is always about power, this debate will either turn violent or exacerbate existing inequalities. ( "Those who consume a lot are prepared to slash the consumption of those who already consume less.") That is a recipe for an even more dangerous world.

We wrecked the planet. Some individuals and organizations more than others, of course, but I doubt we will ever bring anyone to justice. The atmosphere, and with it our collective soul, will not heal on its own for a very long time. All we can do is begin repairs, and through that careful labor perhaps find some measure of redemption.

As you can tell, I take these heavy matters very seriously. Solarpunk doesn't need to get quite so dour - but keep it in mind. As you world-build, ponder the whys of wearing fashions of joy as a response to global sorrow. Remember that cathedral-time decisions are minute compared to climate-scale momentum. Understand that solarpunk's "dirt behind the ears" needs to come from planting something that will reclaim a bit of that carbon we burned. Hold your optimism up to the muggy, yellow light and make sure we are willing to work for it. For solarpunk to lead us towards a better future, it must look our climate sins in the eyes, acknowledge their gravity, and start fixing that carbon. There is no going back. Only slowly, steadily clawing our way through, to something better.

Who knows? Climate disasters could provide the impetus to build the radical communities we envision. Droughts may cause strife, but people can also be extraordinarily good to each other when fires and storms hit. Solarpunk needs a foot in the door; let's not be afraid to walk through it, if the wind blows that door open.

III. Rubble, Seed and Fog

Facts dispensed with, let me add a few suspicions and opinions.

I suspect that global capitalism is entering a contradictory period of both fierce domination and slow failure. When I say "capitalism," I am referring here both to the idea that resources and economic activity should be controlled by those who exert ownership over the means of production and other wealth and to the collection of wealthy individuals and families who do most of this owning and controlling. The power of these capitalists will widen and invade nearly every aspect of human life, pushing out most other kinds of power. But at the same time, the ways this system creates prosperity will narrow to a trickle. The sensation will be one of bloated malnourishment.

How many of us already experience this? On the one hand sickened by the decadence of consumption, with an urge to check out of alienating jobs. But on the other wondering why we work harder and longer but seem to earn less and less, struggling to sustain ourselves, unable to buy our way out. I suspect this feeling will pervade the near future, and I don't know how long it will stay that way.

I see solarpunk emerging as a reaction to this sensation of strangling decay. People want to feel the vibrancy of progress, not just the anxious giddiness of capitalist churn. We want to seek out and apply our true talents, not warp our lives around making money for other, richer people. We want our work to mean something more than survival.

In light of their power, overthrowing the mega-rich is a dicey project, and one perhaps left to a different kind of political aesthetic. Instead solarpunk can challenge the capitalist status quo by nurturing alternative economic arrangements at a community and network level. Encourage resiliency that insulates towns and neighborhoods from economic shocks. Forge mutal aid pacts that protect members from fiscal predation. If we can prove that we don't need them or their money, the chokehold of the plutocracy will loosen.

I also suspect the institution of the nation-state is being hollowed out. In part a consequence of globalization and the drive to "free markets," this isn't exactly a collapse. Instead we see government at every level losing its ability to act with authority, maintain order, mobilize emergency resources, build lasting infrastructure, provide public services, and otherwise be effective in the lives of its citizens.

At the same time these governments become less democratic, more corrupt, more bureaucratic and more beholden to special interests. Public services and utilities get sold off to private corporations. Municipalities become highwaymen that exploit the poor and passersby to enrich a small few (Ferguson). Infrastructure crumbles. A nation's states squabble among themselves. Cops become gangs as violence serves where authority fails, and gangs themselves take on new authority in their communities. Through all this, the nation-state doesn't go away - it just fades from relevance, overshadowed by global network society and outcompeted (or captured) by criminals, corporations and other non-state powers.

While this hollowing out is a challenge for civilization, for solarpunk it's an opportunity. Radical political upheaval is difficult and dangerous. "Revolution is not a tea party." For a great many reasons (not least of which is the aging population), I don't think we can count on mass movements taking to the streets to fix our problems. Instead we can build our solarpunk society in the places and moments that the state neglects - particularly in response to the climate disasters and black swan shocks that will punctuate the coming century. If we do this right, Solarpunk could be the philosophy of those who fill in the gaps, the aesthetic of the assemblies that coalesce where government fails to show up.

This isn't exactly a strategy, but a way to think about how solarpunk might emerge. Imagine a tree, growing amidst rubble, rooting around rocks into open spaces, occasionally pushing cracks wider. The tree can't remove the concrete, but the concrete is too poorly maintained to stop it. In the same way I think solarpunk should work to reinvent civilization from within. Through local free association and global networks, solarpunk can create connected pockets of vibrancy and resistance amidst a larger world of decline and oppression.

This is not a new idea. From the autonomous zones of anarchist theory, to the reincarnated American localism of the Resilient Communities and Strong Towns movements, to the mutual aid networks of Occupy Sandy, many have responded to the crises of recent decades by planning and practicing radical forms of organizing that require neither mass revolution nor democratic reform. Solarpunk can use these methods to rally people to build spaces and infrastructure out of place in a failing world. What I want to note here is that while we should think big and abstractly about what kind of ideal society we want to live in, I believe solarpunk will be most effective if it seizes the initiative where the state has dropped it.

You've heard of the hacker slogan "move fast and break things"? Solarpunk should move quietly and plant things. Don't ask permission from a state beholden to oligarchs, and definitely don't expect those oligarchs to do any of this for you. Guerilla gardening is the model, but look further. Guerilla solar panel installation. Guerilla water treatment facility restoration. Guerilla magnificent temple to the human spirit construction. Guerilla carbon sequestration megastructure creation.

Figure out what a community needs to be prosperous, peaceful and sustainable in as long a term as you can wrap your head around, and start building whatever piece is most in reach before the absent state notices. Doing so just might create pockets of more effective, horizontal politics. As the state wanes, these pockets can grow in size and influence, creating a better world even if some government claims the authority of law and holds a monopoly on violence.

Now, political choices got us into this mess, and political choices could get us out. I for one argue for a comprehensive set of reforms that were inspired by the discussions held around the world during Occupy: a global debt jubilee to free both countries and individuals from debts that impoverish and enslave them; a tax on extreme wealth to control inequality and rein in the power of oligarchs; a guaranteed basic income to provide for the poor, the infirm and those more useful as caregivers, artists and thinkers than employees of businesses; a dramatic reduction in the workweek to slow down unsustainable levels of economic expansion and to eliminate the countless "bullshit jobs" that serve no function but to bore those who hold them; the regulation or even abolition of usury (once considered as great a sin as slavery), so that investments in sustainable infrastructure that will pay off in cathedral time are not hampered by interest payments that will eventually exceed principal.

While these are rather radical prescriptions, all are workable, and with careful application could do much to eliminate the worst shocks, predations, and deprivations that define modern global capitalism for most people on the planet. I mention them here not because they need to be solarpunk's solutions, but to give you an idea of what solutions to the failure of a global economic system might looks like. Any movement that means to stake a claim to humanity's future needs to have something to say on this front.

The problem is that while the global economic system is obviously broken, it is still massively profitable to everyone with the direct power to change it. You may have heard the phrase "late-stage capitalism." This is an ironic euphemism, since capitalism has considered itself "late-stage" for nearly all of its history. Any cursory study of tycoons and robber barons and industrialists from the late renaissance through to the mid-20th century shows that most of these individuals believed violent revolution or political reform was just around the corner to ruin their party. As anthropologist David Graeber has pointed out, it is only recently that capitalists and economists have started to think of capitalism as a system that might not have an end.

This free-market fantasy has been both the genesis and the product of "neoliberalism," a movement to deregulate capitalism and apply its principles to other spheres of human life. To indulge in a completely biased definition: neoliberalism sees capitalist economics as akin to physics, with a system of logics beyond the choices of actual humans; and therefore neoliberalism believes it is capitalism that should reform people, not the other way around.

Though it once preached prosperity for all, the mask has fallen away in the brazen aftermath of the financial crisis. Neoliberalism demands a global oligarchy of the mega-rich, and to get there they must destroy the middle class and dismantle the nation-state. But they must also quash opposing ideas and imaginations. Where once capitalist democracy argued its worth against the legitimate failures of the communist projects, now neoliberalism acts as an ideological superpower. Its mission: to make capitalism appear not just unchallenged but unchallengeable, as though it were the only possible system. It does this at the expense of acknowledging reforms that actually make the system sustainable. Any questioning, any poking at the limits, is met with sustained scoffing or resigned shrugs from the cultured classes. I said in the beginning: this is a lousy time for manifestos.

'I don't understand why when we destroy something created by man we call it vandalism, but when we destroy something created by nature we call it progress.' Ed Begley, Jr. Photo: Overpopulation, overconsumption - in pictures - The Guardian

IV. If We Fail

Solarpunk, that's where you come in. When I scan solarpunk posts on Tumblr, I see constant defiance of the neoliberal attempts to stifle political imagination. More than just sketches and photos of vertical farms, I see solarpunk inspiring people to question the arrangements of modern life and, more importantly, propose alternatives. Much of this takes the form of science fictional 'world-building,' which partly explains why I like solarpunk so much: for me, science fiction has always been the best inroad to expanding political consciousness.

But good science fiction must be more than daydreaming. So perhaps, as solarpunk starts to limber up its speculative muscles, we can learn a bit about the dimensions of its political agenda by contrasting solarpunk with some of the fictions and realities that are distinctly not solarpunk. What I mean to ask is: what does failure look like for solarpunk?

It looks like the skies on a hot day over Beijing, and the commuters shuffling into pressure-sealed office towers wearing stylized gas masks. Smogpunk is the first defeat condition of solarpunk: a world where environmental protection fails and pollution and climate change outpace our ability to make sustainable choices. Taken to an extreme, haze blots out the sun making both urban solar power and urban farming an unproductive imitation of what it could be with clear skies. Smogpunk means resigning to terrible environmental conditions, and a perverse lifting up of that resignation as a banner of our place in the world. Smogpunk is what happens if solarpunk does not act fast enough.

Failure looks like Fukushima and Bhopal every week: a world defined by its anthropocenic disasters. Development trundles along, perhaps with a reluctant bent towards cutting carbon; but we never change the inertia of our degenerating relationship with nature, and we never take on big projects for fear of costs or consequences. The human experience of the environment becomes a long series of mishaps, spills, contaminations and outbreaks. Our best efforts go towards rescue, containment and cleanup, but we are so busy reeling from these shocks that we can't be proactive about preventing the development choices and infrastructure decay that caused them in the first place. Or else we respond to climate change with quick fixes that are themselves unsustainable. Call it hazmat-punk. This is what happens if solarpunk ideas are too reactive.

A weirder failure looks like Naypyidaw, the 'purpose-built' capital city of Burma, which features super-sized versions of suburban amenities unavailable in the rest of the country - but has next to no people there to enjoy them. 20-lane highways, empty at rush hour. Giant golf courses and parks, manicured by workers but played on only by a few elite civil servants. In this essay I've advocated for ambitious infrastructure projects, but the wrong project for the wrong reasons will devolve into Xanadu-esque self-parody, no matter how ambitious. A similar fate awaits us if we try to build a solarpunk community from scratch, and fill in the people later, instead of starting from what real people actually want and need. Let's call this failure state sprawlpunk: a reproduction of unsustainable development approaches in the name of radical ideals.

We can see more visions of solarpunk-gone-wrong in the fictions of Paolo Bacigalupi. In The Windup Girl the future is spring-powered and mammoth-driven, with genetic engineering providing organic solutions in a world after plastic and without enough rare earth elements to go around. But in a tragic twist, the energy abundance solarpunk relies on is missing. Instead, with only the muscles of humans and animals to power most tasks, energy scarcity is taken to the calorie level, and with this comes famine and disease. This is solarpunk sans solar.

Another wrong turn can be seen in Bacigalupi's latest book, The Water Knife. In the American southwest permanent drought is making refugees out of everyone who can't afford to buy a place in a verdant, self-sustaining arcology. This world is solarpunk for some. It is what happens if we allow capitalism to dictate the distribution of sustainable technologies.

This brings us to the last failure condition: the Jackpot. The high concept of William Gibson's novel The Peripheral, the Jackpot gives name and shape to the confluence of all the crises looming ahead of us: climate change, mass extinction, antibiotic resistance, economic instability, strife and terrorism, ecological collapse, singularity-style technology run rampant. No one of these explodes into a disaster that ends the world, leaving behind a Mad Max collapseland. But in Gibson's vision together they roil into an emergent event that chips away at the human population until eighty percent are dead in the course of a few decades. Why call it the Jackpot? Because for the twenty percent who remain - those who could afford it - this horror is a bullet dodged, and one that frees them from all the problems of sustaining a luxurious lifestyle in a world filled with ten billion people.

What the survivors of the Jackpot build after might very well correspond to many solarpunk principles. It may be beautiful, and may one day yield a world better than we could ever get to from here. That doesn't matter. I want no part of it. To yearn for the decimation of our people is an abomination. Solarpunk, as a political idea, must do everything to avert such a slow, multi-causal cataclysm. Otherwise it isn't worth caring about or fighting for.

V. The Ways Forward

The roots of the Jackpot are here, and they are already starting to tighten around us. Without some political intervention, the middle class may very well disappear, cleaving the world into two kinds of urban living: the gothic playgrounds of the rich, immaculate and decadent, and the vibrant, dangerous, untamed favelas of everyone else. From there a gentle nudge from the climate crisis, from tech gone amok, or from toxic political movements could easily send the world spiraling into the cascade of failure Gibson describes.

But saying we want to stop the Jackpot isn't the same has having an alternative. So: what does winning look like? Obviously fleshing out the look, feel, structure and technical details of a successful solarpunk future is precisely the project most solarpunks are currently engaged in. So instead, let's discuss some of the routes we might take to that world of sunny abundance.

As I argued in my discussion of cities, solarpunk should be careful not to idealize either the gothic high tech or the favela chic. No matter how many High Line-style parks or vertical farms they build, Manhattan will be useless if it is only filled with the luxury condos of absentee financiers. And favelas may be full of jugaad-innovation and dense with diverse entrepreneurialism, but they feature a fatal flaw: no fire codes. Slums are fascinating from a design perspective right up until they burn down or wash away. In a world of more extreme weather, disasters will strike down favelas before their recycling-centric, low-carbon lifestyles can save the climate.

Instead, I like the idea of focusing on large-scale infrastructure projects that will provide value for communities into the long term. A seed bank; a hyper-dense vertical permaculture farm engineered for carbon fixing; a massive, low-maintenance desalination system; a space elevator. These projects could themselves be the organizing principle around which unique solarpunk communities are organized.

Perhaps they need not even be infrastructure in the traditional, utilitarian sense, but efforts to create lasting human works that can provide keystones of cultural continuity for centuries to come - works I believe capitalism has proven nearly incapable of building, or in some cases even maintaining. Think of the Long Now Foundation's 10,000 year clock, or the deep, dark caves that look for flashes of neutrinos in the perfect dark. Maybe they have no function at all but beauty. Imagine a community that devotes its generations to the creation and care of some enormous work of art: a mountain carved into a wind instrument; a rainforest that records the whole of human history in tree carvings along walking paths; a crop circle big enough to be seen from space.

The problem with investing in long-term projects is that they are particularly susceptible to environmental disruption. If the rains never return to California, people will be forced to leave all sorts of sustainable infrastructure behind. I want to believe that we can make some sensible bets on good projects, but I worry that the coming decades will see millions displaced by climate and strife. Such upheavals might scatter the resources and the will required for megastructure investments.

While we don't want a future where the default mode of civilization is the refugee camp - the death toll in such places is too high - this may be the 21st century we get, and we should prepare now to succeed within that reality. If we are going to create solarpunk cities/societies from scratch, refugee camps may very well be the foundation we build on. This presents some interesting design challenges, as well as a few opportunities.

First, while many such camps linger for years, they often feel temporary. This is partly because fast-deploy structures are weak to storms and other environmental threats, and partly because migrant settlements are always on thin ice politically. I see great promise in designing our solutions to be modular and easy to both deploy and pack up. Living roofs are nice, but what if we focused on garden boxes for truck beds? Solar stained glass sounds awesome, but might we get more use out of photovoltaic tent canvas?

Just as important as the materials and the tech, refugee camps will need mindful, optimistic politics. The denizens of these places may be strangers to each other, thrown together without any clear lines of authority or organizing structures. This makes them fertile grounds for radical, horizontal, intentional community arrangements. Solarpunk could be such an organizing principle, and in doing so turn what could be a diaspora of strife into a network of peace and progress.

That, I believe, is the biggest difference solarpunk can make, for the real danger of our current path comes not from rising seas or the economic exploitation, but from violence and chaos, nations squabbling over scarce resources, countries and communities fracturing, xenophobia devolving into ethnic cleansing. Whether we cover every roof with solar panels or fill every skyscraper with vertical farms, we should always have our eyes on the more vital goal of peace.

Whether solarpunk ends up building megastructures or organizing climate migrants, the solarpunks of today can start, as many of you are doing, by connecting with each other to begin the fight for the optimistic, verdant, sun-powered world we are envisioning. I see solarpunk as the seeds of an open source movement, the primordial form of global network society.

This means anyone can join by claiming allegiance, anyone can contribute by offering up a contribution. Barriers to entry are low or non-existent, because such movements are based around controversial principles instead of acquiring specific benefits for participants. Leaders, where they exist, are spokespeople and media liaisons, not hierarchs or dictators. The hacker collective Anonymous is perhaps the best example: their very name is designed to allow anyone to take up their mantle. Nearly all the most successful and influential popular movements of the twenty-first century are of this type, from Tahir Square to Occupy, from ISIS to #BlackLivesMatter.

I'd like to close by suggesting some principles of composition and norms of action for the solarpunk movement. Many of these I already see flourishing! It is the act of taking them up collectively that would make us a movement.

First is a tautology: the product of the community is the movement, and the product of the movement is the community. Solarpunk's interest areas are such that meaningful change can only come from connections amongst individuals strong and deep enough to allow them to build real things that make their lives better - not just getting enough people to trend on Twitter. While political demands are vital, solarpunk is really about changing the ways people arrange themselves, not how we are arranged by the state.

Second, without excluding anyone, push the boundaries of what it means to be an open source movement with a norm of "teach one, try one." Only by taking on projects outside our individual wheelhouse will we keep from being niched. We must be both fictional and practical, aesthetic and political, of design and of action.

A lot can change very quickly when artists become activists and activists become planners. Encourage diverse participation from solarpunks, contributing what they can and learning about what they can't. This will also stop people from dipping in for a few ideas and then dipping out without adding their voice. Or worse, lobbing their suggestions in as they drive by, without stopping to listen to others. Think of this as the solarpunk equivalent of "if this is your first night at fight club, you have to fight."

I've seen many people describe solarpunk as optimistic. My last suggestion is this: don't be optimistic, be hopeful. As Vaclav Havel explained: "Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out." Havel, an artist turned activist turned statesman who led his nation out of a time of crisis, in many ways embodies the transformational power of ideas and aesthetics - and thus the potential of a movement like solarpunk to do real good in the world.

This essay has been long, and it has discussed many troubling situations and possibilities. I wrote these things because I think it is important for any cohesive body of political thought to contrast what it wants with what it opposes: for transparency and privacy, against surveillance and deception; for conservation and abundance, against hoarding and exploitation; for neighborhoods and collaboratives, against gangs and police.

I also wrote this because I believe the enormity of our problems doesn't have to paralyze us. Quite the opposite: seeing the world as it is is vital if you are going to figure out how it could be. Now is the moment to be galvanized, to know that we are on to something, and to make acting on these ideas a real part of our lives.

As I write this California smolders with wildfires. A harsh wind runs across the world, hot and dry. But it is at our backs, and if we let it, that wind will fill our sails.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
On the Political Dimensions of Solarpunk

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Can the new Tumblr-grown aesthetic break through the smog to change the Twenty-First Century conversation? It is the nature of our era to stymie the exploration of political alternatives. We live in a fog that obscures our possibilities. We are moving very fast, but tumbling without sense of direction or progress.

# data[].attributes.body
From cyberpunk to Solarpunk

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
KEISHA HOWARD: Imagining a SolarPunk Future

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
As we imagine what life will be like in the future, often times, our media and entertainment emphasize a world of "Cyberpunk" an idea and aesthetic that focuses on advanced technological and scientific achievements, such as artificial intelligence and cybernetics but simultaneously is often dystopic and depicts a breakdown of society.

# data[].attributes.headline
Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation

# data[].attributes.subject
Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Wählen Sie Ihre Cookie-Einstellungen

Wir verwenden Cookies und ähnliche Tools, die erforderlich sind, um Ihnen Einkäufe zu ermöglichen, Ihr Einkaufserlebnis zu verbessern und unsere Dienste bereitzustellen. Dies wird auch in unseren Cookie-Bestimmungen beschrieben. Wir verwenden diese Cookies auch, um nachzuvollziehen, wie Kunden unsere Dienste nutzen (z. B. durch Messung der Websiteaufrufe), damit wir Verbesserungen vornehmen können.

Wenn Sie damit einverstanden sind, verwenden wir auch Cookies, um Ihr Einkaufserlebnis in den Stores zu ergänzen. Dies wird auch in unseren Cookie-Bestimmungen beschrieben. Dies beinhaltet die Verwendung von Cookies von Erst- und Drittanbietern, die Standardgeräteinformationen wie eine eindeutige Kennzeichnung speichern oder darauf zugreifen. Drittanbieter verwenden Cookies, um personalisierte Anzeigen zu schalten, deren Wirksamkeit zu messen, Erkenntnisse über Zielgruppen zu generieren und Produkte zu entwickeln und zu verbessern. Klicken Sie auf „Cookies anpassen", um diese Cookies abzulehnen, detailliertere Einstellungen vorzunehmen oder mehr zu erfahren. Sie können Ihre Auswahl jederzeit ändern, indem Sie die Cookie-Einstellungen, wie in den Cookie-Bestimmungen beschrieben, aufrufen. Um mehr darüber zu erfahren, wie und zu welchen Zwecken Amazon personenbezogene Daten (z. B. den Bestellverlauf im Amazon Store) verwendet, lesen Sie bitte unsere Datenschutzerklärung.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation is the first anthology to broadly collect solarpunk short fiction, artwork, and poetry. A new genre for the 21st Century, solarpunk is a revolution against despair. Focusing on solutions to environmental disasters, solarpunk envisions a future of...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Wählen Sie Ihre Cookie-Einstellungen

Wir verwenden Cookies und ähnliche Tools, die erforderlich sind, um Ihnen Einkäufe zu ermöglichen, Ihr Einkaufserlebnis zu verbessern und unsere Dienste bereitzustellen. Dies wird auch in unseren Cookie-Bestimmungen beschrieben. Wir verwenden diese Cookies auch, um nachzuvollziehen, wie Kunden unsere Dienste nutzen (z. B. durch Messung der Websiteaufrufe), damit wir Verbesserungen vornehmen können.

Wenn Sie damit einverstanden sind, verwenden wir auch Cookies, um Ihr Einkaufserlebnis in den Stores zu ergänzen. Dies wird auch in unseren Cookie-Bestimmungen beschrieben. Dies beinhaltet die Verwendung von Cookies von Erst- und Drittanbietern, die Standardgeräteinformationen wie eine eindeutige Kennzeichnung speichern oder darauf zugreifen. Drittanbieter verwenden Cookies, um personalisierte Anzeigen zu schalten, deren Wirksamkeit zu messen, Erkenntnisse über Zielgruppen zu generieren und Produkte zu entwickeln und zu verbessern. Klicken Sie auf „Cookies anpassen", um diese Cookies abzulehnen, detailliertere Einstellungen vorzunehmen oder mehr zu erfahren. Sie können Ihre Auswahl jederzeit ändern, indem Sie die Cookie-Einstellungen, wie in den Cookie-Bestimmungen beschrieben, aufrufen. Um mehr darüber zu erfahren, wie und zu welchen Zwecken Amazon personenbezogene Daten (z. B. den Bestellverlauf im Amazon Store) verwendet, lesen Sie bitte unsere Datenschutzerklärung.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Solarpunk is a type of optimistic science fiction that imagines a future founded on renewable energies. The seventeen stories in this volume are not dull utopias-they grapple with real issues such as the future and ethics of our food sources, the connection between technology and nature, and the ...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Winters : Ulibarri, Sarena, Hudson, Andrew Dana, Nikel, Wendy: Amazon.de: Books

# data[].attributes.headline
Solarpunk: Ecological and Fantastical Stories in a Sustainable World

# data[].attributes.subject
Solarpunk: Ecological and Fantastical Stories in a Sustainable World

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Solarpunk: Ecological and Fantastical Stories in a Sustainable World

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Solarpunk: Ecological and Fantastical Stories in a Sustainable World : Lodi-Ribeiro, Gerson, Spindler, Roberta, Orsi, Carlos, Marcal, Telmo, Martins, Romeu, Costa, Antonio Luiz M. C., Cantareira, Gabriel, Dutra, Daniel I., Ulibarri, Sarena, Fernandes, Fabio: Amazon.de: Books

# data[].attributes.headline
Multispecies Cities: Solarpunk Urban Futures

# data[].attributes.subject
Multispecies Cities: Solarpunk Urban Futures

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Wählen Sie Ihre Cookie-Einstellungen

Wir verwenden Cookies und ähnliche Tools, die erforderlich sind, um Ihnen Einkäufe zu ermöglichen, Ihr Einkaufserlebnis zu verbessern und unsere Dienste bereitzustellen. Dies wird auch in unseren Cookie-Bestimmungen beschrieben. Wir verwenden diese Cookies auch, um nachzuvollziehen, wie Kunden unsere Dienste nutzen (z. B. durch Messung der Websiteaufrufe), damit wir Verbesserungen vornehmen können.

Wenn Sie damit einverstanden sind, verwenden wir auch Cookies, um Ihr Einkaufserlebnis in den Stores zu ergänzen. Dies wird auch in unseren Cookie-Bestimmungen beschrieben. Dies beinhaltet die Verwendung von Cookies von Erst- und Drittanbietern, die Standardgeräteinformationen wie eine eindeutige Kennzeichnung speichern oder darauf zugreifen. Drittanbieter verwenden Cookies, um personalisierte Anzeigen zu schalten, deren Wirksamkeit zu messen, Erkenntnisse über Zielgruppen zu generieren und Produkte zu entwickeln und zu verbessern. Klicken Sie auf „Cookies anpassen", um diese Cookies abzulehnen, detailliertere Einstellungen vorzunehmen oder mehr zu erfahren. Sie können Ihre Auswahl jederzeit ändern, indem Sie die Cookie-Einstellungen, wie in den Cookie-Bestimmungen beschrieben, aufrufen. Um mehr darüber zu erfahren, wie und zu welchen Zwecken Amazon personenbezogene Daten (z. B. den Bestellverlauf im Amazon Store) verwendet, lesen Sie bitte unsere Datenschutzerklärung.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Multispecies Cities: Solarpunk Urban Futures

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Multispecies Cities: Solarpunk Urban Futures | Chabria, Priya Sarukkai, Fujii, Taiyo, Taneja, Shweta | ISBN: 9781734054521 | Kostenloser Versand für alle Bücher mit Versand und Verkauf duch Amazon.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Wählen Sie Ihre Cookie-Einstellungen

Wir verwenden Cookies und ähnliche Tools, die erforderlich sind, um Ihnen Einkäufe zu ermöglichen, Ihr Einkaufserlebnis zu verbessern und unsere Dienste bereitzustellen. Dies wird auch in unseren Cookie-Bestimmungen beschrieben. Wir verwenden diese Cookies auch, um nachzuvollziehen, wie Kunden unsere Dienste nutzen (z. B. durch Messung der Websiteaufrufe), damit wir Verbesserungen vornehmen können.

Wenn Sie damit einverstanden sind, verwenden wir auch Cookies, um Ihr Einkaufserlebnis in den Stores zu ergänzen. Dies wird auch in unseren Cookie-Bestimmungen beschrieben. Dies beinhaltet die Verwendung von Cookies von Erst- und Drittanbietern, die Standardgeräteinformationen wie eine eindeutige Kennzeichnung speichern oder darauf zugreifen. Drittanbieter verwenden Cookies, um personalisierte Anzeigen zu schalten, deren Wirksamkeit zu messen, Erkenntnisse über Zielgruppen zu generieren und Produkte zu entwickeln und zu verbessern. Klicken Sie auf „Cookies anpassen", um diese Cookies abzulehnen, detailliertere Einstellungen vorzunehmen oder mehr zu erfahren. Sie können Ihre Auswahl jederzeit ändern, indem Sie die Cookie-Einstellungen, wie in den Cookie-Bestimmungen beschrieben, aufrufen. Um mehr darüber zu erfahren, wie und zu welchen Zwecken Amazon personenbezogene Daten (z. B. den Bestellverlauf im Amazon Store) verwendet, lesen Sie bitte unsere Datenschutzerklärung.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Wings of Renewal: A Solarpunk Dragon Anthology

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The future is vibrant, hopeful, and filled with dragons. In WINGS OF RENEWAL, nineteen authors explore the exciting new subgenre of solarpunk through the lens of these majestic creatures. Whether they irrigate dry terrain or serve as spaceships, are mythic beasts come to life or biomechanical cre...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Wählen Sie Ihre Cookie-Einstellungen

Wir verwenden Cookies und ähnliche Tools, die erforderlich sind, um Ihnen Einkäufe zu ermöglichen, Ihr Einkaufserlebnis zu verbessern und unsere Dienste bereitzustellen. Dies wird auch in unseren Cookie-Bestimmungen beschrieben. Wir verwenden diese Cookies auch, um nachzuvollziehen, wie Kunden unsere Dienste nutzen (z. B. durch Messung der Websiteaufrufe), damit wir Verbesserungen vornehmen können.

Wenn Sie damit einverstanden sind, verwenden wir auch Cookies, um Ihr Einkaufserlebnis in den Stores zu ergänzen. Dies wird auch in unseren Cookie-Bestimmungen beschrieben. Dies beinhaltet die Verwendung von Cookies von Erst- und Drittanbietern, die Standardgeräteinformationen wie eine eindeutige Kennzeichnung speichern oder darauf zugreifen. Drittanbieter verwenden Cookies, um personalisierte Anzeigen zu schalten, deren Wirksamkeit zu messen, Erkenntnisse über Zielgruppen zu generieren und Produkte zu entwickeln und zu verbessern. Klicken Sie auf „Cookies anpassen", um diese Cookies abzulehnen, detailliertere Einstellungen vorzunehmen oder mehr zu erfahren. Sie können Ihre Auswahl jederzeit ändern, indem Sie die Cookie-Einstellungen, wie in den Cookie-Bestimmungen beschrieben, aufrufen. Um mehr darüber zu erfahren, wie und zu welchen Zwecken Amazon personenbezogene Daten (z. B. den Bestellverlauf im Amazon Store) verwendet, lesen Sie bitte unsere Datenschutzerklärung.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Long Way From Home (Solarpunk - Positive Futurism)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
"Thoughts warp physical reality in the exact same way that gravity warps space-time. In other words, consciousness affects reality," Quilqulen said. The expression on my face must have been amazement, shock, wonder and awe, all combined into one. I had no idea how to respond, so I opted for humor...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Wählen Sie Ihre Cookie-Einstellungen

Wir verwenden Cookies und ähnliche Tools, die erforderlich sind, um Ihnen Einkäufe zu ermöglichen, Ihr Einkaufserlebnis zu verbessern und unsere Dienste bereitzustellen. Dies wird auch in unseren Cookie-Bestimmungen beschrieben. Wir verwenden diese Cookies auch, um nachzuvollziehen, wie Kunden unsere Dienste nutzen (z. B. durch Messung der Websiteaufrufe), damit wir Verbesserungen vornehmen können.

Wenn Sie damit einverstanden sind, verwenden wir auch Cookies, um Ihr Einkaufserlebnis in den Stores zu ergänzen. Dies wird auch in unseren Cookie-Bestimmungen beschrieben. Dies beinhaltet die Verwendung von Cookies von Erst- und Drittanbietern, die Standardgeräteinformationen wie eine eindeutige Kennzeichnung speichern oder darauf zugreifen. Drittanbieter verwenden Cookies, um personalisierte Anzeigen zu schalten, deren Wirksamkeit zu messen, Erkenntnisse über Zielgruppen zu generieren und Produkte zu entwickeln und zu verbessern. Klicken Sie auf „Cookies anpassen", um diese Cookies abzulehnen, detailliertere Einstellungen vorzunehmen oder mehr zu erfahren. Sie können Ihre Auswahl jederzeit ändern, indem Sie die Cookie-Einstellungen, wie in den Cookie-Bestimmungen beschrieben, aufrufen. Um mehr darüber zu erfahren, wie und zu welchen Zwecken Amazon personenbezogene Daten (z. B. den Bestellverlauf im Amazon Store) verwendet, lesen Sie bitte unsere Datenschutzerklärung.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Solarpunk (Boundary Shock Quarterly, Band 13)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Solarpunk (Boundary Shock Quarterly, Band 13) | Ward, Blaze, Knotted Road Press, Owen, M. E., Buchman, M. L., Ewy, Joel, Jordan, Linda, Foster, Voss | ISBN: 9798589511963 | Kostenloser Versand für alle Bücher mit Versand und Verkauf duch Amazon.

# data[].attributes.headline
Fix the World: twelve sci-fi writers save the future

# data[].attributes.subject
Fix the World: twelve sci-fi writers save the future

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Fix the World: twelve sci-fi writers save the future (Writers Save the World)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
We're a world beset by crises. Climate change, income inequality, racism, pandemics, an almost unmanageable tangle of issues. Sometimes it's hard to look ahead and see a hopeful future.We asked sci-fi writers to send us stories about ways to fix what's wrong with the world. From the sixty-five st...

# data[].attributes.headline
Fiction x Science: Die Vision einer hoffnungsvollen Zukunft (Deutsch) 

# data[].attributes.subject
Fiction x Science: Die Vision einer hoffnungsvollen Zukunft (Deutsch) 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Wählen Sie Ihre Cookie-Einstellungen

Wir verwenden Cookies und ähnliche Tools, die erforderlich sind, um Ihnen Einkäufe zu ermöglichen, Ihr Einkaufserlebnis zu verbessern und unsere Dienste bereitzustellen. Dies wird auch in unseren Cookie-Bestimmungen beschrieben. Wir verwenden diese Cookies auch, um nachzuvollziehen, wie Kunden unsere Dienste nutzen (z. B. durch Messung der Websiteaufrufe), damit wir Verbesserungen vornehmen können.

Wenn Sie damit einverstanden sind, verwenden wir auch Cookies, um Ihr Einkaufserlebnis in den Stores zu ergänzen. Dies wird auch in unseren Cookie-Bestimmungen beschrieben. Dies beinhaltet die Verwendung von Cookies von Erst- und Drittanbietern, die Standardgeräteinformationen wie eine eindeutige Kennzeichnung speichern oder darauf zugreifen. Drittanbieter verwenden Cookies, um personalisierte Anzeigen zu schalten, deren Wirksamkeit zu messen, Erkenntnisse über Zielgruppen zu generieren und Produkte zu entwickeln und zu verbessern. Klicken Sie auf „Cookies anpassen", um diese Cookies abzulehnen, detailliertere Einstellungen vorzunehmen oder mehr zu erfahren. Sie können Ihre Auswahl jederzeit ändern, indem Sie die Cookie-Einstellungen, wie in den Cookie-Bestimmungen beschrieben, aufrufen. Um mehr darüber zu erfahren, wie und zu welchen Zwecken Amazon personenbezogene Daten (z. B. den Bestellverlauf im Amazon Store) verwendet, lesen Sie bitte unsere Datenschutzerklärung.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Fiction x Science: Die Vision einer hoffnungsvollen Zukunft

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Fiction x Science: Die Vision einer hoffnungsvollen Zukunft | Reymond, Melody Aimée, Kaufmann, Michael A., Portmann, Edy | ISBN: 9783907589021 | Kostenloser Versand für alle Bücher mit Versand und Verkauf duch Amazon.

# data[].attributes.body
Essays, stories, pictures...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Many people have written about Solarpunk during the last 10+ years. Mostly after 2014.

The genre is not yet clearly defined.

This Solarpunk Manifesto is a creative re-adaptation of ideas about solarpunk written by many people. These ideas can be mainly found in Solarpunk: a reference guide which can be found here and in Solarpunk: Notes towards a Manifesto by Adam Flynn, which can be found here.

A Solarpunk Manifesto

Solarpunk is a movement in speculative fiction, art, fashion, and activism that seeks to answer and embody the question "what does a sustainable civilization look like, and how can we get there?"

The aesthetics of solarpunk merge the practical with the beautiful, the well-designed with the green and lush, the bright and colorful with the earthy and solid.

Solarpunk can be utopian, just optimistic, or concerned with the struggles en route to a better world ,  but never dystopian. As our world roils with calamity, we need solutions, not only warnings.

Solutions to thrive without fossil fuels, to equitably manage real scarcity and share in abundance instead of supporting false scarcity and false abundance, to be kinder to each other and to the planet we share.

Solarpunk is at once a vision of the future, a thoughtful provocation, a way of living and a set of achievable proposals to get there.

1. We are solarpunks because optimism has been taken away from us and we are trying to take it back.

2. We are solarpunks because the only other options are denial or despair.

3. At its core, Solarpunk is a vision of a future that embodies the best of what humanity can achieve: a post-scarcity, post-hierarchy, post-capitalistic world where humanity sees itself as part of nature and clean energy replaces fossil fuels.

4. The "punk" in Solarpunk is about rebellion, counterculture, post-capitalism, decolonialism and enthusiasm. It is about going in a different direction than the mainstream, which is increasingly going in a scary direction.

5. Solarpunk is a movement as much as it is a genre: it is not just about the stories, it is also about how we can get there.

6. Solarpunk embraces a diversity of tactics: there is no single right way to do solarpunk. Instead, diverse communities from around the world adopt the name and the ideas, and build little nests of self-sustaining revolution.

7. Solarpunk provides a valuable new perspective, a paradigm and a vocabulary through which to describe one possible future. Instead of embracing retrofuturism, solarpunk looks completely to the future. Not an alternative future, but a possible future.

8. Our futurism is not nihilistic like cyberpunk and it avoids steampunk's potentially quasi-reactionary tendencies: it is about ingenuity, generativity, independence, and community.

9. Solarpunk emphasizes environmental sustainability and social justice.

10. Solarpunk is about finding ways to make life more wonderful for us right now, and also for the generations that follow us.

11. Our future must involve repurposing and creating new things from what we already have. Imagine "smart cities" being junked in favor of smart citizenry.

12. Solarpunk recognizes the historical influence politics and science fiction have had on each other.

13. Solarpunk recognizes science fiction as not just entertainment but as a form of activism.

14. Solarpunk wants to counter the scenarios of a dying earth, an insuperable gap between rich and poor, and a society controlled by corporations. Not in hundreds of years, but within reach.

15. Solarpunk is about youth maker culture, local solutions, local energy grids, ways of creating autonomous functioning systems. It is about loving the world.

16. Solarpunk culture includes all cultures, religions, abilities, sexes, genders and sexual identities.

17. Solarpunk is the idea of humanity achieving a social evolution that embraces not just mere tolerance, but a more expansive compassion and acceptance.

18. The visual aesthetics of Solarpunk are open and evolving. As it stands, it is a mash-up of the following:

1. 1800s age-of-sail/frontier living (but with more bicycles)

2. Creative reuse of existing infrastructure (sometimes post-apocalyptic, sometimes present-weird)

3. Appropriate technology

4. Art Nouveau

5. Hayao Miyazaki

6. Jugaad-style innovation from the non-Western world

7. High-tech backends with simple, elegant outputs

19. Solarpunk is set in a future built according to principles of New Urbanism or New Pedestrianism and environmental sustainability.

20. Solarpunk envisions a built environment creatively adapted for solar gain, amongst other things, using different technologies. The objective is to promote self sufficiency and living within natural limits.

21. In Solarpunk we've pulled back just in time to stop the slow destruction of our planet. We've learned to use science wisely, for the betterment of our life conditions as part of our planet. We're no longer overlords. We're caretakers. We're gardeners.

22. Solarpunk:

1. is diverse

2. has room for spirituality and science to coexist

3. is beautiful

4. can happen. Now

The Solarpunk Community

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
A Solarpunk Manifesto (English) – ReDes – Regenerative Design

# data[].attributes.body
Read and find out what is punky in solarpunk.

# data[].attributes.body
General information on solarpunk.

# data[].attributes.body
Women with bicycles will save the world

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.authors[].name
English edition by Elly Blue (Herausgeber)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Biketopia: Feminist Bicycle Science Fiction Stories In Extreme Futures (Bikes in Space)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Biketopia: Feminist Bicycle Science Fiction Stories In Extreme Futures (Bikes in Space) : Blue, Elly: Amazon.de: Books

# data[].attributes.body
Watch the video and find out to what extent you already might be a solarpunk!

# data[].attributes.body
...and why it is high time to start thinking positively.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
re:publica 2018 – SolarPunk and going Post-Post-Apocalyptic

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Find out about our involvement in the concept art and visual development of projects including Halo Infinite, Mortal Kombat 11 and PUBG.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Breathing Effect - Solarpunk Playlist - full album (2020)

# data[].attributes.headline
Pedal Zombies: Thirteen Feminist Bicycle Science Fiction Stories: Bikes in Space Volume 3

# data[].attributes.subject
Pedal Zombies: Thirteen Feminist Bicycle Science Fiction Stories: Bikes in Space Volume 3

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Wählen Sie Ihre Cookie-Einstellungen

Wir verwenden Cookies und ähnliche Tools, die erforderlich sind, um Ihnen Einkäufe zu ermöglichen, Ihr Einkaufserlebnis zu verbessern und unsere Dienste bereitzustellen. Dies wird auch in unseren Cookie-Bestimmungen beschrieben. Wir verwenden diese Cookies auch, um nachzuvollziehen, wie Kunden unsere Dienste nutzen (z. B. durch Messung der Websiteaufrufe), damit wir Verbesserungen vornehmen können.

Wenn Sie damit einverstanden sind, verwenden wir auch Cookies, um Ihr Einkaufserlebnis in den Stores zu ergänzen. Dies wird auch in unseren Cookie-Bestimmungen beschrieben. Dies beinhaltet die Verwendung von Cookies von Erst- und Drittanbietern, die Standardgeräteinformationen wie eine eindeutige Kennzeichnung speichern oder darauf zugreifen. Drittanbieter verwenden Cookies, um personalisierte Anzeigen zu schalten, deren Wirksamkeit zu messen, Erkenntnisse über Zielgruppen zu generieren und Produkte zu entwickeln und zu verbessern. Klicken Sie auf „Cookies anpassen", um diese Cookies abzulehnen, detailliertere Einstellungen vorzunehmen oder mehr zu erfahren. Sie können Ihre Auswahl jederzeit ändern, indem Sie die Cookie-Einstellungen, wie in den Cookie-Bestimmungen beschrieben, aufrufen. Um mehr darüber zu erfahren, wie und zu welchen Zwecken Amazon personenbezogene Daten (z. B. den Bestellverlauf im Amazon Store) verwendet, lesen Sie bitte unsere Datenschutzerklärung.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Pedal Zombies: Thirteen Feminist Bicycle Science Fiction Stories (Bikes in Space, Band 3)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The zombie apocalypse will be pedal-powered! In the not-so-distant future, when gasoline is no longer available, humans turn to two-wheeled vehicles to transport goods, seek glory, and defend their remaining communities. In another version of the future, those with the zombie virus are able to es...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Sieudiver - Photosynthesis | Solarpunk - Melodic

# data[].attributes.body
Blackpanther (2018), directed by Ryan Coogler

The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind (2019), directed by Chiwetel Ejiofor

Okja (2017), directed by Bong Joon Ho

FernGully: The Last Rainforest (1992), directed by Bill Kroyer

WALL-E (2008), directed by Andrew Stanton

Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012), directed by Benh Zeitlin

Documentaries:

2040 (2019), by Damon Gameau

Tomorrow (2016), by  Cyril Dion and Mélanie Laurent

A Simple Way (2016), Jordan Osmond and Samuel Alexander

Netflix sereis “Down to Earth“ (2020)

Cartoons / animes:
Princess Mononoke (1997), directed by Hayao Miyazaki

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984), directed by Hayao Mizazaki

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Various Artists : Solarpunk : A Possible Future

# data[].attributes.headline
The Butterfly (Russian Animation) - 1972

# data[].attributes.subject
The Butterfly (Russian Animation) - 1972

# data[].attributes.headline
"Contact" an award winning 1978 Soviet animated short film

# data[].attributes.subject
"Contact" an award winning 1978 Soviet animated short film

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Contact or Kontakt Russian  Контакт is an award winning 1978 Soviet animated short film

# data[].attributes.body
Wikipedia

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
New-age is a genre of music intended to create artistic inspiration, relaxation, and optimism. It is used by listeners for yoga, massage, meditation, and reading as a method of stress management to bring about a state of ecstasy rather than trance, or to create a peaceful atmosphere in homes or other environments. It is sometimes associated with environmentalism and New Age spirituality; however, most of its artists have nothing to do with "New Age spirituality", and some even reject the term.

New-age music includes both acoustic forms, featuring instruments such as flutes, piano, acoustic guitar and a wide variety of non-Western acoustic instruments, and electronic forms, frequently relying on sustained synth pads or long sequencer-based runs. Vocal arrangements were initially rare in the genre, but as it has evolved, vocals have become more common, especially those featuring Native American-, Sanskrit-, or Tibetan-influenced chants, or lyrics based on mythology such as Celtic legends.

There is no exact definition of new-age music. An article in magazine in 1987 commented that "New Age music may be the most startling successful non-defined music ever to hit the public consciousness". Many consider it to be an umbrella term for marketing rather than a musical category, and to be part of a complex cultural trend.

New-age music was influenced by a wide range of artists from a variety of genres. Tony Scott's Music for Zen Meditation (1964) is considered to be the first new-age recording. Paul Horn (beginning with 1968's Inside) was one of the important predecessors. Irv Teibel's Environments series (1969-79) featured natural soundscapes, tintinnabulation, and " Om" chants and were some of the first publicly available psychoacoustic recordings. Steven Halpern's 1975 Spectrum Suite was a key work that began the new-age music movement.

New-age music is defined more by the use and effect or feeling it produces rather than the instruments and genre used in its creation; it may be acoustic, electronic, or a mixture of both. New-age artists range from solo or ensemble performances using classical-music instruments ranging from the piano, acoustic guitar, flute, or harp to electronic musical instruments, or from Eastern instruments such as the sitar, tabla and tamboura. There is also a significant overlap of sectors of new-age music with ambient, classical, jazz, electronica, world, chillout, pop, and space music, among others.

The two definitions typically associated with the new-age genre are:

New-age music with an ambient sound that has the explicit purpose of aiding meditation and relaxation, or aiding and enabling various alternative spiritual practices, such as alternative healing, yoga practice, guided meditation, or chakra auditing. The proponents of this definition are almost always musicians who create their music expressly for these purposes. To be useful for meditation, music must have repetitive dynamic and texture without sudden loud chords or improvisation, which could disturb the meditator. It is minimalist in conception, and musicians in the genre are mostly instrumentalists rather than vocalists. Subliminal messages are also used in new-age music, and the use of instruments along with sounds of animals (like whales, wolves and eagles) and nature (waterfalls, ocean waves, rain) is also popular. Flautist Dean Evenson was one of the first musicians to combine peaceful music with the sounds of nature, launching a genre that became popular for massage and yoga. Other prominent artists who create new-age music expressly for healing or meditation include Irv Teibel, Paul Horn, Deuter, Steven Halpern, Paul Winter, Lawrence Ball, Karunesh, Krishna Das, Deva Premal, Bhagavan Das, and Snatam Kaur.

Music found in the new-age sections of record stores. This is largely a definition of practicality, given the breadth of music classified as "new age" by retailers that are often less interested in finely grained distinctions between musical styles than are fans of those styles. Music that falls into this definition usually cannot be easily classified into other, more common definitions, but can contain almost any kind of music; it is more of a marketing slogan rather than musical category.

Debate and criticism

Kitaro, a prominent new-age music artist from Japan

Stephen Hill, founder of Hearts of Space, considers that "many of the artists are very sincerely and fully committed to New Age ideas and ways of life". Some composers like Kitarō consider their music to be part of their spiritual growth, as well as expressing values and shaping the culture. Douglas Groothuis stated that rejection of all music labeled as "new age" would be to fall prey to a taboo mentality, as most of the music belongs to the "progressive" side of new-age music, where composers necessarily do not always have a New Age worldview.

However, it is often noted that "new-age music" is a mere popular designation that successfully sells records. J. Gordon Melton argued that it does not refer to a specific genre of music, but to music used for therapeutic or other new-age purposes. Kay Gardner considered the label "new age" an inauthentic commercial intention of so-called new-age music, saying "a lot of new age music is schlock", and how due to record sales, everyone with a home studio put in sounds of crickets, oceans or rivers as a guarantee of sales. What started as ambient mood music related with new-age activity became a term for a musical conglomeration of jazz, folk, rock, ethnic, classical, and electronica, among other styles, with the former, markedly different musical and theoretical movement.

Under the umbrella term, some consider Mike Oldfield's 1973 progressive rock album Tubular Bells one of the first albums to be referred to under the genre description of new-age. Others consider music by Greek composer Vangelis and general modern jazz-rock fusion as exemplifing the progressive side of new-age music. Other artists included are Jean-Michel Jarre (even though his electronic excursions predate the term), Andreas Vollenweider, George Winston, Mark Isham, Michael Hedges, Shadowfax, Mannheim Steamroller, Kitarō, Yanni, Enya, Clannad, Era and Enigma.

However, many musicians and composers dismiss the labeling of their music as "new age". When the Grammy Award for Best New Age Album was first created in 1987, its first winner, Andreas Vollenweider, said, "I don't have any intention to label my music... It's ridiculous to give a name to anything that is timeless". Peter Bryant, music director of WHYY-FM (90.9) and host of a new-age program, noted that "I don't care for the term... New-age has a negative connotation... In the circles I come in contact with, people working in music, 'new-age' is almost an insult", that it refers to "very vapid, dreamy kinds of dull music... with no substance or form or interest", and that the term has "stuck".

"New age is a spiritual definition more than a musical definition. Some musicians began by associating themselves with new-age music. Now they've thrown everybody in there. But it would be silly to associate with this particular music". - Yanni on new-age music definition (1992)

Harold Budd said, "When I hear the term 'new-age' I reach for my revolver... I don't think of myself as making music that is only supposed to be in the background. It's embarrassing to inadvertently be associated with something that you know in your guts is vacuous." Vangelis considers it to be a style that "gave the opportunity for untalented people to make very boring music". Yanni stated that "I don't want to relax the audience; I want to engage them in the music, get them interested", and that "New age implies a more subdued, more relaxed music than what I do. My music can be very rhythmic, very energetic, even very ethnic." David Van Tieghem, George Winston and Kitarō also rejected the label of new-age artist. David Lanz said that he "finally figured out that the main reason people don't like the term new age is because it's the only musical category that isn't a musical term". Andreas Vollenweider noted that "we have sold millions of records worldwide before the category new age was actually a category", and shared the concern that "the stores are having this problem with categorization".

Ron Goldstein, president of Private Music, agreed with such a standpoint, and explained that " Windham Hill was the hub of this whole thing. Because of that association, new-age has come to be perceived as this West Coast thing". However, Windham Hill's managing director Sam Sutherland argued that even the label's founders William Ackerman and Anne Robinson "shied away from using any idiomatic or generic term at all. It's always seemed a little synthetic", and they stopped making any kind of deliberate protests to the use of the term simply because it was inappropriate. Both Goldstein and Sutherland concluded that the tag helped move merchandise, and that new-age music would be absorbed into the general body of pop music within a few years after 1987.

The New York Times music critic Jon Pareles noted that "new-age music" absorbed other styles in more softer form, but those same, well-defined styles do not need the new-age category, and that "new-age music" resembles other music because it is aimed as a marketing niche-to be a "formula show" designated for urban "ultra-consumers" as status accessory; he also said the Andean, Asian and African traditional music influences evoke the sense of " cosmopolitanism", while nature in the album artwork and sound evoke the "connection to unspoiled landscapes".

Alternative terms

The borders of this umbrella genre are not well-defined, but music retail stores will include artists in the "new-age" category even if they belong to different genre, and those artists themselves use different names for their style of music.

Kay Gardner called the original new-age music "healing music" or "women's spirituality". Paul Winter, considered a new-age music pioneer, also dismissed the term, preferring "earth music".

The term "instrumental music" or "contemporary instrumental" can include artists who do not use electronic instruments, such as solo pianist David Lanz. Similarly, pianists such as Yanni and Bradley Joseph use this term as well, although they use keyboards to incorporate layered orchestral textures into their compositions. Yanni has distinguished the music genre from the spiritual movement bearing the same name. The term "contemporary instrumental music" was also suggested by Andreas Vollenweider, while "adult alternative" by Gary L. Chappell, which was the term by which called the new-age and world-music album charts.

The concept arose with the involvement of professional musicians in the New-Age movement. Initially, it was of no interest to the musical industry, so the musicians and related staff founded their own small independent recording businesses. Sales reached significant numbers in unusual outlets such as bookstores, gift stores, health-food stores and boutiques, as well as by direct mail. With the demand of a large market, the major recording companies began promoting new-age music in the 1980s.

New-age music was influenced by a wide range of artists from a variety of genres-for example, folk-instrumentalists John Fahey and Leo Kottke, minimalists Terry Riley, Steve Reich, La Monte Young, and Philip Glass, progressive rock acts such as Pink Floyd, ambient pioneer Brian Eno, synthesizer performer Klaus Schulze, and jazz artists Keith Jarrett, Weather Report, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Paul Horn (beginning with 1968's Inside), Paul Winter (beginning in the mid-1960s with the Paul Winter Consort) and Pat Metheny.

Tony Scott's Music for Zen Meditation (1964) is sometimes considered to be the first new-age recording, but initially it was popular mostly in California, and was not sold nationally until the 1980s. Another school of meditation music arose among the followers of Rajneesh; Deuter recorded (1971) and (1972), which mixed acoustic and electronic instruments with sounds of the sea. Kay Gardner's song Lunamuse (1974) and first recording Mooncircles (1975), which were a synthesis of music, sexuality and Wiccan spirituality, were "new-age music before it got to be new-age music". Her A Rainbow Path (1984) embraced Halpern's theory of healing music from that time with women's spirituality, and she became one of the most popular new-age sacred-music artists. Mike Orme of Stylus Magazine writes that many key Berlin school musicians helped popularise new-age.

Paul Winter's Missa Gaia/Earth Mass (1982) is described as "a masterpiece of New Age ecological consciousness that celebrates the sacredness of land, sky, and sea". His work on the East Coast is considered to be one of the most important musical expressions of new-age spirituality. On the West Coast, musicians concentrated more on music for healing and meditation. The most notable early work was Steven Halpern's Spectrum Suite (1975), the musical purpose of which was described as to "resonate specific areas of the body... it quiets the mind and body", and whose title relates "to the seven tones of the musical scale and the seven colors of the rainbow to the seven etheric energy sources (chakras) in our bodies". In the 1970s his music work, and the theoretical book Tuning the Human Instrument (1979), pioneered the contemporary practice of musical healing in the United States.

In 1976 the record label Windham Hill Records was founded, with an initial $300 investment, and would gross over $26 million annually ten years later. Over the years many record labels were formed that embraced or rejected the new-age designation, such as Narada Productions, Private Music, Music West, Lifestyle, Audion, Sonic Atmospheres, Living Music, Terra ( Vanguard Records), Novus Records (which mainly recorded jazz music), FM ( CBS Masterworks) and Cinema ( Capitol Records).

Between the intentional extremes of the U.S.' coasts are some of the most successful new-age artists, like George Winston and R. Carlos Nakai. Winston's million-selling (1982), released by Windham Hill Records, was highly popular. Most of Nakai's work, with his first release Changes in 1983, consists of improvised songs in native North American style. During the 1990s, his music became virtual anthems for new-age spirituality.

In 1981, Tower Records in Mountain View, California added a "new age" bin. By 1985, independent and chain record retail stores were adding sections for new age, and major labels began showing interest in the genre, both through acquisition of some existing new-age labels such as Paul Winter's Living Music and through signing of so-called "new-age" artists such as Japanese electronic composer Kitarō and American crossover jazz musician Pat Metheny, both signed by Geffen Records. Most of the major record labels accepted new age artists by the beginning of the next year. In the late 1980s the umbrella genre was the fastest-growing genre with significant radio broadcast. It was seen as an attractive business due to low recording costs.

Stephen Hill founded the new-age radio show Hearts of Space in 1973. In 1983, it was picked up by NPR for syndication to 230 affiliates nationally, and a year later Hill started a record label, Hearts of Space Records. On Valentine's Day in 1987, the former Los Angeles rock radio station KMET changed to a full-time new-age music format with new call letters KTWV, branded as The Wave. During The Wave's new-age period, management told the station employees to refer to The Wave as a "mood service" rather than a "radio station". DJs stopped announcing the titles of the songs, and instead, to maintain an uninterrupted mood, listeners could call a 1-800 phone number to find out what song was playing. News breaks were also re-branded and referred to as "wave breaks". Other new-age-specialty radio programs included Forest's Musical Starstreams and John Diliberto's . Most major cable television networks have channels that play music without visuals, including channels for New age, such as the "Soundscapes" channel on Music Choice. The two satellite radio companies Sirius Satellite Radio & XM Satellite Radio each had their own channels that played new-age music. Sirius- Spa (Sirius XM) (73), XM- Audio Visions (77). When the two merged in November 2008 and became SiriusXM, the Spa name was retained for the music channel with the majority of Audio Vision's music library being used.

In 1987 was formed the Grammy Award for Best New Age Album, while in 1988 the s New Age weekly charts. In 1989 Suzanne Doucet produced and held the first international New-Age Music Conference in Los Angeles. By 1989, there were over 150 small independent record labels releasing new-age music, while new-age and adult-alternative programs were carried on hundreds of commercial and college radio stations in the U.S., and over 40 distributors were selling new-age music through mail-order catalogs.

In the 1990s many small labels of new-age style music emerged in Japan, but for this kind of instrumental music the terms "relaxing" or "healing" music were more popular. Enigma's Sadeness (Part I) became an international hit, reaching number one in 24 countries including UK, also number five on the US Billboard Hot 100, selling over 5 million worldwide. At the time Holland was the home of two leading European new-age labels-Oreade and Narada Media. Oreade reported that in 1997 the latest trend was "angelic" music, while Narada Media predicted that the genre would develop in the direction of world music (with Celtic, Irish and African influences). In 1995 some "new-age" composers like Kitarō, Suzanne Ciani and Patrick O'Hearn moved from major to independent record labels due to lack of promotion, diminishing sales or limited freedom of creativity.

In 2001 Windham Hill celebrated its 25th anniversary, Narada and Higher Octave Music continued to move into world and ethno-techno music, and Hearts of Space Records were bought by Valley Entertainment. Enya's " Only Time" peaked at #10 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, while the album A Day Without Rain at #2 on the Billboard 200, being the number one new-age artist of the year.

1. Hale and Payton 2000, p. 26.

2. Jon Pareles (November 29, 1987). "Pop View; New-Age Music Booms, Softly". The New York Times.

3. Don Heckman (February 27, 1994). "Trends: New Age Enters a New Phase: Call it what you want, but the sound of Yanni and his similarly minded pals ... is reaching far beyond its old image of ambient mood music". Los Angeles Times.

4. Roger Catlin (April 26, 1992). "New Age Artists Want A New Label". Hartford Courant.

5. ^ Peter Culshaw (6 January 2005). "My Greek odyssey with Alexander". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 2022-01-12.

6. ^ Steve Appleford (October 28, 1994). "Playing to Emotions: Kitaro brings his New Age blend of rock, classical and folk to Universal Amphitheatre". Los Angeles Times. The category he seems least comfortable with is New Age, which remains a mystery to him. "Who came up with this name?" he asks. It seems to have little to do with the layers of rousing, emotional music he creates with elements of rock, classical and various international folk styles.

7. ^ Puckett, Jeffrey Lee (April 26, 2012). "Yanni up close: Musician known for larger-than-life venues also loves the Louisville Palace". The Courier-Journal. Archived from the original on April 29, 2012.

8. ^ Wheeler, Fred (2002). "Interview with Bradley Joseph". Indie Journal. Archived from the original on 2005-09-08.

9. Puckett, Jeffrey Lee, ^ "Yanni up close: Musician known for larger-than-life venues also loves the Louisville Palace", The Courier-Journal, April 26, 2012.

10. ^ Derk Richardson (Nov 1986). "The Sounds of Sominex". Mother Jones. Vol. 11, no. 8. Mother Jones Magazine. p. 60. ISSN 0362-8841.

11. Werkhoven, Henk N. (1997). ^ The International Guide to New Age Music. Billboard Books / Crown Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-8230-7661-1.

12. Geoff Mayfield (October 25, 1986). "The Independents: Oasis of Individuality Offering Welcome Relief from the Volume Wars". Billboard Magazine. Nielsen Business Media. p. 22.

13. ^ PJ Birosik (March 1989). "Dreamtime Return". Yoga Journal. Active Interest Media, Inc. pp. 94-95.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
New-age is a genre of music intended to create artistic inspiration, relaxation, and optimism. It is used by listeners for yoga, massage, meditation, and reading as a method of stress management to bring about a state of ecstasy rather than trance, or to create a peaceful atmosphere in homes or other environments.

# data[].attributes.body
Solarpunk architecture is no fiction in Italy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Bosco Verticale - "The Vertical Forest" was one of the most unique buildings I had ever seen in . There were 900 trees, 5,000 shrubs and 11,000 floral plants that had been imbedded against the two towers. The towers were built in this style, to reduce smog and increase oxygen levels.

What a brilliant way of connecting nature and the city!

One tower is 111 meters tall and the second is 76 meters tall and both are located in the Porta Nuova District in Milan. Isn't it just the modern dream to work and live here! It is the economical centre of Milan and is why The Bosco Verticale buildings stood out so much for me. I have to say though, it is a perfect symbol of having a great work-life balance.

This was an eye-opening experience for me, to hopefully see the buildings of future cities.

Do you know of any other places in the world where trees are grown against buildings?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Bosco Verticale | Milan, Italy - Fine Art Photography by Nico Trinkhaus

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Bosco Verticale - "The Vertical Forest" was one of the most unique buildings I had ever seen in . There were 900 trees, 5,000 shrubs and 11,000 floral plants that had been imbedded against the two towers. The towers were built in this style, to reduce smog and increase oxygen levels.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Kitaro Greatest Hits | The Best Of Kitaro | Best Instrument Music

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Anja, the protagonist of Oval, which is a science fiction novel written by Elvia Wilk and recently published in Italy by Zona 42, lives on The Berg.

In the fiction of the book, The Berg is an artificial mountain built on what is left of Tempelhof airport [1]. The Berg is an eco-friendly, zero-emission community run by the multinational corporation that controls the city and lives of the protagonists. The Berg is a rotting nightmare of inefficiency, malfunction and disruption. The Berg is a carbon neutral dystopia, overshadowed by the Green New Deal. It is ecology without any criticism of the production system - basically, it is gardening. Or rather, its urban equivalent.

Even in the world created by Wilk - which is our world, just a few minutes in advance - the ecological transition, or rather, the collection of practical recipes that should help us overcome the climate crisis we are experiencing, is irreparably compromised and lessened in the context of capitalist realism. What is presented to us as a solution in the renderings, statistical projections, and politicians' speeches, turns out to be only one of the many dystopian futures among which we can choose. This should not surprise us. We live in such a problematic reality that dystopia is what best defines the mood of the visions of the future produced by our culture: whether it be cyberpunk, steampunk, or climate science fiction, our ability to imagine what awaits us is dominated by gloomy visions imbued with pessimism.

Solarpunk is an exception to this rule. Coming from the outermost nooks and crannies of the internet, it is a complex and multifaceted cultural artifact and, at the same time, a literary subgenre of the already mentioned climate science fiction; an aesthetic in which nature and technology maintain a balanced, mutually beneficial relationship; a movement of criticism of the current social and economic structures that, precisely through the harmony between nature and technology, are planned to be overcome in ways that we can easily describe as utopian.
Therefore, Solarpunk employs the ideas linked to the need for a return to utopia as a strategy to imagine, visualize and design a future capable of breaking with the meaning frames that define the mood of the era in which we live.

To find the first occurrence of the term "solarpunk", we need to go back to twelve years ago, to an article called From Steampunk to Solarpunk published in 2008 on Republic of the Bees, an economics and politics blog that pays particular attention to a couple of themes: the solar transition and the theory and practice of common goods. In the article, which talks about the launch and maiden voyage of the Beluga Skysail, the first contemporary cargo ship to use sail power to reduce fuel consumption, a new literary genre, Solarpunk, is hypothesized for the first time.

The best way to describe it, says the author, is by contrasting it to steampunk: "it conflates modern technology with older technology, but with a vital difference. In the case of steampunk, the focus on Victorian technology serves as a guideline for imagining an alternative world. In the case of solarpunk, the interest in older technologies is driven by modern world economics: if oil isn't a cheap source of energy anymore, then we sometimes do best to revive older technologies that are based on other sources of energy, such as solar power and wind power."

Moreover, the author of the article in Republic of the Bees says that another difference between the two genres is that "solarpunk ideas, and solarpunk technologies, need not remain imaginary, and I indulge a hope of someday living in a solarpunk world".

Ever since its first occurrence, solarpunk has had the ambition to be much more than just a literary genre, an aesthetic or an imaginary. Solarpunk is, essentially, an exercise to visualize the future, an instruction manual to redesign the reality that has found in the internet its ideal breeding ground and vehicle. Its objective, as Elvia Wilk points out in Is Ornamenting Solar Panels a Crime?, her analysis of the genre published on e-flux, is to "transform science fiction into science action". The way in which solarpunk tries to pursue this goal contributes to defining its political dimension. But what is the latter characterized by?

One of the elements that best defines solarpunk is its speculative nature. That is, as we have already pointed out, the effort aimed at designing a world in which prosperity, peace, sustainability and beauty are not just hopes, but also an achievable goal, within the reach of an organized movement capable of transforming its criticism of the existing into concrete actions. This is the definition given by Andrew Dana Hudson, in a long essay published on Medium called On the Political Dimensions of Solarpunk, whose subject is precisely the political implications of this genre.

Dana Hudson believes that "barring radical cataclysm, the reasonably inevitable trends of urbanization, an aging populace and climate change will set the stage for life in the coming five decades. If you are a human living in the middle of the 21st century, chances are you will be elderly - or surrounded by the elderly. Chances are you will live in a city. Chances are your community, country and supply chains will be plagued by some combination of extreme weather, rising sea levels and droughts".

True to its "punk" nature, Solarpunk's task is to oppose the political domination of the old, even though it is fully conscious of having to live with it. Therefore, since architecture and infrastructure are two key elements of solarpunk aesthetics, aiming at a coexistence between generations means designing them to be sustainable in the long term and flexible enough to meet the needs of very different people. This will also entail the need to accordingly reorganize the forms of communal living, adapting them to the evolving climate context as well as to the necessary new urban organization. The attention will therefore focus on the dimension of mutual economic exchange, on generative and procedural political practices, on modular, light and open source ways of communal living. This perspective is very similar to the idea of curing the planet from an infection, a necessity that is well formulated by Donna Haraway in the first paragraphs of her Chthulucene, stating how it is necessary "to be present in the world as interconnected mortal creatures in a myriad of open configurations made up of places, ages, questions and meanings".

However, just like in Haraway's texts, all the effort put in by solarpunk is fully conscious of the fact that redesigning the world will only be made possible with a bottom-up push. The landscape will therefore be dominated by scattered and connected communities, which will rise side by side with realities dominated by other ways of managing the existing. In its political dimension, solarpunk does not aim at imposing a global order, but rather at determining a net of connections and relationships that, as Haraway says, will allow us to "live and die together with each other" and which will be possible to access only by accepting the rules and customs, changing them accordingly.

In the path towards this political, imaginary and aesthetic project, they take on a crucial role.

Solarpunk aims at becoming a movement that can regenerate the reality, and offer solutions to the challenges that characterize our age - the rapidly aging population, the ever-increasing urbanization and climate change. In doing so, it shows an attitude towards the recovery of disused technologies and their integration with more contemporary ones, as well as fostering a more general harmony between technology and nature. These characteristics can also be found in the complex aesthetics of the movement. We could say, if we wanted to define its extremes, that it is located in a visual spectrum between explicit references to art nouveau and direct references to the more contemporary biophilic design.

Between these two extremes, we find glass and metal architectures, greenhouses and winter gardens that serve as an ideal counterpoint to the glass and concrete fortresses that dominate the visual horizon of cyberpunk metropolises, whose blunt opacity is opposed by airy transparencies reminiscent of Islamic architecture. It is in these spacious volumes that, filtered by the green of the plants and the blue of the water, sunlight penetrates, caressing solar panels and ornamental wind turbines.

Everything shines with subtle emerald and aquamarine nuances. The air is clean, fresh and breathable. Everything seems surrounded by a faint halo of humidity, as if people were floating in a cloud of water mist. The atmosphere is reminiscent of the evocative universes of Hayao Myazaki's movies - in fact, he is one of the most cited aesthetic references when talking about solarpunk and its aesthetics. An aesthetic that covers every aspect of the world and life. Decorations, ornaments, clothes and jewelry, everything fits this hybrid style, where ancient and hypermodern blend into each other.

This fusion of different times - which means that the city of Arcosanti, a prototype arcology built under the supervision of Paolo Soleri in 1970 in Arizona, can also be interpreted as an effect of the disarticulation of the sense of time brought about by the spread of digital technologies. As Aaron Z Lewis notes in The garden of forking memes, an essay recently published on his blog, "The internet has flattened the vast archive of the past and made history unprecedentedly (and unrelentingly) immediate". This flattening has resulted in fracturing our collective experience of time. Internet therefore appears to us as a vast surface on which, while surfing, certain whirlpools can drag people under the surface, into the less illuminated depths of the net, along endless funnels of meaning that redefine the subjective experience of reality, bending it until it is reconstructed, to make it real.

With its Tumblr posts, its Pinterest boards, its Telegram or Discord groups and its Instagram hashtags, solarpunk is one of the many whirlpools you may come across along the way. This is where its greatest strength lies. Slipping into one of these semiotic vortexes can lead to redefine the subjective experience of reality that - as opposed to the collective elaboration of the imaginary, with the production of memea, sense and knowledge - is curved until it is reconstructed. As a consequence, the objective of redesigning the reality appears no longer as a hope or a wish, but rather as an attainable horizon, within the reach of a movement that, after having elaborated its own policy, must only realize that it has the necessary strength to impose its vision and learn how to exercise it.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Solarpunk, a movement capable of providing solutions to the challenges that define our age, thinks and designs a world where prosperity, peace and beauty are an achievable goal.

# data[].attributes.headline
Solarpunk: The future of ecological architecture

# data[].attributes.subject
Solarpunk: The future of ecological architecture

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Concept art from ecological architect Vincent CallebautWikipedia: KOMA MODULAR CONSTRUCTION

In medieval Europe, lawns were a product of the aristocracy. Not only did the early treeless expanses of land make the duties of the watchmen easier and more reliable, but the lavish expanses of grass and floral arrangements they eventually spawned became a boast and symbol of wealth and prosperity-land only the rich could afford to waste. Men only the rich could afford to pay to care for it. Water only the rich could spare to tend it. By the time the low-growing perennials described in 12th century literature grew into the fountain-speckled expanses of Versailles, lawns were a universal sign of power and frivolity.

In 20th century America, everyone had a lawn. Proud little green squares of perfect uniformity, hemmed by box hedges and Homeowners' Associations. And then came the Italians. A fresh wave of European migrants arrived in these little boxy homes with their perfect green squares and had a better idea. Household after household tore up their ornamental lawn and flowerbeds, and replaced it with something they could use. Herb gardens, vegetable gardens, little square bedded kitchen gardens with rows of beets and carrots, divided by neat dirt of gravel pathways, not a scrap of land wasted.

"Golf course owners arrive with all the pomp and ceremony of those one-time French nobles"

Today, the aristocratic origins of lawn culture are mostly forgotten; an aristocratic garden is now more likely to be filled with bright exotics and dainty water features. But family after family continue to cultivate their perfect, uniform green squares. Perhaps a more obvious source of waste are the rolling lush expanses of golf courses. In the UK, this is at worst a vast usage of land and lawnmowers. Golf course owners arrive with all the pomp and ceremony of those one-time French nobles, carving out great swathes of verdant growth for their own amusement, and that of their paying peers.

But where does the manicured lawn become too much? The average Scot might not particularly delight in Trump International Golf Links, but what harm it does is primarily the same as any other large expanse of cultivated grass-habitat destruction, the spraying of noxious chemicals. There are 1,126 golf courses in California alone, a state currently celebrating an all-new low of 10,293,045 inhabitants in drought areas. The golf courses, naturally, have remained verdant throughout.

In England, kitchen gardens and allotments are becoming a more commonplace sight, but trimmed lawns are nowhere near falling from grace. The quads in Cambridge colleges are too perfectly manicured to even be walked on. Most kitchen gardens are relegated to a bedraggled corner where a flower bed can hide them from the lavish lawn. But the wastage of land is going down. Allotment groups are now reclaiming strips of land, abandoned building sites and long stretches beside railways for community kitchen gardens. Midnight raids of 'guerrilla gardeners' are now planting edible herbs and fruits in public flower beds and corners of land, free for the taking. Several councils have taken it upon themselves to let the bedraggled patches of roadside grass blossom into wildflower meadows.

"Solarpunk takes the bitter rage of pure punk and the artistic dalliance of steampunk and cyberpunk to create a system of ecological activism"

Whilst individual movements vary wildly in form and function, the current swell of sustainable gardening owes its backbone of support to the solarpunk movement. Independent researcher Adam Flynn calls solarpunk a system of "infrastructure as a form of resistance" in his 2014 manifesto, an optimistic futurism dedicated to the design and construction of eco-sustainable cities. A hybrid philosophy of aesthetics and politics, solarpunk artists and designers create images of vast, lush settlements filled with natural green spaces and practical living solutions. Solarpunk takes the bitter rage of pure punk and the artistic dalliance of steampunk and cyberpunk to create a system of ecological activism and a brand of futuristic design that wins over idealists and realists alike. The vision relies on a sense of community and development, a willingness to share technology and resources to create a new kind of utopia.
Gentrification and spiked trees
A quick search on Google images reveals the diverse beauty of the solarpunk ideal: vivid green vines draped over a Shanghai skyline or an Italian villa, the soft bubble shapes popular with American architects and the bright geometric patterns inspired by Afrofuturism. Believers in solarpunk practise stunning handicrafts and preach new technological developments, bringing the best of old and new technologies together. Rather than focus on single strands of development as the saving of the planet, solarpunk blends ideas from dozens of sources into a vision of practical utopianism.

But visions very rarely lend themselves to practical action today, and the aspiring solarpunk internet dweller who happens not to be a billionaire philanthropist, ground-breaking energy developer or renowned architect might find themselves at a loss for what to do. And this brings us back to the matter of lawns. We can tear up our pathetic miniature golf courses and build something worth having. Install state-of-the-art transparent solar cells in our double glazing. Join the growing economy of repair cafes and makerspaces. Find neglected stretches of land and build our kitchen gardens, or join the ones already running here in Cambridge. The call has already gone out, to create a new era of green spaces

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Solarpunk: The future of ecological architecture

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In medieval Europe, lawns were a product of the aristocracy. Not only did the early treeless expanses of land make the duties of the watchmen easier and more reliable, but the lavish expanses of grass and floral arrangements they eventually spawned became a boast and symbol of wealth and prosperity-land only the rich could afford to waste.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
740 01 Solarpunk Architecture ideas in 2022 | architecture, amazing architecture, earthship home

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Feb 17, 2022 - Explore Eme's board "01 Solarpunk Architecture", followed by 189 people on Pinterest. See more ideas about architecture, amazing architecture, earthship home.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
inspiration from http://missolivialouise.tumblr.com/ "Solarpunk - a plausible near-future sci-fi genre... based on updated Art Nouveau, Victorian, and Edwardian...

# data[].attributes.headline
Solarpunk: Post-Industrial Design and Aesthetics

# data[].attributes.subject
Solarpunk: Post-Industrial Design and Aesthetics

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Solarpunk: Post-Industrial Design and Aesthetics
[Eric Hunting - 7/20 - Illustrations by Dustin Jacobus]
Introduction: Overview of the Solarpunk World: Phases of Solarpunk History: Core Principles of Post-Industrial Design: Packaging, and Living Without It: Energy: Modular Building Systems: Domestic Goods: Clothing: Architecture and Housing: Furnitecture: Vehicles and Transportation Systems: Computers and Communications: Robots: Plants and Farming:

Introduction: In recent years a futurist aesthetic movement has emerged in response to renewed public concern for the environment and a seeming lack of reflection of that concern in much contemporary art and design. Deriving its name from similar aesthetic movements such as Cyberpunk and Steampunk, its roots lay in various eco/climate science fiction and Post-Industrial futurist literature and is considered 'punk' in the sense that it is reactionary, and in opposition, to both the naive corporate utopianism that dominated the 20th century and the dystopianism that emerged in its wake by the end of that century, persisting to the present. We now live in an era where pragmatism is a radical stance. Thus Solarpunk seeks to cultivate a positive, hopeful, vision of a future rooted in technologies and culture of sustainability, yet in the context of what it acknowledges will be dramatic changes in our way of life due to Global Warming and the environmental malfeasance of the past, the transition to a renewables-based infrastructure, and the collapse of Industrial Age paradigms. A culture that has weathered the dramatic disruptions coming with the end of the Industrial Age, taken its sometimes bitter lessons from that, and found a way forward.

What makes Solarpunk 'punk' is an underlying activist/revolutionary narrative it shares with the earlier punk movements tracing its origins to the narrative of one of Science Fiction's earliest 'antiheroes'; Captain Nemo of Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. Long mischaracterized in film, the original character of Nemo is an Indian victim of European colonialism who is radicalized by the murder of his family by colonialists. He then appropriates and improves upon the technology of the colonialist powers not just to fight against them but to create a model egalitarian society of the future in the secret haven of the underwater underworld, beyond the reach of those colonial powers. Thus he becomes the prototype tech-hero, turning the oppressors/dominators technology against them and repurposing it for the benefit of the rest of society. But he still bears the psychological damage of the trauma of his family's murder, his compulsion for revenge becoming the undoing of his dream of a better future. That's a much more complex and radical story than the likes of Hollywood were ever willing to portray!

From this story came the essential Cyberpunk narrative of the hacker-hero, radicalized by corporate/government oppressors and forced to retreat to a kind of underworld - the digital Xibalba of Cyberspace - where they surreptitiously appropriate and repurpose the oppressor's technology to use against them. Later, Cyberpunk returned to its roots with Steampunk, imagining an alternative future where an IT revolution was catalyzed much sooner, merging - for better and worse - with the culture the Victorian British Empire, and producing a broader assortment of variations on Nemo's maverick tech-hero. Steampunk has had a great appeal among contemporary Maker-hobbyists.

The Solarpunk narrative, though less clearly developed, is again very similar. It revolves around a kind of Maker-hero who reappropriates technology - green technology in particular - deliberately suppressed by corporate and government interests for the sake of profiteering and social control and then applies it to the salvation of a world facing environmental catastrophe and the cultivation of a better, more sustainable, future. We see the first clear characterization of this new green-tech Maker-hero in a concept devised by writers/futurists Cory Doctorow and Alex Steffan and dubbed the 'Outquisition'. They imagined the emergence of a nomadic activist movement from the 'cloisters' of eco-villages, hacker/makerspaces, Fab Labs, and online communities (another sort of underworld haven...) in response to the crisis created by the fall-out of environmental collapse and the creeping decrepitude of late-stage capitalism with its entrenched pathological institutions and economics. These nomadic Makers gather to intervene in communities left in crisis as the old system fails them and systematically retreats from the no longer 'profitable' mess it created. 'Hacking' and repurposing the detritus of the failing Industrial Age culture with their alternative energy, recycling, and production technology, these Maker-heroes create islands of self-sufficiency, seeding the culture of a new Post-Industrial era.

In some ways this relates to a much earlier concept envisioned by futurist-designer Ken Isaacs; the Urban Nomad. Yet another Post-Industrial futurist, he imagined a future nomadic youth sub-culture that lived by seasonally migrating among cities and cleverly repurposing the detritus of the collapsing Industrial Age found there, which inspired the notion of Nomadic Furniture based on the repurposing and upcycling of various Industrial cast-offs. Isaacs devised the concepts of user-built Living Structures, microhousing, and the DIY Matrix building system that would inform much of what we now refer to as Maker and Solarpunk design.

But how to characterize this aesthetic? How to portray it? In this piece we will present some suggestions as to the nature of this future and the principles - with their reasoning - that go into the speculative design of its artifacts and architecture. These can only be suggestions. One cannot accurately predict the future nor can the interpretation of trends and influences on it be definitive. The futurist can, at best, capture the theme of the tune. Lyrics remain a toss-up.

Overview of the Solarpunk World: The footprint of a civilization is greatly influenced, if not largely defined by, the logistics of its predominant forms of energy and the modes of transportation they enable. This, in turn, establishes the context in which production must function with its subsequent techniques and materials influencing the collective aesthetic of the habitat. Archeologists deduce a great deal about past cultures through reverse-engineering its artifacts. How things are made tells you a great deal about how a culture works. Similarly, if we understand some things about how a future culture should/could work, we can deduce the likely ways things might be made and thus how they may look.

As its name suggests, the Solarpunk World is a predominantly renewable energy powered world. The most common sources of renewable energy are solar, wind, geothermal, sea (wave, current, tidal, and ocean-thermal), hydropower, and the chemical energy inherent in plant products converted to biofuels. Aside from biofuels, all those are most commonly utilized to generate electric power. Thus the Solarpunk habitat is a predominantly electric-powered one, constrained by the logistics of distributing that form of energy.

There would certainly be many other more-or-less 'clean' forms of energy in use, particularly expanded use of human power, perhaps some revival of other animal power, revival of use of sails for propulsion and wind turbines for mechanical power, and widespread use of solar-thermal systems and passive solar design in architecture. Many facilities would employ solar-dynamic/thermal collectors and furnaces for things like industrial processing, heating, and to power public kitchens. (much like the famous solar kitchen of Auroville India) But this would not be entirely ubiquitous as not every location/situation can work with that technology. Thus more flexible solar energy systems use would tend to predominate, and these typically produce electricity.

Similarly, biofuels offer solutions in certain situations, but because they still produce CO2, are ultimately not suited to widespread use. Being 'carbon neutral' may not be sufficient in the future. The culture must strive toward being 'carbon negative' to truly reverse the warming trend produced by the Industrial Age. They may become common as a fossil fuel substitute, particularly early in a transition to the new culture where technological progress may see some stagnation or reversion and in rural areas where, as a locally-produced form of power for farm machinery made from agricultural wastes, they would have a distinct advantage, but would not suit urban transportation or use in the new urban environment. New safer nuclear options are on the horizon as well, with a longer-term/later era prospect of fusion energy systems and a nearer-term prospect of alternative compact salt reactors. However, that technology is not likely to be employed in the transitional period of a Solarpunk history as it's not suited to the 'bottom up' local development much of that transition to the new era would likely be based on. (as we will discuss in more detail later) For similar reasons, space solar power is not a likely near-term prospect as it is, basically, redundant to land and sea based solar, dependent on grandiose scales of development, and only perpetuates state and corporate hegemonies with their extortion of society.

Certain locations are more advantageous to one form of renewable energy exploitation or another, but in general it is diversely usable everywhere, and thus its infrastructure would be much more decentralized than fossil fuels. Indeed, this is a key motivation for its development as it breaks down the economic and political hegemonies notorious across the fossil fuel era. Every community may see experimentation - particularly early-on - with a spectrum of energy harvesting and storage, with some very novel and quirky concepts explored. Every flow of air or fluid and every surface in the built habitat with some significant solar insolation are potential (if not always practical) energy sources. Even the latent energy of casual foot and vehicle traffic can potentially be harvested, as well as the biochemical and thermal energy of human bodies and other organisms.

With electricity the most efficiently utilized form of renewable energy, it is most conveniently used where integrated and distributed by a wired power grid. New technologies such as High-Voltage DC transmission have much increased the reach of electric grids (even offering the prospect of a truly unified global energy network), and we may see such innovations as superconducting power lines as well, but for some time parasitic grid losses using existing tech may significantly limit practical reach, limiting the spread of a new built habitat, but that is just as well as we must return landscape to nature anyway.

Packaging and storing electricity in various forms comes with a variety of trade-offs and is generally less efficient than grid use. Batteries are the most convenient form, but limited to modest (but slowly growing) capacities, long (but slowly shrinking) charging times, high (but slowly falling) mass, and often reliant on scarce materials from problematic sources. Pneumatic power storage has long been of interest for vehicle and domestic applications (Buckminster Fuller was a fan of this for a time) but useful storage capacities depend on advanced materials and engineering for super-pressure compressed air storage. Conversion to fuels such as hydrogen, hydrides, or redox solutions come with many complications and their production and storage, much like old fossil fuels, is somewhat hazardous with a tendency to large system scales. These are unlikely in the domestic environment, but may be extensively used in municipal facilities or large vehicles and may be key to mass renewables exploitation on the open sea and distant tropical/desert areas. Long duration gyroscopes have long been used as short term electricity buffering in the computer and communications industry and some experiments have been tried in domestic use. But they remain limited to stationary use and, again, rely on advanced materials and engineering.

Other lower-tech forms of energy storage tend to rely on large municipal construction projects limited by geography, such as the creation of dams and large pools for water, large high-pressure tanks and limestone wells for pressurized air storage, hill-slope rail systems for gravity storage, large stationary battery banks sometimes based on flow-battery technology, and similar schemes. These would tend to feature in the buffering of locally exploited energy, but given their scale, are not likely to be used in a transitional period unless repurposing some existing structures.

Given these forms of energy, the predominant forms of powered transportation would be electric vehicles - most-efficiently grid powered as with rail systems but more flexibly battery-based as with electric cars. Electric rail is ultimately the most energy-efficient means of land transit we are currently capable of and would be expected to expand in use and diversity on that premise.

Air and sea transport are more difficult problems for electric power. Battery-based electric aircraft and ships are currently emergent but may long be limited to short distance commuter transit. Biofuels could well substitute for conventional aircraft and ship fuels, but not at the scale of contemporary travel given they would ultimately still be carbon producing and, at that scale of use, their production must be industrial in scale, competing with food production.

It's likely large sea vessels will turn to use of liquid hydrogen powering electric drive systems based on fuel cells or turbogenerators - with a trend toward electric drive systems already underway to facilitate use of cleaner - if still carbon based - fuels like natural gas. Minimum practical scale of such systems are large, but this will be less of a problem for large cargo vessels. However, safety concerns with handling cryogenic hydrogen may limit this mostly to cargo transit. This may ultimately demand the establishment of a new dedicated marine energy infrastructure to sustain it, likely based on technologies such as geothermal and OTEC. (ocean thermal energy conversion) But that development may be long delayed over a turbulent transitional era. So various hybrid sailing vessels are a likely near-term eventually. There will be much experimentation in these modes of transportation as designers/engineers struggle with these limitations and a likely revival of things like sailing ships, dirigible airships, and ekranoplanes in various solar-hybrid forms and using more advanced technology.

In general, all forms of transportation will need to seek progressively increasing energy efficiency which will often compel structural/logistical changes in the physical habitat and lifestyle as well. For example, it will soon make no sense to produce goods at a distance as it is far less efficient in energy and resources to ship bulky finished and packaged goods around the world than just the materials they are made from.

In many ways the footprint of a civilization based on renewables would come to parallel that of the Steam Age, with its reliance on bulky wood and coal fuel powering large locomotives and ships, thus compelling urban concentration. However, with the use of electricity comes smaller, lighter, more diverse, systems than were possible in the Steam Age with potential for safe and clean integration into residential environments. With the proper urban design, fully automated door-to-door transportation becomes a real option, as was long speculated in the era of PRT (personal rapid transit) experimentation in the late 20th century.

We can thus anticipate the likely physical organization of the Solarpunk civilization to be dominated by urban centers, satellite communities of smaller, but still urban, organization (higher density towns like that of the early rail era that served as hubs for the flow of farm goods, eco-villages based on denser co-housing arrangements, and perhaps some 'proto-arcology' concepts) arrayed along a smaller network of transit routes. Additionally, there would be an impetus to reduce the compulsion to travel/shipping in general with greater reliance on local facilities kept in closer proximity, rather than spread out in dispersed massive zones as was the virtually cult-ike compulsion of civil engineers in the fossil fuel era. A by-product of the expanded use of Basic Income schemes would be the elimination of much commuter traffic and the congestion caused by synchronized work schedules.

The sprawling suburbs and dense roadways that were the hallmark of 20th century civilization would be systematically abandoned for the sake of restoring land use to local food production and the natural habitat previously squandered. Development may be formerly constrained by planned 'urban corridors' flanking the fewer key transit routes, pollution-free electric transit often going underground or inside architecture, eliminating much of the negative aspects of living in its proximity which hampered urban quality of life in the past and drove the suburbanization trend. The use of free-standing housing would become rare with a return to earlier townhouse forms more common. Though we may never see a need for the vast arcologies and urban megastructures imagined by futurists of the 20th century, they may well influence the necessarily more self-contained and parametrically designed urban habitats of the future.

Coinciding with the transition to renewable energy and its transformation of the built habitat will be a very radical change in the nature of production already underway whose impact is often underestimated yet may be the single-greatest influence on future economics and politics. We commonly anticipate a future of increasing automation - decrying its likely negative impacts on society with the obsolescence of many jobs - but overlook the coincident evolution of that production technology itself. We are not just moving toward increasing automation but also - and much more significantly - the generalization of production, its localization with a shrinking scale and cost through robotization, and the globalization of production knowledge communicated digitally - what futurists often refer to with the terms 'Industry 4.0' or 'The Fourth Industrial Revolution.'

What is the difference between industrialization, automation, and robotization? Put simply, it's the transition of the information of design and technique toward increasing states of virtualization and thus portability. One might say, it's the transfer of production knowledge/skill from the human brain into the hardware of machines and then to portable, digital, forms. The Industrial Age did not begin with machine production but rather with the massification and specialization of human labor. That was the first industrial revolution. The second was the encoding of design knowledge and human skill into the engineering of specialized mechanical machines to increase production volume and consistency - the initial form of automation which was also very dependent on geographically limited large scale energy sources such as water power. This is what we typically regard as the start of the Industrial Age - often conflated with the term 'Machine Age' as it coincided with the appearance of large production machines and steam engines. The third was the electrification of production, affording its wider geographic dispersal with the advent of grid power, followed by the digital/computerized control and management of those still specialized production machines. This enabled production's expulsion from the urban environment to outlying regions affording larger facility scales, and the transformation of cities into centers of predominantly 'white collar' commercial and information processing activity.

Much about the nature of civilization across the Industrial Age was keyed to the reliance in these three first phases on such speculative massified modes of production and the necessarily large scales of capital needed to initialize it that could only be amassed by various schemes of mass social collectivization - society ultimately where all capital originates.

The fourth industrial revolution - now emergent - is in the digitization of design and technique for the control of robotic production machines of increasingly multipurpose capability with shrinking scale and cost. With that comes a transition from speculative, capital-dependent, distant mass production to non-speculative, direct, and local production on-demand. Like humans, robotic production systems use knowledge to allow them to perform countless different tasks with the same tools. The big difference is that knowledge is now in digital form, swapped out as needed and broadcast worldwide. We've completed an evolutionary circle from the originally local, generalized, direct human production of pre-industrial times to likewise local, generalized, and direct machine production, human skill now digitally unleashed from the confines of the brain to be made available everywhere. Hegemonies rooted in the exclusivity of ownership of the means and knowledge of production can be broken as that means - shrinking in physical scale and cost as it expands in capability - disperses into communities and even households.

A new cultural paradigm is emergent; cosmo-localization. Design and share globally. Make locally. As marginal costs shrink, design becomes the new basis of goods value, yet exists in digital form, infinitely replicable and globally shared like any digital media. It makes no sense anymore to ship bulky, fragile, wastefully packaged, finished goods long distances if you can simply transmit their designs for local production. This will supplant a global trade in goods, further compelled by the demand for transportation efficiency. And this is why, in recent times, corporations have become so obsessed with the control of consumer behavior and 'intellectual property' - often through manipulating law and state policy. It's all they have left to maintain their old hegemonies in a world of dispersed digital production, where corporate designs must increasingly compete with open source ones coming from everywhere.

It's hard to overstate the likely impact of all this on how the world works. This may be at least as big a deal as the invention of the printing press or computer. Yet it's curiously overlooked when we think about future impacts of automation. We worry about losing jobs to machines, but there's always one job that can't be obsolesced; owner.

Another important area of change in this future Solarpunk culture is in the spectrum of commonly used materials, some to accommodate these new forms of production, but most significantly, to accommodate increasing environmental impact concerns. This is likely to have some of the greatest influence on the visual aspect of the Post-Industrial aesthetic. The biggest near-term changes in this would come with the recent awareness of the full environmental impact of plastics we grew so very reliant on across the 20th century. Already we see attempts at reducing plastic waste, expanding recycling, developing better substitutes, and minimizing packaging. In the Solarpunk culture we would anticipate a return to older types of materials, as well as adopting some new and unusual ones, in the domestic environment and attempts to completely eliminate packaging by structurally changing how we access goods. It's unlikely that plastics will be entirely eliminated from the culture, particularly given their important roles in healthcare, but they will most certainly be much reduced and where they persist there will be pressure to employ easily recyclable, rapidly biodegradable, and agriculturally-sourced forms. With this we are likely to see a return to some product designs of the pre-plastic past combined with the new production techniques.

The Solarpunk World will likely experience disruptive political and economic change in its transitional era for many reasons - the social and economic impacts of Global Warming, the collapse of fossil fuel and industrial/financial hegemonies, and the advent of Industry 4.0 key among them. Many futurists anticipate a decline or collapse of capitalism and the emergence of Social-Democratic, Libertarian-Socialist, or various anarchistic systems. Some anticipate even an end of the Westphalian State and the irrelevance of national borders. Driving this change will be the already critical income disparity plaguing the world combined with the growing detachment from mainstream culture - if not reality itself - among political leaders and the upper-class. A likely product of this will be the rise of a Global Resilience Movement, hints of which are already emergent today.

Increasingly, we can no longer count on 'the system', the authorities, our political leaders, and their institutions to do the right things in a crisis or maintain the essential social contract all government and the market economy represent. Upper levels of government are becoming decrepit and dysfunctional, corrupted by corporate influence and afflicted by an endemic cultural nihilism. Increasingly, we see certain demographic groups, certain communities, abandoned and betrayed by government and corporate/finance interests in times of crisis - often of those institutions' own making. That's the basic story of Flint Michigan. And it's happening to a growing number of communities around the globe. With increasing frequency of environmental disasters and economic disruptions, this can only get worse. Who doubts for a moment that, as the costs of Global Warming abatement efforts for wealthy communities rise, the poorer communities will be overlooked and abandoned? And so some households, towns, and even cities are starting to realise they must cultivate contingencies for the sake of their own future survival.

In response we see some towns and cities assuming more local responsibility for their critical needs. They adopt open source software when they realize the exploitation and unreliability inherent to branded software. They develop municipal/cooperative telecommunications and power when corporate services turn into exploitative hegemonies. They cultivate urban farming in response to the often racially-motivated abandonment of poor communities by large corporate supermarket chains. They adopt local scrips - local money - to encourage patronage of locally-owned business and try to prevent that economic extraction by outside interests. And most recently, they are beginning to cultivate the local use of the new technologies of production in the hopes of encouraging more reliance on locally-made goods rather than those of extractive, distant, corporations. The envelope of 'municipal utility' is expanding in people's minds to cover more of what our lifestyles depend on. This is the beginning of the Global Resilience Movement, though it still remains small in proportion to the emerging threats. There's resistance, of course, but the trend persists because the 'system', at a fundamental level, simply isn't doing its job anymore and people don't just lay-down and die when that happens. They find another way.

And with this increasing local-reliance, be it on the household level, the community/neighborhood level, or regional networks of communities, will come the realization of an increasing economic and political autonomy and a waning of the upper levels of state authority - starved as it will soon be of tax revenue as the middle-class hollows-out and after the huge expenses of futile Global Warming abatement projects. Thus we can imagine the future Solarpunk World to be one where towns and cities have been compelled to evolve toward autonomy by the creeping decrepitude of the state expressed through its deteriorating higher-level infrastructures, thus becoming new default units of social and political identity. This would not be balkanization. Society might still hold its national and cultural identities for a long time. And communities would still tend to recognize the need for regional cooperation to maintain their shared infrastructures. Rather it would be a rediscovery of local identity combined with the discovery of a new global identity compelled both by the shared crisis of Global Warming and the cosmo-localization of the new modes of production.

Phases of Solarpunk History: Given the likely nature of this transition to a Solarpunk culture - particularly its potentially crisis-driven nature early-on - we can imagine a likely multi-phased history of that culture with certain characteristics of each phase reflected in the aesthetics and design of those times.

The Early Solarpunk era would be characterized by the hallmarks of this transition from an Industrial to a Post-Industrial culture, and, in particular, by an emergent global resilience movement with its community activism. 'Post-industrial' should not be confused with 'non-industrial'. People would still be making sophisticated goods. But how they make them - by what paradigms - is what is radically changed in the new culture. Could it turn out to be a 'soft' transition where some critical mass of society collectively stands up in anticipation of the challenges, or a 'hard' one where most remain in denial or a nihilistic paralysis and have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the future by crisis after crisis? Many are working toward the soft transition, but sadly, at present the latter seems more likely, promising years to decades of struggle for pragmatists. There could be a key catalyst for change as yet unanticipated (and a great subject for stories to explore), however, the longer it takes the farther backward standard-of-living may slide in many areas.

The old Industrial Age paradigms, systems, and institutions, decrepit and stressed under the dual forces of Global Warming and disrupted economic/industrial paradigms, are beginning to collapse into various kinds of dysfunction. Accelerating automation and AI are impacting all jobs and, in their chronic denial, many nations and corporations are as badly failing to address this crisis as they have the climate crisis. The wealth gap has turned into an 'economic singularity', the economy ejecting a growing portion of society as it contracts like a dying star.

Grandiose sea level abatement projects, intended to preserve the wealthiest or most politically important cities and their historic landmarks (and invariably planned far too late...), have generally turned into boondoggles and broken the backs of regional or national economies. The insurance industry has abandoned whole states or geographic regions, triggering real estate market collapse and general economic failure. Poorer communities are increasingly abandoned by their government to their growing spectrum of problems. There are shortages and infrastructure failures. Mass protests, riots, and looting. Violent crackdowns by increasingly desperate authorities. Mass migrations inland and northward. New settlements - with and without authorization - emerge in unlikely places, some created by the displaced and poor, some by militarized gangs, others by Survivalists and eco-activists, others by followers of crazed demagogues, religious fanatics, some fortress-like enclaves of the wealthy. Some communities turn into antagonistic armed camps, but often illicit a violent response from what remains of national militaries - their armories shrinking but deep. All sorts of community 'movements' are ascendent in the wake of waning central/upper authority.

Many communities will be abandoned outright as their conventional infrastructures fail, are destroyed by weather events, or their anchor industries dry-up. Those that persist will need to adapt to a more mutualistic way of life than has been the norm for over a century. People will need to adopt a conserver lifestyle focused on rational needs, learn how their infrastructure works and is maintained, how the things they need are made, how their food is grown, and take their turn in mutual subsistence work. Most importantly, they will need to learn how to, once again, get along with each other without the anonymity of the 'system' and its bureaucratic mediation. In the process they may inadvertently discover a better quality of life than they have ever known.

Renewable energy tech and independent production spread quickly of necessity but - often dependent on high-tech industry - are sometimes hampered by materials shortages and financial problems. Things like photovoltaics, fuel cell systems, and computer systems require scarce and advanced processing facilities and materials. This compels a fall in standard-of-living in some areas and a reliance on at-hand 'soft-tech' approaches until the dissemination of 'green-tech' can catch-up. Implementation of the new technologies is somewhat makeshift and experimental, early generation designs bulkier, cruder, and often reliant on recycling and adaptive reuse of the detritus of the old culture. Local entrepreneurs, activists, and community groups start to widely implement communal production workshops implementing early generation digital/robotic production, most intended for open access and reliant on open source design.

The Post-Industrial culture is emerging in a 'hacking' of the Industrial Age as it falls apart. It's a time of 'cargotecture', steel pipe and bamboo yurts, Tiny Houses, earthen architecture, and funky repurposed vehicles and buildings. CNC/laser cut plywood and rediscovered DIY 'hippie' furniture made from recyclables. Squatted and repurposed shopping malls and abandoned corporate towers. Barge, parking structure, rooftop, and backyard farms. A vast menagerie of quirky home-brew and human-powered vehicles. It is the most visibly 'punk' era.

The Middle Solarpunk era is one where the new Post-Industrial culture and its attendant technologies are coming into their own. The rise in atmospheric carbon has been, at least, suspended, though the inertial effects on the environment are fated to play-out for a long time to come. Greenland and the poles are becoming ice-free, glaciers are gone, and coastlines around the globe are drastically changed, leaving many major cities radically transformed or reduced to flooded ruins. Some Equatorial parts of the Earth have become uninhabitable for large communities, though some militant diehards persist even in the scorched middle-east, motivated by the historic/religious significance of their ancient homes and age-old conflicts.

The world is settling into a new routine. National governments have either fizzled-out or restructured into something more sustainable. New social/political/economic orders are fairly well established and working out their kinks. Cities and towns are largely self-sufficient in production and now forming new regional networks of cooperation as old institutions fizzle-out and old borders are slowly forgotten. Land is being reconsolidated into regional commons and individual land ownership is slowly disappearing in most places, replaced by Georgist property models after real estate markets collapsed. No mass confiscation of property was ever needed, except in places deemed uninhabitable due to climate impacts. Once the real estate market collapsed, there was no point to hoarding it. No money to be made when there's no money to be had...

Inland and northern cities have swelled in size. Most climate refugees have resettled, though waning streams of them from more devastated parts of the globe persist. Most of society is urban or dense town based and use of free-standing homes has become rare outside of rural areas and persisting isolationist enclaves. Abandoned suburbs and their excess roads are systematically scavenged, razed, and converted to farmland and programs of mass environmental restoration - rewilding - are under-way in many areas. Engineered marshes and mangrove forests are being cultivated along many coastlines.

New architecture (increasingly modular or robot-built such as by large scale 3D printing) and adapted old architecture exist in equal measure, except in newly created settlements. (particularly in northern regions and along the Arctic coasts as the sea becomes ice-free and a primary marine transit route) More refined alternative/sustainable materials are replacing the old experimental alternatives. Goods based on them are now generally more refined in design. Every community has its own increasingly sophisticated urban farms and 'fabs' or 'fabrication workshops' and robots are proliferating in the habitat, but there is still a great reliance on personal and community labor. There remains an interesting menagerie of diverse electric and human-powered vehicles, many now semi-robotic and generally more refined in design.

Despite the spread of robotic production, the current generation has grown-up - in the previous transitional era - with broader, truly practical, industrial and social skills than previous Industrial Age generations as communities transitioned to self-reliance, independent production, and mutualism. Though cities can be quite large, they have self-organized into cellular complexes of socially connected neighborhoods with more active resident participation and self-reliance. There is still much lifestyle experimentation. Some communities are still quite high-tech, others deliberately more reliant on 'soft-tech', offering a more pastoral mode of living. Planned or 'intentional' communities emerge based on deliberate alternative lifestyle models, as centers of certain arts or sciences, or based on various hobby and aesthetic themes.

Design largely focuses on the idea of facilitating local production/recycling and optimizing end-user self-reliance. There is a general goal that nothing in the domestic environment should be beyond the skills and means of a solitary individual to build, install, or repair. Utility leads over style and most goods are 'open source' in design origin. There is much reliance on, and much more standardization in, refined modular building systems in architecture, home furnishings, and domestic articles. Housing is rarely available 'finished' as inhabitants now freely adapt it to their tastes without special skills.

The Late Solarpunk era sees the impacts of the most advanced sustainable technologies, the restoration of environmental balance, and the general realization of a post-scarcity culture. It is the most utopian of the phases. Things like nanotechnology and advanced forms of energy have come into general use, though solar-electricity still predominates. Almost everything is as easy to recycle as to create and something of a throw-away culture has returned, though without the waste and pollution of the past. Most people's important possessions are digital in nature. The temporary contrivance of Basic Income has evolved into an Integral Basic Income soft-coded into the infrastructure, with all basics available free on-demand from most anywhere in the built habitat, usually by online order.

Architecture has become self-fabricating and commonly parametric in design - except where mimicking stylisms of the past or fanciful themes - with the urban corridors now largely conjoined into verdant contour-terraced 'urban landscapes' built of carbon-sequestering materials. Like a living reef hosting civilization. Elaborate interior streets, valley-like thoroughfares, or caldera-like public centers host most public activity. Some cities, still similar in architecture but physically isolated, float out on the sea or have been setup on the coasts of the ice-free Antarctic continent - now the focus of a kind of terraforming project intended to reestablish its former frozen state. Towns and cities are now, essentially, cybernetic organisms, self-managed by integral AI, perpetually aware of the environment and public communication alike, and anticipating most needs. Production has fully merged with the rest of the self-maintaining municipal infrastructure and has either gone inside homes or underground along with most long-distance transit routes. Few surface roads remain, vehicles rarely seen outdoors except for human powered/personal scale ones, aircraft, and ships and once sprawling solar and wind farms have been somewhat reduced in area through their steadily increasing efficiency and the establishment of very long-distance power grids tapping the energy of the largely uninhabited tropical regions.

Human augmentation by various means has become common, transhumanist lifestyles are emergent. Some people comfortably and casually wander the restored wilderness - or even the open seas - as nomads, their bodies augmented to withstand even the harshest natural outdoor environments without shelter while carrying inside them all the communications, computing, and VR/AR imaging capability they need to be continually connected to the rest of the world. The aesthetic lines between the organic and the inorganic have blurred. Robots are common but seem as much animal/plant as machine - and many people likewise.

The transformation of the footprint of civilization is largely complete. It is now a lace-like network across the face of a largely restored natural environment that coexist in closely integrated symbiosis. Global Warming has been stopped and is slowly reversing to pre-industrial levels, but the world remains forever changed. Attention has returned to space.

By now the reader may already be forming a mental image of this future Solarpunk World. Let us now elaborate on the details of that in the context of design. What makes designs Solarpunk? How are they different from those of the past?

Core Principles of Post-Industrial Design: The most important principle of Post-Industrial design is the principle of a circular goods ecology, which can be simply summarized thusly;

Reuse > Repurpose > Upcycle > Recycle > Downcycle > Dispose

-The longer things last and can be reused, the less often they need to be replaced. There is no excuse for designing to suit sliding scales of economy. That's consumerism. Anything that is not designed to be best in functional quality by default only deliberately creates waste - an environmental sin. Design things right, design things to last. Resist obsolescence by 'design for repairability', the employ of modularity where possible, and the avoidance of 'destructive construction'. (ie. glues, paints, nails, screws)

-Repurpose that which is obsolete in its original use where you can to extend its use-life. Few things are truly limited to a single purpose. Many can be endlessly repurposed with creativity. Modularity and simplicity in design facilitate this.

-Upcycle when direct repurpose is not possible. Upcycling is generally a process of specialization, physically modifying a thing, which can increase the utility and lifespan of something in that context but can come at the cost of later future repurpose.

-Favor recyclable materials and design to facilitate it, but consider the overhead of that recycling - its energy, process complexity, and process wastes. Merely being recyclable isn't automatically sustainable.

-Apply circular design/planning. One system's waste stream can be another system's feedstocks. Design with the larger resource ecology in mind. Pollution is a waste of resources, typically rooted in the ignorance, stupidity, and casual indifference to the consequences of cost externalization.

-Dispose as a last resort and avoid from the start those materials which nature cannot re-assimilate.

As we previously noted, archeologists can deduce a great deal through the reverse-engineering of the artifacts of ancient cultures. It's not just the materials or styles of decoration that inform them but the many hallmarks of production technique which can reveal a great deal about how a culture works and its logistical situation. Through these hallmarks they can associate artifacts with very specific points in time and place on the globe. Very particular situations allow certain production techniques and design forms to evolve and flourish, sometimes turning into skeuomorphs as practical technique evolves - when the common design for a thing becomes a cultural symbol referring to its function/use/social role long after that particular design has become obsolete, as with the case of the shape of the classic telephone or the icon of a floppy disk.

And when archeologists inevitably look back on the detritus of our own time for clues to as to how our culture worked perhaps the chief hallmark of the 20th century they will look for will be a barely noticeable seam; the seam that denotes injection molding and the 'clamshell' enclosure design used with most of the electrical and electronic products of our time. Though not exclusive to the material, it evolved with the emergence of plastic and its most common use with injection molding. This hallmark is so ubiquitous in our environment today that, like telephone poles, we have come to ignore it. Learn to be aware of it and you will see everywhere. It's the hallmark of our age.

What's very interesting about design in the Solarpunk future - Post-Industrial design - is how this and other hallmarks of 20th century industry are about to change or disappear because we are about to turn down a very different path for how the world works and therefore how we must commonly make things. Materials tended to go gradually obsolete as alternatives of superior performance or economy emerged. But this time around we're very deliberately choosing to abandon a ubiquitous set of materials we once relied very heavily on because we woke up to the realization that they - and their industry - were killing us and the environment around us. And the fully equivalent alternatives aren't all there. We haven't yet figured them all out. So there's going to be some looking backward at past techniques and designs plastic previously obsolesced as well as a lot of experimentation looking forward to the new digital/robotic production and new materials.

In the early, transitional, Solarpunk era there will be many situations of crisis demanding a sudden reliance on local industry and scarce local resources. The Industrial Age systematically cultivated a desperately dependent society, overspecialized in knowledge, devoid of practical industrial and social skills, and reliant on a market economy for everything. Thus, in such situations, there will emerge a kind of spontaneous ad hoc design focused on low-tech means of production, recycling, and repurposing of the at-hand detritus and consumer/industrial wastes. What could be called Post-Apocalypse Chic. In the past this was referred to as 'Nomadic Design' and inspired the hippie-esque up-cycled furniture designs that were briefly popular in the 1970s. For all intents and purposes, many communities will indeed be in a Post-Apocalyptic situation, compelled to survive through the salvage and repurposing of whatever is at-hand in the local environment. This may become a design and engineering specialty, particularly among the Outquisition activists who must 'McGuyver the hell out of things' wherever they set down to work.

It's really a very interesting, exciting, time for design, with so much of the stuff of our habitat now compelled to reinvention, yet most professional designers remain oblivious! Indeed, the cutting edge is now nowhere near their offices and studios - still obsessed as they are with 'style' and 'brand' and all those other irrelevancies of the old corporate culture. It's now with the Maker-entrepreneurs who define the cutting edge, immersed in the emerging new fabrication techniques and energized - indeed, radicalized - by the new design imperatives the future is imposing on us and the emerging fight over control of the cultural commons of technology, production, and design knowledge. It's in the Fab Labs and Makerspaces where our initial hints of a Post-Industrial aesthetic can now be seen.

We can obviously anticipate a revival of appreciation for old handcraft but this is also a problem because there are simply too many people today with too many needs to fill and so we cannot simply turn-back the clock on production technique. Rather, we must devise, through design, new ways to work with old and new materials to minimize skill-dependence and meet that demand. And all this will play out in that first, transitional, phase of the Solarpunk era which we've characterized as the most chaotic, experimental, and most 'punk' of our anticipated phases.

Packaging, and Living Without It: As we have started becoming more aware of the many problems associated with product packaging today, many alternative materials are starting to be explored. But this is ultimately a limited and still wasteful strategy. The problem isn't just with the choice of materials but also the compulsion to packaging at all.

Much of this relates to the way the imperatives of the market economy have permeated the culture and the way it chose to deal with the consumer transaction through the venue of stores. Packaging is a key part of the marketing process, its design often as elaborate - and as costly - as that of products themselves. There is a bizarre psycho-sensory arms race playing out on the typical store shelf. One would think this would have started to become redundant by now as online shopping has supplanted the need for this weird shelf-competition. But companies have yet to start more minimally packaging goods with the new online marketplace in-mind. They seem to behave either oblivious to the reality of online shopping or reluctant to produce alternate runs of packaging. Old habits die hard...

Packaging does serve the important role of protecting products from damage, which is especially critical because of the nature of speculative mass-production. Mass produced goods sit in storage for long periods after being made and then are shipped great distances to the stores that distribute them. That is all inherently hazardous to goods. Packaging protects goods both by shielding them from impact and contact and also simplifying their often irregular shapes for easier packing into containers and vehicles. There is also the important role of maintaining the hygienic/sterile status of many products, food in particular.

While many promising packaging alternatives are emerging, the superior way of dealing with these issues is 'structural' - in other words, changing how and where we market and access goods. Key to this will be the obsolescence of distant mass production by local on-demand or 'direct' production. This improves things in several ways. First, it is much more efficient to ship materials and parts than finished goods because those pack more densely, simply, and tightly and, by their nature, facilitate standardized reusable packaging where they need it. You're not only creating waste through elaborate packaging but also in terms of energy - and thus carbon overhead - squandered on unused volume. The fact of this has been well proven over the long history of 'flat-pak' product design. Next, if goods are made nearby they only need protection in the transport from local production point to the consumer's home and, again, need not 'sell' themselves through that packaging allowing it to be lighter, standardized, free from toxic inks, colorings, and clear plastic inserts, and potentially more easily recyclable or reusable. Finally, it is fundamentally more energy efficient for goods to be brought to the consumer than for them to wander around gathering them. (though on-demand delivery for fast-foods is the terribly wasteful exception) The reason for this is the redundancy of transportation created when many people are simultaneously and randomly traveling around shopping. Collective delivery means fewer vehicles whose routes can be optimised for efficiency. The modern convention of shopping in numerous dispersed stores MUST be stopped or radically changed in the future. Thankfully, already traditional retail is in a global death-spiral.

The closer the consumer lives to the point of product access the less inconvenient it is to rely on reusable containers they own themselves. This is the concept behind 'refilling shops' which specialize in bulk goods customers bring their own containers to carry. A large variety of goods are suited to this approach and retail ventures are emerging to explore it, though it is a big cultural shift. Ideally, it needs the help of reusable container design which can standardize volumes/weights and forms (some skeuomorphic in nature) for certain classes of products to aid the retailer and convenience of customers. Little of that is actually being done today despite the obvious trend. The design community remains oblivious.

What all this suggests about packaging in our imagined Solarpunk future is that there will be much less and much simpler forms of it, a greater reliance on reusable packaging as well as alternative/recyclable materials (glass in particular), and ultimately big changes in the nature of our access to goods. There will be increasing reliance on digital and virtual display methods, online marketing, and the use of models and samples to sell goods. There will be less 'impulse buying', which is wasteful to begin with. Most shops can be expected to become relics of the past where there is no value added through social interaction.

In the early Solarpunk era we can expect to see most experimentation through alternative methods of distribution in the retail setting. While the long-term trend points to an ultimate obsolescence of shops, they may see brief local resurgence in seemingly old-fashioned forms as a means of returning goods access to within walking distance. There will be a return to the town square and 'main street' of the past. It is also in this form that many entrepreneurs will introduce local production technology. Many products will be made in-store or in walk-in accessible workshops and will rely on samples and show models. Cars, appliances, phones and furniture may quite soon become commonly assembled at dealerships much as personal computers often were. This trend will culminate in the increasing convergence of this production in common facilities as, particularly in times of crisis, communities become reliant on multi-functional community workshops. Automated community warehouse facilities will later emerge subsuming the role of companies like Amazon by providing multipurpose storage space much the same way data centers provide data services. There will also be an emergence of goods sharing facilities. 'Freestores', tool and appliance lending libraries, and the like often aided by the convenience of these local automated warehouse centers.

By the middle Solarpunk era there may be enough of an automated local goods transport infrastructure (PPT - Personal Packet Transit) that the vast majority of products can be ordered online and shipped to the home even if made relatively nearby. The larger/longer trend of retail obsolescence will reassert itself, though local, less specialized, 'convenience stores' and retail with service/social components (barber shops, cafes/restaurants/communal kitchens/langars, bookstores, hobby stores) will likely persist in proximity to social centers for the sake of walk-in convenience. New 'product galleries' may also appear here (for independent designers) to market new goods through showcase samples. Remaining shops may likely become based on unattended 'honor store' models or use robotic kiosks, if general use of currency isn't completely obsolesced by then. Greatly generalized local production facilities will be common in most communities, but many households also will cultivate their own in-home production, particularly to facilitate customization or independent product development as a profession. Corporations - should they persist - will largely abandon manufacturing and retail to focus on design/development, but in constant competition with open source development from around the globe.

By the late Solarpunk era, Integral Basic Income (IBI) based on predictive analysis of demand becomes the norm, money a fading memory, and most production, storage, and distribution completely automated and embedded into the infrastructure of the built habitat as a municipal utility. Many smaller goods will be home-fabricated for convenience. With the advent of robust nanotechnology, many goods may become 'self-fabricating' - grown like plants - wherever one has the space to put it and is willing to wait. A great deal of home furnishing may become integrated and formed like this as the superstructure of the built habitat becomes subsumed by a nanotech infrastructure.

Energy: As the key factor in defining the footprint of civilization and the context of the logistics it functions under, energy systems will greatly influence the appearance of the habitat in terms of both their physical presence and the constraints the forms of energy place on the organization of the habitat. As we've previously noted, a renewable energy world is a predominantly electric powered one and because of the constraints of electric power distribution we anticipate a shrinking of the footprint of the built habitat to something in many ways similar to that of the Age of Steam, more urban as a physically denser power grid is more efficient in many ways as is tracked transportation that can employ energy directly from a grid without the contrivance of batteries. Additionally, we anticipate development of a more resilient 'bidirectional' power network integrating many alternating points of power generation, storage, and consumption, as opposed to the energy grids of the past where power was mass produced in a distant plant location and sent one-way out through the municipal grid. With the resilient grid, every home and building is now a potential power producer.

But, due to the long and deliberate suppression by the fossil fuel industry, renewable energy remains quite underdeveloped today despite rapid advance in recent years. As we enter the Post-Industrial transition, the renewables technology is not entirely in place or especially refined, certain technology remains largely unexplored, technologies like photovoltaics remain heavily dependent upon old-fashioned giant-scale mass production, and thus the early Solarpunk era faces some challenges in this development as old infrastructures collapse and supply chains for high-tech goods are disrupted. Let us consider how this may play out with the different types of renewable energy systems across the three phases of Solarpunk history.

Photovoltaics are the most recognizable form of solar energy today and appear in a great variety of forms from small cells integrated into many appliances to vast arrays of rigid and flexible panels, mounted on roofs or in large rural installations, and sometimes integrated into the windows of buildings. But they are also the most complex to manufacture due to the need for sophisticated materials processing and their expense has long been a factor in delaying their adoption. As we've noted, they are the least well adapted to independent/local production. It is actually possible to make your own PV cells based on organic dyes deriving, oddly enough, from a variety of berry juices. But the performance for this remains too poor for more than very small devices and educational uses. And so this form of solar energy would, during the early Solarpunk era, likely be subject to much disruption in supply. (likewise, other electronics relying on sophisticated semiconductors) There is much effort in advancing organic PVs because of their potential economy, ability to use plastic substrates, and avoidance of rare materials, but it's slow-going. Breakthroughs are on the horizon, but in a near-term crisis situation new PV hardware is likely to become scarce, large remote PV installations scavenged for local use, with other energy systems preferred for Outquisition/Urban Nomad interventions in outlier communities because of easier local production.

By the middle era PVs would be back to their full production, but based on local means employing digital production methods. Their physical presence would be great everywhere and one would expect a return to large solar farms on the urban periphery, often of a hybrid nature with raised translucent panel arrays sheltering crops or grazing under them and support structures serving double-duty for wind turbines. In the late era dedicated PV technology may be surpassed by integrated hybrid technology aided by nanotechnology as well as the use of other renewables technologies. Dedicated solar panels may be a thing of the past as every exposed built surface not covered by plant life may potentially have PV functionality built into it. We may also move such systems into space, with the vast rural solar panel arrays of the past replaced by 'rectenna' arrays receiving that energy from space-based solar arrays as microwave beams.

Solar Thermal systems rely on the collection of solar energy as heat that can be stored and used in a variety of ways, usually involving the heating of some working fluid ranging from simple water to molten salts and metals and in a few cases materials heated to plasma states at extreme temperatures. The most commonly seen domestic forms are the solar heater panels and vacuum tubes often used to heat water for pools and home heating. Slightly less common is 'passive solar' architecture relying on extensive window areas with careful insolation alignment for solar heating - more common in rural homes that can be freely positioned to this ideal alignment. But for large scale power they are most commonly used to drive 'Rankine Cycle' systems where the solar heat drives a fluid cycle turning a turbogenerator to produce electricity. Such systems were demonstrated even in the 19th century. There are many variations on this. Large arrays of mirror 'troughs' with heat collector pipes running along them, vast arrays of mirrors concentrating light on a tower (the highest energy concentrators), salt ponds that trap and concentrate heat, and Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion, which taps the temperature difference between deep and surface seawater to drive low-pressure Rankine systems. More compact systems employ parabolic collectors which can be used for small turbogenerators, small 'Sterling Cycle' engines, or to heat water to steam for industrial processing or simple cooking. Some are small and free-standing units using uniform or cellular dish collectors - portable reflecting cookers are common - but these systems are often integrated into the design of buildings, as with some solar laboratories and communal solar kitchens like that famously built in Auroville India.

A lesser known form of solar thermal system are stack-effect turbines which combine elements of solar thermal energy collection with wind turbine technology, allowing for more consistent power generation. They function by creating a thermally driven updraft in a chimney hosting ducted fan turbines. These systems are today being integrated into greenhouses serving as a heat collector where they can serve additional duty as urban farms.

Solar thermal systems have the advantage of being readily designed and manufactured with modest production means and have long been the subject of DIY solar energy experimentation. Thus in the early Solarpunk era we would expect much reliance on this type of solar energy system. Mobile solar community kitchens or 'langars' (the communal kitchens of the Sikh community) may become iconic of the Outquisition/Urban Nomad movement. But the different systems don't scale freely, the primary power systems limited to very large scales. They also have severe limitations in the site situations that can host them and the climate zones they can be most effectively used in. As supplemental systems, small scale systems work most anywhere, but as primary energy systems they are most practical in lower latitude locations with high insolation, and so large installations are more commonly seen in desert or tropical areas. Likewise, OTEC systems are usually employed in tropical waters and, ideally, along the Equator.

By the mid Solarpunk era, we could expect the smaller, independent, supplemental uses of solar thermal technology to be largely obsolesced by reliable municipal-scale power. OTEC expansion in particular may prove crucial as a part of hydrogen-based shipping infrastructure. By the late Solarpunk era it may be largely obsolete except in terms of OTEC-based marine settlements and passive solar architectural elements in the design of urban superstructures.

Sunlight is, of course, also directly used as a source of light but, until recently, this has been reliant on architectural design and the careful placement of windows and skylights. In recent years the technology of fiber optics has been applied to the manipulation and conveyance of light in ways similar to electricity, allowing for the creation of natural light collectors or 'heliostats' in panel-like forms that can direct their light by cable to locations impractical for the placement of windows. A small but slowly growing number of companies currently produce such fiber optic heliostat systems that communicate light by cable anywhere within a building, including to a variety of individual light emitters that can be switched on and off just like electric light. These systems are also indifferent to moisture and are often used for outdoor and underwater lighting. The potential for this particularly in urban farming/gardening is great and the systems can be integrated with high efficiency electric 'light pumps' to provide light at night while reducing the amount of electric wiring typically needed for lighting. Wiring failures are a major source of building fires and the need for special training in electrical system assembly a barrier to owner-builder construction. Fiber optic systems reduce this problem, its cabling only conveying light from outdoor heliostats and centralized indoor 'light pumps'. This is one technology where we can suggest that advance is likely all across the three phases of Solarpunk history owing to the simplicity of the technology and the advent of 3D printing capability for optics.

Synthetic photosynthesis is another emergent solar technology which may prove very significant to a Solarpunk future. It is generally considered as a means to the more efficient solar-powered production of hydrogen, synthetic fuels, and may possibly be employed for carbon sequester. Systems are physically similar to photovoltaic cells and panels but based on membranes that are supplied by small tubing with feedstocks of water or other chemicals and output their products similarly. Some designs employ cells intended to mimic the appearance of plant leaves. This technology is more likely to make an appearance in large scales in the mid and late Solarpunk eras, where nanotechnology starts to come into its own.

Wind turbines are the second-most iconic form of renewable energy and are already fairly well refined. They are also fairly scalable and are likely to be incorporated into the future habitat in many ways, though in practice they too increase in efficiency with scale and most refined municipal power systems will rely primarily on turbines of large scale situated in ideal wind corridors. In the early Solarpunk era we would expect their extensive use at intermediate scales because of the portability of such systems, their potential for small-scale low-tech production and makeshift design based on up-cycled materials and hardware, and their option to be readily retrofit to many buildings and structures thanks to a vast assortment of shapes and configurations. Even relatively low-performing 'savonius' type turbines have practical potential in some situations. And the quite ancient use of the turbine as a direct source of mechanical power still has many useful possibilities even in a mostly electric powered world. The integration of wind turbines into architecture - as with solar - could be considered itself a key feature of the Solarpunk aesthetic and we would anticipate that, by the middle Solarpunk era, every possible approach to this might be explored in the urban habitat. However, by the late Solarpunk era we may actually see this technology go into decline as improved efficiencies of other technologies and the introduction of new sources of energy eventually supersede it.

Hydropower has long been a close associate of wind power, sharing as they do the basis in fluid physics, and there has often been crossfertalization between their development. Hydropower was the initial basis of large scale industrial mechanization. In modern times the whole environmental impact of dam construction has become apparent and their use has gone into some decline, despite grandiose state projects of the developing world. In the future we are likely to see this technology expand in the form of stream/river turbines with less impact than dams, similar tidal turbines and ducted tidal systems, revival of ram pump technology, various wave motion systems, and the advent of magnetohydrodynamic power systems aided by the advent of high-temperature superconductors. And there is, again, potential for novel integration in things like sewer/water pipe turbines. However, the technology will generally be more limited by geography than wind power systems and in the early Solarpunk era the devastation of coastal areas caused by climate change induced storms and sea level rise may be a detriment to its deployment. Similar to wind, we would expect most of its use to emerge in the middle era while declining in the late era, with the exception of large, solid-state, magnetohydrodynamic ocean current hoops made possible by the new materials realized through nanotechnology.

Biofuels and closely related synthetic fuels are likely to be predominantly a feature of the early Solarpunk era obsolesced in later eras, this because, as previously noted, they can only ever be carbon-neutral while the general imperative is to achieve a carbon-negative civilization. In the early era, their potential to aid energy independence and resilience of communities, particularly in farming areas, supersedes this limitation. Farming wastes and human waste will be the primary feedstocks for this production, followed by more dedicated use of algaeculture and mariculture, with their distinctive structures in the form of tubing arrays, growing 'races', and floating frames. In later eras only the algaeculture and mariculture may persist, chiefly as a new food and industrial products source. Marine settlements may rely extensively on the farming of algae for the production of their own architecture, using concrete-like materials deriving from the microscopic skeletons of diatoms.

Geothermal energy is a very great yet underdeveloped renewable source of energy, limited as it long has been by rare locations with near-surface volcanism that are, of course, inherently hazardous. Like solar thermal systems, it is primarily utilized through Rankin cycle systems using some high temperature working fluid to drive a turbine. Other methods, however, remain less explored such as elaborate thermocouple systems, infrared photovoltaic arrays, and magnetohydrodynamic fluid dynamos. The chief complication for these systems is the need for deep earth drilling to reach strata with the constant high temperatures needed, which is further complicated by the frequent disruption of such boreholes by volcanic activity. But in recent years improvements in drilling technology and lower pressure turbines exploiting lower temperature ratios have opened the possibility of much more widespread use of the technology - albeit limited to very large scale projects. Consequently, these large minimum scales preclude much development of this technology in the early Solarpunk era unless in select areas with access to hot springs. More development is likely in the middle era while, by the late Solarpunk era, the advent of robust nanotechnology offers the prospect of self-constructing structures that may see every city extending its own plant-like root systems into the Earth to exploit subterranean resources and energy.

Nuclear energy has long been anathema to environmentalists, for many good reasons. But the potential abundance of clean electric energy on offer has always been extremely compelling, if only its systems, fuel sourcing, and by-products were not so extremely dangerous for such extreme periods of time and so easily converted to weapons of mass destruction. But much of this problem relates to the reliance on the uranium fuel cycle adopted in the Post-War period largely for the purpose of creating an infrastructure for weapons under the guise of 'peaceful commercial development'. The lie of Atoms for Peace... But in recent years there has been a revelation of the suppressed history of molten salt reactor development based on abundant thorium that was originally developed in parallel to the uranium based technology and which offered to greatly reduce the hazards associated with this source of energy - only to be abandoned specifically because it was useless for weapons creation. Along with this has emerged a tantalizing prospect for the realization of nuclear fusion systems which, likewise, much reduce the hazards associated with this source of energy. It is thus very likely that nuclear power will continue to be a prospect in our imagined 'green' future. Aside from possible smaller sizes (some anticipating molten salt reactors small enough to be containerized) and a lack of large pressure containment vessels, such systems would probably be visually similar to today's nuclear plants, relying on Rankine cycle systems for their actual power output and thus employing the various cooling towers common to these. The novel technology would be on their insides.

However, in the early Solarpunk era such technology is not likely to see much advance because of its continued reliance on systems of very large scale, complexity, and cost beyond the reach of the small community. In fact, at present nuclear energy is in decline everywhere and, with the likely turmoil we anticipate in the Post-Industrial transition, the development of these new types of systems may be suspended for some time. Thus the realization of such technology might only be a prospect for the late Solarpunk era, with a strong possibility that it may prove completely unnecessary by then by virtue of the advances in renewable energy. We know that underdeveloped technology like OTEC alone could support a civilization ten times the size of our own currently. A civilization that can achieve some degree of sustainability may never need to go to the extreme of building their own mini-suns except, perhaps, for use in space.

Energy storage is a critical element of a renewable energy infrastructure, and some approaches to this may have a significant visible presence in the future built habitat. We are most familiar today with chemical batteries, but these remain problematic due to the relatively rare materials they still require and the impactive mining processes needed to extract them. Much effort is finally being put into their improvement today and we can expect these limitations to be whittled-down over time in incremental improvements. But bear in mind that, just as with photovoltaics, we have that potential for disruption of research and production in the early Solarpunk era, which will call for alternatives more accessible to local production. Thus some very interesting alternatives may come forward in that time, even with certain caveats to their efficiency and demand-response times.

Those based on simple mechanisms have the most potential in this context and one we've previously noted was pneumatic power storage. Long used as the basis of power for a variety of tools, this technology has potential at small and large scales, but less so at intermediate scales due to the need for very high pressures and advanced materials and fabrication methods for the tanks containing it. Small scale systems typically rely on direct use of the stored air pressure to drive small machines using turbines or other motors, this being more efficient at that scale than trying to convert that potential energy to another form. Large scale systems, intended for municipal power systems, use larger pressure-driven turbogenerators to produce electricity and large subterranean chambers - natural caves or disused mines - as their storage tanks. Thus they are very limited in location. Pneumatic automobiles have actually been developed, but being intermediate scale systems, tended to be hampered by the engineering of the lightweight super-pressure tanks they needed to contain enough pressure to give them useful operating ranges. But one can imagine stationary systems, based on heavier but simpler tanks, being a possibility in some applications.

Gravity has been used as a means of energy storage going back into antiquity and offers prospects for very low-tech systems supporting municipal scale power storage, though not especially useful at smaller scale. Two forms already in use today are water storage systems and gravity trains. Water storage systems use elevated pools or dams to store energy as water pumped from lower ground and then extracted when drained using hydroturbines. Some of these systems can use seawater. Gravity trains use electric powered locomotives with regenerative braking, towing a series of weighted cars up an incline to store energy then releasing it by passively rolling downhill. Again, the viability of these approaches depends on the local geography. More freely located and smaller scale systems have been based on simple towers in which weights are winched up to store power and allowed to drop to release it. But these tend to be limited by the practical size of their weights, cable strengths, and the heights of their towers.

Flywheels are another promising mechanical energy storage method that has even been touted for domestic energy use with home solar systems. However, as simple as they seem, their potential for electric energy depends on being able to spin at extreme velocities with very low friction. So, again, they have tended to be hampered by their necessarily advanced engineering, fabrication, and materials. No domestic-scale systems seem to have managed to make it to market. But they have seen use in less challenging lower-velocity forms as short term energy storage in applications like busses and trolleys, spacecraft, and uninterruptible power supplies in computer centers.

Packaging electric energy in chemical forms is another option with the key benefit of allowing storage for very long periods. The most well known method for this is, of course, the production of hydrogen gas, usually by various forms of hydrolysis, which has long been explored as an alternative fuel and anticipated as the basis of a general distributed renewable energy infrastructure able to get the energy gathered in places like the tropics or places suited to geothermal energy back to existing communities. There has been much effort in the development of hydrogen powered automobiles with this in mind, but so far the technology has proved difficult to implement at small scales. It's really only useful at the densities of cryogenic liquid hydrogen, which is inherently hazardous and difficult to handle and store. It is very likely we will see a hydrogen infrastructure emerge, but probably not at small scale, which is why many engineers remain skeptical of the prospect for hydrogen cars and planes. However, there are some possible alternatives suited to small scale systems, albeit with a compromise in efficiency. One of these is the use of hydrides in safer, less volatile, forms.

Hydrides, which release hydrogen gas in the presence of water, were long researched as fuels, but proved far too volatile to be safe. However, certain hydride mixtures such as liquid borohydride are more safely less volatile unless in the presence of a metal catalyst. Thus it becomes possible to use small amounts of these metals to limit the reaction rate. However, these are complex chemicals to recycle. More common hydrides - sodium hydride sourced from lye - are easier to produce and recycle but are highly volatile. To make it safer, a concept was devised to encapsulate this material in recyclable thermoplastic pellets which could be mechanically cracked open individually in a water storage tank, thus limiting its reactions to small volumes at a time. This makes the material safer to handle than most any other fuel known, but one must both recycle the resulting lye and the plastic to reuse it. This comes at significant efficiency cost. But it is relatively clean and very safe and so may have many portable energy applications.

Another chemical storage method is the use of 'redox' solutions which store energy as an electrical potential between paired chemicals released by their isolated reaction through a fuel cell system. These are often referred to as 'flow batteries'. This concept was long hoped to become an alternative to fossil fuels but was long stymied by the complexity and toxicity of the chemicals, their recycling, and the cross-contamination common to fuel cells. But in recent years a viable form was discovered in the form of a solution of the rare element vanadium in a solution of sulphuric acid. This proved to be able to store positive and negative potential in the same solution with cross-contamination only modestly diminishing the efficiency. And the recycling of the chemical can be done within the same fuel cells simply by applying electricity. Indeed, with multiple cells, it becomes possible to charge and discharge these solutions. Thus this technology has, in recent years, proven useful as an alternative for data center power backup and municipal scale power storage, since the scale of power contained is limited only by the volume of tank storage. But given the use of that sulphuric acid solution, everything the chemical is in contact with must be made on non-reactive materials such as glass and ceramic. This makes it unlikely to ever see domestic small scale uses, though operating small vehicles with it has been demonstrated.

Using electricity to produce synthetic fuels that could be used in internal combustion engines has long been a focus of research from the earliest times of the chemical industry. The techniques remain, however, complex and involve many hazardous chemicals, thus never realizing a cost-effective alternative to fossil fuels as long as they were much cheaper to produce and your source of energy was fossil fuel of some form to begin with. However, this is still a future possibility and it has been suggested in the past that the combination of nuclear energy and synthetic fuels would be the eventual alternative to fossil fuel. The downside is that, like biofuels, these still produce CO/CO2 when used along with other kinds of pollution. So while a possibility, it would not be as preferable in general use unless that pollution could be better contained. Given the compulsion to seek a carbon-civilization, these may only see specialized use.

In the more distant future we have the prospects of alternative forms of hydrogen such as metallic hydrogen offering the prospect of much higher energy densities than any other form of it, but needing exotic production methods unknown today. Likewise, there are speculative 'nuclear isomer' batteries - sometimes appearing in science fiction literature - which offer a hundred times the density of chemical batteries and nuclear-like energy output in very controlled, and thus presumably safer, forms. Such technology would offer the prospect of machines and vehicles whose entire lifetime energy needs - enough for centuries - would be installed when they are created. If possible at all, such things would only be a prospect for the late Solarpunk era.

Modular Building Systems: This topic deserves some detail of its own because it represents a key characteristic of Solarpunk/Post-Industrial culture and its approach to the habitat. We have already noted previously that modular building systems would be much more common in Solarpunk design, but what sort of systems are we talking about and where are they most likely to be used?

Modular assembly is common in industry and has roots in its earliest days, but generally in the context of individual designs and applications, easing the production of complex devices or structures by allowing them to be broken into smaller step-elements. Taylorization. In the late 19th century (though elements of it can be seen in quite ancient architecture) we began seeing it used in construction, facilitating the precision factory pre-fabrication of building elements that could be assembled by simple means on-site so as to speed the process of building and produce higher-performance structures. In the mid 20th century we began to see the emergence of general purpose modular building systems inspired by 'design science' and intended to support many different uses. And here is where the interest in them from corporate industry began to wane as they proved fundamentally subversive to their agenda of accelerating obsolescence and maximizing consumer dependence. Modular systems remove the skill and technical knowledge required for creating things - ingressing it within the topology of components which become commodified - and this kind of empowerment of the end-user/consumer was a threat to consumerism. They also give things much longer use-life by facilitating the reuse of their components.

Long advocated by designer-futurists like Buckminster Fuller, many such systems have been devised but few have approached any sort of ubiquity in use, with two notable exceptions; the sub-component architecture of the IBM PC that facilitated the computer industry's 'industrial ecology' and the aluminum T-slot profiles originally devised by the ITEM company which likewise facilitated an 'industrial ecology' in industrial automation, overcoming its earlier adoption barriers.

For the Post-Industrial/Solarpunk culture, multi-purpose modular building systems support the ideal of maximizing reuse to extend the life of goods as long as possible. But it's also key to empowering the 'prosumer' (producer-consumer) by overcoming barriers of skill in creating things for themselves and improving the flexibility of local production. With one set of commodity components many different things can be made from, complexity and scale of local production to provide them is much reduced. Some designers refer to this as the Min-A-Max principle; maximum diversity of uses from the minimum diversity of components. In the early and middle Solarpunk eras, where resilience imperatives dominate, this will be a very important capability and so we can anticipate that many neglected or forgotten building systems of the 20th century will be rediscovered and put to new use.

In the early Solarpunk era, where there will be much emphasis on repurposing the detritus of the Industrial Age, modular systems will derive from common or found materials and repurposed industrial products and be used mostly for structures of modest scale. So we can anticipate much use of things like the Grid Beam system, pipe-fitting systems like the well known Kee Klamp, scaffolding systems, industrial and commercial shelving systems, angle-iron, T-slot framing, theatrical truss systems, trade-show framing systems, light geodesic dome systems, and shipping containers - whole and in the collapsable box frames used for industrial and relief shelters. There will be new - but still relatively low-tech - systems as well based on things like bolted-together welded box frames in steel profiles and laminate lumber. (such as demonstrated with Marco Casagrande's Paracity building system)

By the Mid Solarpunk era, modular systems become much more refined with accumulating use experience and the revival of systems lost to industry/corporate hegemonies in the 20th century. The architectural scale space frame building systems of the 20th century - long limited in application by their short-sighted corporate developers - will see more widespread and owner-builder level use. Much architecture will be designed as 'functionally generic' superstructures in anticipation of perpetual adaptive reuse, accommodating outfit by modular plug-in retrofit using prefabricated parts and 'furnitecture' elements. Modular 'platforms' similar to that of the PC but for electric and robotic vehicles will also be common, allowing easy end-user repair and reconfiguration. Many vehicles will commonly be assembled-on-demand at dealerships or, increasingly, in the general community workshops.

The late Solarpunk era sees modularity reduced to the scale of the molecule through the advent of nanotechnology and its means for near-total recyclability. Thus the emphasis on component reusability and end-user ease-of-assembly will be less important. Production and recycling capability will be ubiquitous in a built habitat where organismic buildings and large artifacts are self-growing, self-repairing, and self-adapting. There is a possibility for common artifacts to be based on smart materials that can self-recycle and remake themselves under computer guidance - what this author likes to refer to as 'nanofoam'.

Domestic Goods: As we noted, a great deal of the artifacts in our habitat must be redesigned and reinvented to suit the obsolescence of plastics and polymers we grew so reliant on in the 20th century. But this comes with a lot of near-term trade-offs as the reasons they were often adopted in these roles was because of superior performance or economy. They also facilitated adoption of microwave cooking. Of course, they were also often adopted in the pursuit of the now seemingly deranged practices of 'planned obsolescence' and its overlooked partner the 'sliding scale of economy' - the practice of deliberately bad-design for short-lived products for the sake of reinforcing the perceived value of higher-priced goods without regard to the waste created. How many variations on most product designs do we really need? Do you really express yourself through a choice of mass-produced junk? So there is likely a lot of looking back at earlier materials and re-evaluating their real virtues and shortcomings.

We can thus anticipate that a lot of domestic goods will go back to the use of glass and ceramics, wood, fiberboard, fabric, and metals with minimal finishing or use of anodizing, baked enamel, or other kinds of coating to avoid the use of polymer paints and laminated plastic surfaces. Many old fabrication techniques have been lost with time and will need rediscovery. And there will be adaptations to facilitate independent, smaller-scale, lower-tech, lower-skill, digital/robotic, and thus more local production. With electronics and electrical devices we would anticipate the re-appearance of aluminum - already happening in high-end products - as well as wood and cloth. This will bring with it the return of design approaches based on simpler forms of 'box' or 'tube' enclosures relying on screw assembly and the use of standardized forms with variable face-plates. Designs like the legendary Tivoli Model One radio designed by Henry Kloss, the cloth-covered fiberboard boxes of early radios, 'roadcase/flightcase' construction, or the extruded enclosure profiles like those of old modems. (recently re-emerging in 'NUC' - next unit of computing - type computers) Such adaptation may, early-on, come with a necessary increase in mass and bulkiness for some goods and some complication in meeting contemporary safety standards.

There is already a 'plywood chic' emergent in furniture design (inspired by CNC fabrication) and a rediscovery of interior finishing materials like fabric and cork. There is also likely to be a re-emergence of crafts such as re-upholstery, with new furniture deliberately designed to facilitate it by using resilient core structures in wood, steel, and possibly heavy recycled polyethylene plastic. The quirky, marbled, sometimes gnarled, appearance of recycled plastics that was considered too ugly for mainstream products will become an attraction. Suited to low-tech local industry, it may feature as a replacement for wood in many kinds of heavier furnishings made with bolted construction and modular elements, pulling it out of the waste stream while making it repeatedly reusable until it can finally be obsolesced for-good.

With these materials changes would also come an emphasis on design-to-last, design-for-repair, design-for-reuse, and design-for-recycling, particularly in the early Solapunk era as an act of 'design activism' against the old throw-away culture.

The middle Solarpunk era would see many substitute materials in their refined forms and robotic production well adapted to them. The culture will have worked-out many of the kinks in the earlier approaches to these materials and standardized on many forms. There would be a much smaller spectrum of variant product designs thanks to the elimination of the sliding scale of economy racket. Many designs would anticipate and facilitate end-user customization, made increasingly easy with digital production.

The late Solarpunk era would see the introduction of nanotechnology into mainstream goods design with the emergence of a number of 'diamondoid' materials possible only by this technology. (in the earlier eras, where it exists it would tend to be constrained to uses in subcomponents and very high-performance applications as the means to nano-fabrication may long be limited in physical scale) There would be a general emphasis on using the built habitat and its artifacts as a means to carbon sequester. And so these materials would begin supplanting earlier alternatives even through their extreme performance might be unnecessary for most applications. Many artifacts of this late period may exhibit organismic and parametric design characteristics owing to the 'grown' nature of their fabrication which may borrow heavily from the architectures and processes of biology. Owing to their total recyclability, there will be a certain return to the 'blobject' approach to design of the late 20th century (rounded-edged, permanently sealed, non-repairable designs characteristic of mass production using plastic) They will often be more delicate-looking owing to the extreme strength of their materials and far more solid state, hermetically sealed, eliminating internal voids. Furniture and appliances will increasingly be formed-into architecture after the fashion of free-form organic design as the grown structures will not only retain a capability for their self-repair but also the on-demand creation of furnishing and appliance features.

[an evolution of nanotech production]

Clothing: One of the first industries to adopt global outsourcing in earnest, the garment industry has been hiding many of the dirty details of its production for a long time and represents a particular challenge to the transition to robotic production and more sustainable materials. It may be a persistent hold-out for Industrial Age paradigms. However, it also represents a relatively low-tech spectrum of technique with global ubiquity, albeit labor-intensive. Trends are already well established in the re-adoption of more natural and traditional materials, but the processing for even these remains resource-intensive and some synthetics may persist because of potential use of plant cellulose and recycled PET bottle feedstocks.

Early Solarpunk era clothing will be largely characterized by the growing scarcity of some materials, wider use of hemp and bamboo materials, and the deliberate abandonment of polluting synthetic dyes and polymer materials with a return to the use of embroidery, aplique, batik and block printing, or woven patterns for decoration. Much production may necessarily return to home and community workshops specialized to the craft. Generally, everyday clothing may - for a time - be simpler, less diverse, and less colorful than today with more reliance on plant-based dyes. A new functionalism in clothing design may emerge as society becomes more concerned with durability, ease of production, and comfort than style. With temperatures increasing in many formerly temperate zone areas, functional fashions from Oceania, the Middle-East, and India may spread to the northern hemisphere. Many of today's white-collar work-day fashions may be deliberately abandoned in protest against the older 'corporate culture' they symbolize. In times of crisis, repurposed and recycled materials may be used for makeshift clothing, often similar to that depicted in post-apocalyptic themed media. There may even be a neo-primitivist trend as an expression of a desired 'return to nature' in many communities, though much of that fashion may not be particularly practical.

By the middle-era clothing may begin to return to its older diversity due largely to improving robotics and new sustainable materials. It may still rely on more specialized machines and production facilities than the general goods production that are more easily accommodated in robot design. Some promising methods of fully robotic clothing production are being experimented with today and may see expanded use later in the middle Solarpunk era. Laser cutting of fabric is increasingly common and methods of freezing or temporarily petrifying fabrics allow them to be more easily manipulated by robots. A so-called 3D printing technique has appeared based on what is essentially spray-flocking of reusable garment preforms. Felting is a simple alternative to weaving and may see various forms of high-tech revival. Fabric welding by various means has long been under experimentation, but has not supplanted conventional sewing methods, possibly because of technology costs. However, these may emerge compelled by the need to eliminate manual labor that can no longer be simply farmed out to poor countries as transportation costs increase and 20th century economics is disrupted.

Curiously, the advent of nanotechnology in the later era may not have as much or as rapid impact on garment design as it will likely have on just about everything else, even though it will certainly result in a variety of novel materials and the capability to integrate various electronics and active systems. One reason for this is that, with that kind of technology, the human body itself may become an open canvas for self-expression, as easily physically modified as a choice of clothing. Fabrics based on microlattice structures fabricated on precise preforms or even grown-on the user may appear and may have many utilitarian uses where a contiguous 'second skin' is desirable. (such as mechanical counter-pressure space suits, VR tactile feedback suits, and water-breathing diving gear) But, for a while, it may be more difficult to match the tactile qualities of woven materials with these more monolithic materials, flexible as they can be. Of course, certain new fashions may be devised around that second-skin nature and the ability to form-in surface features like those of various organisms, such as fur, bioluminescence, chromatophores, and so on.

Architecture and Housing: A common misconception is that sustainability in architecture is largely a matter of materials choice and the use of solar power. And though it may be a major consumer of materials and energy, in truth, how people live and how architecture facilitates that lifestyle matters much more. 'Net impact' is what's really important. Fossil fuels have long enabled a pathological way of life, squandering valuable land and facilitating the habitation of places where people probably should not live. Our approaches to housing worked hand-in-hand with this, encouraging consumerist lifestyles and dependency on cars. We literally brought the car right into our houses! We crafted the whole modern built habitat more to suit the needs of the automobile and market than our own. This is fundamentally unsustainable. The Solarpunk future will see architecture become a crucial tool in the cultivation of both a more environmentally sustainable lifestyle but also a more humane, social, one.

As we already noted, this is likely to be a more urban way of life by default with emphasis on factoring out the compulsion to use the automobile to meet one's daily needs. Cities are the most sustainable way for people to live. Potentially, the lowest in net-impact. But they have rarely been well designed or managed habitats, subject to the whims of property speculation and politics, and thus were demonized by earlier environmentalists because of those dysfunctions. And they too succumbed to the cult of the car - ironically, adopted as a cleaner and safer alternative to horses. Our habitat should be more intentional in design, with a more democratic, organic, bottom-up participation of society in its development. It's management should no longer be casually delegated to politicians, real estate developers, and 'experts' who, increasingly, do not live in the same reality as that of mainstream society. It must do-away with the pathology of real estate speculation and the gridded parceling of land. And, of course, there will be more appropriate materials and more use of plants, but that's secondary to the way the habitat must work and whose interests it must be optimized for.

During the transitional era the means to transform the habitat will be necessarily limited by the resistance of established property owners, laws, conventions, and entrenched bureaucracies protecting them, and often local governments hopelessly corrupt or stuck in the Industrial Age past. And so much of the change will be insurgent in nature and rely heavily on the principle of adaptive reuse. Here again we meet that idea of an Outquisition or Urban Nomad movement which seeks to intervene in communities where the established system has failed its citizens and begun some kind of territorial retreat in authority and control. These interventionists would be highly skilled in approaches to adaptive reuse of existing older buildings, with this dominating the architectural aesthetic of the time. Much as obsolete urban industrial buildings saw adaptation by a generation of artists and hipsters with the 'lofting' movement of the past, we would expect a similar fate for today's office buildings, corporate and light industrial 'parks', and retail structures - the new urban detritus. We can imagine them transformed by clever retrofit into eclectic self-contained communities akin to Hans Widmer's Bolos. We would also expect more of the same alternative community development phenomenon we've seen to date, with groups of people going to edge-of-wilderness locations or otherwise abandoned/underused areas for the freedom to create 'intentional communities' with radically alternative architecture bureaucratically barred from use in mainstream communities. Here is where we would expect the most experimentation with new architecture, materials, and construction methods. We would also anticipate the growth in temporary or accidental settlements compelled by the forced migration of populations due to Global Warming impacts. Here a 'nomadic' approach to architecture would be the convention with the immediate demand for basic shelter, sometimes made with makeshift and recycled/upcycled elements like shipping containers, container shelter frames, and upcycled old vehicles, that transition over time to more permanent habitation should such 'camps' be allowed or compelled to remain persistent.

By the mid Solarpunk era many towns and cities will have been abandoned with the changes of the previous era and in those that remain a mix of repurposed old and new architecture would be common. Large highways are being demolished as new or revived electric rail systems take their place. Cars are falling in number and excluded from much of the now intentionally walkable habitat. Commercial and retail facilities have largely gone obsolete, their structures repurposed or razed. Residence is once again the primary purpose of the city, quality-of-life it's primary concern. Industry and agriculture have returned to the urban habitat, but now miniaturized, through community urban farms, fabrication workshops, and warehouses managed as municipal utilities. Founded on the digital production techniques emerging at the start of the 21st century, they all increasingly employ robotics. Most goods and the most perishable of foods are commonly produced locally. There is increasing use of automated personal and packet transport with newer communities and buildings designed to accommodate automated delivery service.

Like just about everything we made in the 20th century, the design of housing was deliberately intended to maximize waste in the name of profit, supporting the racket of real estate growth through the ingression of labor costs into property values through the notion of 'land improvement'. The delusional idea that you can in any way improve land by building things on it will likely be abandoned in the future as we come to realise land's natural state holds the greatest potential - and thus greatest value - of all. Suburban homes were deliberately overelaborate in design and most of the cost/labor of their construction went to interior finishing work often using latantly toxic materials. Yet, ironically, the first thing most people did moving into a new home was to renovate that interior! The rate of home renovations, particularly for bathrooms and kitchens, has steadily increased well into early 21st century with little effort made to ameliorate this by reducing dependence on specialty service trades. The result; a steady stream of unrecyclable landfill waste.

Such unsustainable practices would be largely gone by the mid-Solarpunk era. Decades of cultural experience through an era of constant and rapid change will have compelled a convention of functionally generic architecture in many communities; structures designed specifically with perpetual adaptive reuse in mind, employing minimalist superstructures or modular structural systems intended to adapt to many purposes over time. The structure that cannot change with the society is doomed to demolition - a waste of valuable material. Many buildings are multi-purpose, often incorporating rooftop parks and farms. (green roofs of some sort are a general convention, along with solar and smaller scale wind systems) There is great emphasis on empowering unskilled individuals in the crafting and maintenance of their own habitat, typically through modularity, retrofit, and 'furnitecture'; furnishings that bridge the line between furniture and architecture through the use of multifunctional volumetric forms and modular structures. (we will discuss that in more detail in a later section) Most forms of 'destructive construction' (ie. anything involving nails, self-embedding screws, paints, adhesives) that hamper reuse/recycling have been obsolesced.

By the late era the urban habitat has evolved into a lacey urban web across the face of a much-restored natural environment. This urban web is composed of a verdant, contiguous, flowing, parametrically designed 'urban landscape' superstructure complementing the adjacent natural landscape with similar forms along the path of narrow urban corridors, built - by robots - from carbon-sequestering masonry materials serving as a vast carbon sink. Most architecture is designed to merge into this superstructure, most residence arrayed like townhouses along the edges of large contour-terraces hosting farming and park space with various water features. At the human scale things are more personally and freely customized, creating an eclectic crazy-quilt of facades and 'living wall' garden installations. Originally designed to accommodate plug-in modular retrofit, with the new self-constructing materials assimilating the superstructure more free-form organic shapes are becoming the convention. Enclosed interior avenues, atriums, and open narrow valleys and caldera host public areas. Clusters of wind turbines sprout like copses of giant sunflowers and ribbons of PV glass canopies flow down slopes like frozen waterfalls. Pinnacle and dome forms emerge to host special-purpose public buildings such as schools, museums and galleries, public assemblies and such. The general form is low, only a handful of terrace levels, but features more, and more sharply sloped, terraces where the superstructure branches or crosses to create more lively centers of activity.

Most powered transportation has disappeared into the superstructure. Only pedestrians, human-powered, and personal electric vehicles are commonly seen on the surface, along with modest-sized service robots. Old conventions of real estate and the grid-like parceling of land have been abandoned, thus facilitating such an organic contiguous landscape. The superstructure is a commons, space freely available on a first-come-first-serve basis, built and managed with the aid of AI systems linked to millions of sensors that cultivate the superstructure like a self-learning symbiotic organism while leaving the human-scale architecture to humans themselves to outfit as they wish. In the most technically advanced areas this superstructure has literally become a synthetic organism akin to a reef, formed of self-constructing smart materials hosting colonies of nanomachines and a fluid vascular system distributing material to complement the digital nervous system.

Though most of the structure features this common parametric aesthetic, most suited to AI design, some areas are more actively managed by local community and professional groups and feature more 'themed' or 'period' architecture. These include so-called 'secular ashrams' that take roles such as universities, research institutes, art collectives and media studios, resorts and theme parks designed also to be the homes of those who work there.

Furnitecture: Deriving from a number of design concepts of the late 20th century, 'furnitecture' is a concept this author devised as specifically expressing principles of Post-Industrial culture and its perspective on the built habitat. Thus it is anticipated to become an iconic design element of the future culture. The portmanteau implies the merging of furniture and architecture in the design of multi-purpose volumetric structures that replace the functions of traditional rooms in simpler, more-or-less open-plan, settings.

This author's interest in such designs originated with a study of low-toxic housing intended to aid sufferers of Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Syndrome or 'environmental illness' whose needs for housing are largely ignored by the mainstream building industry, facilitating owner-builder strategies that not only produce modest-cost low-toxic shelter but shelter potentially buildable by unskilled people of possibly diminished health. One approach can be found in the use of 'high-performance' structures based on prefabricated or modular construction - often industrial in nature and made without the adhesives and paints so typical of conventional housing. Such structures tend to be simple shells or pavilions in form, producing open-plan spaces devoid of fixed walls which, of course, require elaborate skilled finishing. Furnitecture was devised as a means to comfortably outfit such dwellings using light free-standing elements made of non-conventional non-toxic materials. Initial inspiration was found in the work of futurist designer Ken Isaacs and his Living Structures made from simple modular frames of unfinished wood intended to maximize the utility of space by making more use of its volume. His building system Matrix evolved into today's Grid Beam system.

This author realized that, by their owner-built, freely adapted, freely moveable nature, their ability to facilitate nomadic lifestyles, and the quick and easy adaptive-reuse of found buildings and unconventional structures, these structures embodied the essential nature of a Post-Industrial culture. They represent a culture that embraces perpetual change, mobility, self-reliance/resilience, and rapid evolution as the norm.

There are several basic types of furnitecture; pods, frames and mezzanines, modular cabinet systems, modular wall/shell systems, and built-ins.

Pod furnitecture is based on small free-standing enclosures comprised of a single box-like unit, often designed to be fully closed and often featuring castors for easy mobility. The concept takes its cues from the designs of enclosed beds common to a number of ancient cultures and their modern reinvention, the 'capsule hotel' pods devised in Japan in the mid 20th century and reappearing in some 21st century hotels. Their original purpose was to provide more privacy in multigenerational households as well as more thermal insulation in draftier buildings. Later variations on the concept sought to extend the notion of a self-contained 'appliance' to the collective functions of a room.

Though multifunctional, pods usually feature a primary application such as sleeping, food preparation, bathroom, lounging, entertainment, working, indoor farming, etc. The exterior of the enclosures often feature secondary uses like shelving and cabinets. Though generally intended for use indoors in an open-plan setting, they can be weatherproofed for use in the outdoors as well where they are combined in a 'compound home' arrangement and can potentially support light roofing or tensile structures. They are generally never larger than a smaller-sized shipping container. In some designs pods are designed for stacking and linking as a space-filling modular system, creating elaborate complexes filling larger spaces.

Pod furnitecture would be particularly iconic of the early Solarpunk era and the Outquisition/Urban Nomad movement whose activists would use this form for easy transport and rapid deployment of their facilities using random found host structures. Likely based on the use of roadcase/flightcase construction commonly used by travelling performers and musicians, they would comprise both domestic roles and workstations for many kinds of machine tools, microfarms, deployable energy, and communications systems.

Frame and mezzanine furnitecture is based on the use of various modular open frame building systems and used to create additional levels of function/activity for more use of the volume of spaces. Open frames are combined with rigid and tensile partition panels, heavier deck and shelving panels, appliance inserts, pod-like cabin units, and retrofit fixtures. In some designs they can be the basis of yurt or tent-like shelters enclosed in weatherproof fabric shells and insulating blankets. Systems such as Grid Beam, T-slot profile extrusions, scaffolding systems, industrial shelving, modular warehouse mezzanine systems, pipe fitting systems, and space frame systems may all be used in this role. In some designs a space-filling frame is used to host pod type units within the structure, creating elaborate complexes. This form directly deriving from the early Living Structures, it is another form most representative of the early Solarpunk era with its extensive use of up-cycled and makeshift furnishings and structures.

Modular cabinet systems are a more refined form of furnitecture best suited to machine-assisted prefabrication and thus representative of the middle Solarpunk era. They derive from the Modernist full-wall modular shelving and cabinet systems developed by many furniture companies but are designed to be self-standing. They are usually intended for the inner area of a space while leaving the perimeter free, except where they may be placed along demising walls in the same fashion of conventional whole-wall cabinets/shelves.

In the early 21st century Japanese designer Shigeru Ban came to the realization that the quality of furniture construction was often much superior to that of the structure of houses and began exploring the use of reinforced prefabricated shelf/cabinet systems combined with minimalist roof/floor deck systems as a primary housing structure. He dubbed this series of designs the Furniture Houses. Influenced by this, cabinet furnitecture employs free-standing cabinet/shelf modules as partitions dividing space into functional areas. Like pod furnitecture, many of these integrate other furniture elements and appliances and can feature casters or sliding pads for rapid reconfiguration. They can be single or dual 'sided', which means they may have functional features on one or both sides and can be joined face-to-face to create a mobile enclosure protecting their contents for transport. Reinforced versions can function, as per the Furniture Houses, as load-bearing support for simple pavilion houses, plugged into floor/roof deck systems otherwise covered by plug-in decorative finishing panels and enclosed in non-load-bearing exterior window and weather proof wall panels.

Modular wall/shell systems derive from the carved wooden panelling systems often used in ancient masonry buildings to finish their interiors, providing sound and thermal insulation and a generally more comfortable environment than bare brick and stone. Even in their ancient forms, they were often quite modular in design and frequently repurposed like furniture for use in multiple buildings. In their modern form they are based on systems combining wall, floor, and ceiling elements which can be based on many pre-finished materials and, like the cabinet/wall system, incorporate storage, appliances, lighting, and other fixtures into the panel elements along with integrated utilities busses. They are designed for the rapid plug-in retrofit furnishing of minimalist shell structures typically based on block or formed concrete. (and, in the future, 3D printed masonry) Thus they are particularly useful in the adaptive reuse of industrial structures.

Built-in furnitecture is based on bespoke designs intended to suit very specific spaces. Though potentially prefabricated, they need not be particularly standardized as they are not intended for more than their one installation and so will tend to rely heavily on the customization possible through digital fabrication combined with handcraft. They can combine characteristics of all the other forms of furnitecture - save those enabling portability/demountability - with the intent to optimize the multi-functionality of, usually, more limited spaces. In essence, they are applying the logic of nautical and spacecraft interior design to the home to maximize the utility of minimal spaces. When this applied to fully weatherproof structures, they basically become Tiny Houses/microhouses. This approach is often used for the series production of prefabricated housing, but the limited reusability of the designs is less typical of most Post-Industrial design. However, in the late Solarpunk era we would expect to see this approach to design emerge as a convention for interior design as fabrication techniques for formed-in-place furnishings become possible - particularly with the advent of refined 3D printing and nanotechnology capable of in-situ creation and recycling of sophisticated appliances and furnishings.

Vehicles and Transportation Systems: Transportation is one area where the most novel and interesting changes are likely in the Post-Industrial future, thanks to a convergence of both new and revived technology, the new forms of energy we must adopt, and the changes in lifestyle all that compels. The transitional period of the early Solarpunk era likely presents us with much experimentation as not only new kinds of vehicles are explored, but new ways of making them with smaller scale industry as well. This would be a time of quirky, sometimes, bizarre, DIY machines. This is the 'MacGyvering' era.

As previously noted, in general there will be a great revival in rail transportation as the single-most energy-efficient form of electric powered transportation. But it may not take familiar forms. And in the early Solarpunk era, where economic turmoil may compel communities to become more self-sufficient while national-level infrastructures slide into a decline, there may be a necessary reliance on legacy infrastructure - even as it physically deteriorates - and thus more adaptation through individual and small group effort than complete reinvention. A concerted physical reconfiguration of the civilization's footprint is more likely a product of the middle Solarpunk era where we expect communities to have formed new regional cooperative systems able to engage in big infrastructure development. Let's consider how the different categories of vehicles may be changed.

Personal Transportation: Here we refer to both human powered vehicles, such as bicycles, and small low-speed powered vehicles intended for one or two passengers. This category is where we expect the most experimentation in the early Solarpunk era as the urban habitat is returned to the pedestrian and cyclist and because such vehicles are the most amenable to small scale experimentation and production. Bicycle, kick-scooter, and low-power motor scooter production - typically based on simple welded tube space frames - is something that already exists in local small scale across the globe and which has long been a focus for eco-tech inventors. Already we have seen much development in work-oriented vehicles and accessories as well as exploration of new materials such as bamboo (aiding their local production in developing countries) and plywood suited to CNC fabrication. In the immediate future we can anticipate 3D printing to emerge in this application, already being subject of some experimentation. There already exists a broad market of retrofit electric power conversion hardware for bicycles and other vehicles based on the same kind of wheels. This will expand as the technology matures and more vehicles move into the use of wheel integrated motors. With the introduction of the self-balancing Segway vehicle at the turn of the century, we have seen rapid proliferation of similar concepts, in one and two wheel forms, and this has also carried-over to some robot design. Recently, this has evolved to one and two passenger self-balancing 'wheelchairs' likely to spawn a new class of low-speed urban 'microcar' - again, a revival of concepts from the past aided by newer technology.

Motorcycles, Motortrikes, and Tuk-Tuks: Intended for higher speed travel and thus demanding higher power propulsion systems, this category of vehicles will certainly see a transition to electric power but possibly not as much experimentation in form. The exception may be the tuk-tuk which, originally intended as a multi-purpose urban vehicle, has made western inroads from its eastern origins in recent years and offers many possible utility variations. In the western world motorcycles have come to be seen as primarily 'sport' vehicles and development has generally been obsessed with performance, with little regard for practicality or utility in contemporary design. And thus there has been a trend of employing the most advanced forms of fabrication and powerplants in the name of performance. In the near future such vehicles will be regarded as more utilitarian and hence a trend returning to simpler, more functionalist, and economical, designs may emerge using traditional space frame fabrication and modular power systems suited to local production and repair. We see hints of this in the field of Motortrike enthusiasts where a cottage industry developed in the fabrication of rather large space frame based vehicle chassis designed to host repurposed automobile engines. Though not well known, that hobby industry may have ramifications for not only future motorcycles, but automobiles as well as it demonstrates a practical capability for such vehicles to be locally manufactured at cottage industry scales.

Automobiles: The design and manufacture of the conventional automobile represents the epitome of Industrial Age sensibility - and damn-near everything wrong with it from the perspective of the contemporary and future situation. No other human creation has so greatly, or rapidly, altered the footprint of civilization, impacting both society and the natural environment. No other artifact so fully illustrates how we turned down the path to self-destruction across the 20th century. Consequently, it is one artifact who's likely future design may most reflect the critical changes in the emerging Post-Industrial culture.

As previously noted we anticipate a general decline in automobile use across the Solarpunk future with a return to urban living and the re-integration of electric public transit. Roads themselves are a critical impact on the environment and we must return as much landscape to nature as we can. But we have so deeply structured dependence on this means of transportation into the civilization that its outright obsolescence is unlikely and even curbing the growth in its use will be a challenge for the Post-Industrial culture. In the near-term, a more immediate transformation of the automobile is necessary as the habitat around them will be too difficult to rapidly transform and transportation patterns slow to evolve. So what might we expect for the 'saner' automobile of the near-future?

The transition to electric power is the most obvious anticipated change, and currently underway despite a century of resistance, but what's often overlooked is the way this technology may change the way cars are designed and built, which may be far more important than just the change to a new energy source. Electric power systems have the potential to 'commodify' in the way components in personal computers have, doing to transportation what the IBM PC did to computing.

The conventional contemporary car is based on a kind of fabrication known as 'welded pressed steel unibody construction' which - as futuristic as the term sounds - is, in truth, a technology well over a century old that has changed little in all that time for several reasons; sheet steel is a cheap commodity, it allows endless superficial variation without real improvement creating the illusion of 'newness', deliberately produces short-lived products that visually accumulate wear and minor damage without too much impact on safety, and it limits the production of those products to machines of ridiculously huge scale and capital investment. This is what makes conventional automobiles the ideal 'consumerist' product. And we know this is not the best way to build cars for the simple reason that, when performance and safety really matter, we don't build cars this way. It is often said that the safest vehicles in the world are modern racing cars, which gave up this method of construction long ago in favor of space frames based on tubular alloys. These not only perform better, they can be fabricated, repaired, and endlessly modified in the smaller scale workshop facilities of typical racing teams. Similarly, few military vehicles employ conventional automobile chassis. Heavier ones employ the 'carriage frame' chassis of earlier vehicles and still typical of large trucks or, if lighter, space frames much like the racing vehicles and the 'sand rails' devised by off-road racing enthusiasts. Again, they have an advantage in performance and ease of repair and modification critical to the battlefield. By comparison, the conventional car is just another throw-away consumer product like the soda cans its fabrication is related to.

But cars have not always been like this. In their history are a few interesting diversions from the conventional that hinted at the possibility of a very different path to a very different sort of industry. Three vehicles particularly notable in this respect were the Czechoslovakian Velorex Oskar, the British Lotus Seven, and the classic American 'hot rod'. Their designs offer us some interesting hints as to the possible nature of a Post-Industrial automobile.

Velorex was among a long list of companies producing microcars during the early and mid 20th century. Like many countries of the post-war era, Czechoslovakia struggled to match the industrial capabilities of larger wealthier nations and explored the approach of using much smaller, lighter, vehicles than the convention as a way to get the society mobile despite limited production means and poor public buying power. Starting out as a bicycle shop owned by the Stránský brothers, they began with a design dubbed the Oskar modeled on the British Morgan three wheel cars of the early 20th century but adapted to their limited means of production by use of a welded tubular steel space frame chassis that could be manufactured much like their bicycle frames. Powered by a retrofit motorcycle engine and using motorcycle wheels, this skeleton was then covered in a weatherproof vinyl-leather-fabric body shell made in a series of panels attached by bolts. Consider that; a functional automobile built with the technology of bicycles! Unlikely as it may seem, this extremely minimalistic and relatively slow two-seater vehicle proved successful, with demand exceeding production for much of its 20 year lifetime. The total number of cars produced was tiny compared to production by large companies, only around 15,000 made in total across four model runs, but they proved extremely resilient and perpetually repairable with many of these vehicles still in operation to the present day. A revival of the vehicle as a modern sports car was attempted at the start of the 21st century and there was some brief interest in a variant for the Indian market.

Most famous for its appearance in the opening to the Prisoner TV series, the Lotus Seven sports car was yet another space frame based vehicle which appeared a few years later than the first Oskar. The use of such a chassis structure was in part inspired by its adoption in racing vehicles, but also as a very practical solution to the problem of shipping vehicles internationally. As we noted previously, it's terribly inefficient to ship large complex products whole and we anticipate this will become largely obsolete in the future as the carbon overhead of the practice becomes apparent. But that's not a new revelation. In the past - before the advent of containerized shipping - many companies struggled with this problem. It's tough to protect large, heavy, or fragile products from damage in long-distance shipping. Clocks, radios, TVs, and early automobiles often separated the production of more sophisticated core components from the enclosures or bodies that could be made locally with less skill. The Lotus company took the unusual approach of designing its early cars as kits of parts that could be produced with smaller facilities and would be assembled at dealerships in order to exploit a legal loophole circumventing onerous sales taxes - something that inspired a trend in kit cars during the mid-century persisting into the 1970s. They also proved more easily shipped by diverse means, facilitating international sales. Those dealerships would often allow customers to observe and even participate in their cars' assembly and soon enthusiasts were taking to assembling the whole thing themselves as home, knowing they could always call on the dealership for help. Far from a mainstream vehicle, the Seven persisted in four model variations for some 15 years before Lotus abandoned the concept, automobiles starting to become too physically complex as an increasing volume of electronics was introduced. However, some dealerships banded together in a bid to continue production. This resulted in the Caterham company which continues to produce this very unique vehicle in an expanded model line to the present day, still allowing customers to buy them either assembled-to-order or as kits for their own home assembly.

Meanwhile, in the US there emerged a post-war boom in car ownership that extended to the young, with driving becoming something of a right of passage for young middle-class youngsters similar to gun use in previous generations. But cars were still very expensive and it was more common that the young would receive their parents' hand-me-down vehicles than obtain new ones. Persistent American gender stereotypes created an expectation that all males should understand how all machines work - the automobile in particular. And many new 'high schools' and 'vocational schools' featured courses in automobile maintenance. It was once a convention in the culture to learn through doing and so many youth of mid-century took to the modification of these second-hand cars as their learning tool, in some cases taking to the complete construction of radically novel vehicles made by repurposing the parts of old vehicles and, of course, optimized for both speed and novel, some could say 'aggressive' anti-conventional appearance. Thus Hot Rods were born.

But this hobby relied on the reuse of earlier, more durable, and simpler vehicle chassis and engines that started to become scarce over time as car companies began to increasingly embrace the pathological doctrine of planned obsolescence, increasing public concern for vehicle safety saw more legal restriction imposed on car modifications, and cars became increasingly elaborate and reliant on exclusive car dealership tools and knowledge. (by the end of the century some car companies actually began toying with welding the engine compartment closed altogether...) Some vehicles persisted in this repurposing for a long time - such as the venerable VW Beetle which saw the emergence of owner-built 'dune buggies' spawning an American kit car phenomenon based on repurpose of its chassis and engine and the use of fanciful fiberglass body shells. But eventually even this supply of chassis ran out as VW slowly abandoned the vehicle. Thus there emerged two novel vehicle concepts spawning their own overlapping cottage industries; dune buggies evolved into 'sand rail' off-road vehicles and hot-rods evolved into 'motor trikes' putting full-size car engines on open three wheel frames - both of these based on the use of space frame chassis that could be produced independently in small facilities. These persist to the present day as an often overlooked independent car industry.

What lessons can we take from these vehicles about the likely forms of automobiles in the future? In the early Solarpunk era we anticipate a similar logistical situation in the need to be able to make much more resilient, adaptive, and recyclable cars by more modest scale industry. By virtue of its size, the car is a challenging artifact for economical localized production. But these vehicles demonstrate that there are, in fact, effective ways for doing this. Space frame construction is not only superior in performance, hence its use in high-performance vehicles, but suited to smaller production facilities and tools. And with the recent advent of alloy 3D printing we have a way to automate the on-demand fabrication of these structures with production systems even smaller in scale than these early forms required.

Electric propulsion offers us further radical simplification of the car, reducing parts count while also eliminating the mass and mechanical drive trains and reducing complexity through modularity. In recent years the public has started to become aware of the lifetime operating costs savings already apparent in current electric cars not even deliberately optimized for this. Already existing in some electric vehicle designs, soon we will see more use of combined wheel/motor/suspension units and drive-by-wire control systems which will effectively reduce the vehicle to an enclosure for passengers that we simply retrofit propulsion to. In effect, the car's chassis will become a 'passive backplane' we plug the rest into like the parts of an industrial computer. There is potential for establishing cross-industry standards that compartmentalize engineering into the topology of modular elements, eliminating skill in assembly, and reducing those parts to commodities produced by many companies that compete within the domain of components and collaborate across common platforms - just as with the ubiquitous PC platform. It was this ability for the computer to be divided into a series of modular elements with standardized interfaces that allowed for the establishment of a global 'industrial ecology' of alternately cooperating and competing component developers, accelerating its progress to a pace beyond that of any other device in the past. This is what made this single-most sophisticated device humans have ever devised into something cheap, ubiquitous, and which a child can be taught to assemble in an hour. Imagine if cars were like that!

Right now there is much emphasis on self-driving technology, almost to the point where it's becoming another 'red herring' distracting the public from more important design issues. But with the climate-driven economic turmoils we anticipate in the near future of the early Solarpunk era, this may take a back-seat to the imperative for accelerating the transition to electric vehicle use with local production independence, use of smaller and easier to maintain vehicles, and thus a greater focus on utilitarian design. While dying Industrial Age companies continue to compulsively resist change, pursuing their automotive equivalent of haute couture, we can anticipate that local entrepreneurs and local-resilience activists will see the potential in open vehicle platforms that can, relying on local production and global community development (cosmo-localization), deliver the essential, no frills, functionality needed of electric vehicles at modest cost. Early forms of these vehicles may appear clunky, quirky. They may experiment with things like that fabric body cover of the Oskar, the use of wood and bamboo, and delightfully gnarly 3D printed recycled plastic. Some variants may have characteristics of off-road vehicles, anticipating the problem of deteriorating road infrastructures or being intended for farms. Already there is a growing problem with proprietary electronics in corporate farm equipment among the traditionally more self-reliant farm community - an opportunity for open source designs that could see these cheap, utilitarian, vehicles originate in the farm setting.

The car with a space frame chassis and modular electric drive would be a 'lifetime car' where every element can be potentially repaired, replaced, upgraded, customized, salvaged, refurbished, repurposed, and ultimately recycled. As long as the essential form of the vehicle remains functional, it can be maintained forever. That should be a very scary prospect for the old auto industry...

By the middle Solarpunk era many of the structural changes in the habitat may be in force and many roads and towns obsolesced, slowly returning to nature. There will be more use - and more kinds - of public transportation, less need to travel to meet one's daily needs, and less compulsion for individual car ownership. Interest in self-driving robotic urban vehicles may return as a form of public transit as well as delivery but we may also see a new class of such vehicles as the basis of a variety of robots, larger than today's typical robots but a little smaller than typical utility vehicles. Today we tend to think of self-driving cars as conventional cars we add this self-driving feature to. But they are, essentially, robots and in the future - after some experience with truly modular vehicles - we may come to think of them more as multipurpose robot platforms with passenger conveyance just one of many applications. And so we may see the 'people's car' of the earlier era evolve into such a standard robot mobility platform with quick-swap plug-ins for a large assortment of roles from taxis and package transport, to emergency response, to self-mobile vending kiosks, to self-mobile hotel cabins, to garden/park maintenance, infrastructure repair, and architectural construction.

The late Solarpunk era would see most transportation disappear from the surface of the earth with the emergence of the new parametric urban landscapes. Such integrated public transit would offer more-or-less door-to-door access and independent car use would be mostly gone, mostly automated, and mostly relegated to internal/subterranean networks where they share space with taxis and many kinds of robots. With advanced excavation automation, anything that can be put underground would be for nature's sake, much of the restored environment concealing vast subterranean complexes invisibly supporting it. Telepresence may come to compete with physical transportation as increasingly sophisticated robots for the purpose become available. Rare off-road travel may turn to legged robotic vehicles with increasing biomimicry and small electric drone-like aircraft designed to minimize impact on the restored wilderness. Robot-assisted construction would facilitate extensive and convenient walking/biking trails and the increasingly ubiquitous underground infrastructure, used to monitor and help restore/maintain that wilderness, may also provide easy visitor access to remote locations. As large and dense as the new urban environments of the future may be, most people would be within minutes of wilderness.

Rail Systems: As previously noted, we expect a general increase in public transportation as rail systems are the single-most efficient form of electric powered transportation. A most of this will eventually go underground. But much of this vital infrastructure of the past has been neglected across the latter half of the 20th century and in the early Solarpunk era there will be limited means to large scale infrastructure redevelopment. Europe and parts of Asia are in the helpful position of having neglected these far less than other parts of the world, which will greatly facilitate their transition to a more sustainable urban lifestyle. Many regions never had viable mass transit to begin with, their communities having developed in the automobile era. Thus, again, we can expect an era with a lot of interesting experimentation.

Legacy rail systems may become highly prized in some areas as they are less costly to restore and maintain than highways, even if their conventional large vehicles will be hard to support by localized industry. Thus we can anticipate the emergence of novel light rail vehicles based, again, on that space frame chassis construction that is more immediately accessible to grass-roots inventors and local industry.

An interesting source of inspiration for how legacy rail might be repurposed in the early Solarpunk era is the ad hoc railways of Batambang Cambodia known as the 'bamboo train'. Left in poverty after the wars of the mid 20th century, long abandoned railway lines built during French colonization were ingeniously put to use by locals creating simple platform vehicles with bamboo and box steel frames powered by crude but modular engines - originally developed by a UN farming program. Though far from safe, these vehicles have proved a vital means of supporting the rural settlements along the rail line. In recent years this unusual transportation system has become a tourist attraction in itself. One can easily imagine a similar situation in the future where once abandoned legacy rail systems in towns and cities are repurposed through local ingenuity.

Often legacy rail lines are stripped of their rails and wooden ties leaving only a bare strip resisting plant regrowth. These are sometimes repurposed for other utilities which also create their own clear land vias criss-crossing the landscape. Even without the rails, these are useful long-distance transportation vias, sometimes converted into bicycle paths and walking trails by more thoughtful urban planners. A number of small scale light rail systems could be devised for these as well. Monorails in various forms suit this well. One that frequently intrigues this author are the banana monorail systems developed for agricultural use. These are based on suspended wires from which simple structures are hung on small bogeys and towed by an engine unit. Though limited in speed, they have very low construction cost and have sometimes been adapted to passenger travel. Their potential space applications are also intriguing as they prefabricated and could be built using modular self-standing rail supports. Roller coaster systems using supported beam tracks have also been repurposed as personal rapid transit systems with a low construction cost and safe use in proximity to houses and buildings. Cable cars are another technology with lower construction costs and easy retrofit into existing environments. They too have been explored as alternative public transit.

In the later Solarpunk eras we would expect restored community cooperation to facilitate larger shared infrastructure projects and more robust, higher speed, longer distance systems. Many earlier experimental concepts will become more refined, others go obsolete. We can also anticipate multimodal integration. Local automated taxis or parcel delivery vehicles supporting lower speed local transit could be designed to ride in or with the higher speed/longer distance systems for trips to neighboring communities. However, long duration travel would favor faster and more specialized vehicles, particularly to offer a higher degree of passenger comfort. Some concepts have suggested the design of long distance rail 'coach' vehicles like self-contained personal hotel cabins with options for in-transit goods delivery by parallel docking vehicles. With such mixed uses, we can anticipate that future rail systems may favor discrete self-propelled vehicles that can be designed for different roles, rather than the long trains of the past. Whether concepts akin to today's much-touted but elaborate Hyperloop prove feasible is unclear, but certainly the performance of high speed rail systems is likely with systems that can use any part of a conformal tunnel inner surface to provide guide and propulsion.

By the late era we anticipate most surface transportation being either integrated into the interiors of urban landscape superstructures or put underground, aided by the economy of robotic and later nanotechnology based automated excavation. A truly global high-speed rail system may emerge to compensate for lost intercontinental transit, perhaps linking the continents through a hub around the now ice-free arctic circle. With the advent of nanotech-based production methods comes an option to distribute molecularly-packaged materials in mixed liquid suspension rather than packaging it in containers. Thus it's possible much cargo transportation across the globe may be obsolesced by networks of fluid pipelines.

Boats and Ships: As previously noted, we expect a revival of ocean passenger travel as aircraft face such great challenges in eliminating their reliance on fossil fuel energy. But large ships face big challenges in adapting to renewable energy as well, since that industry likewise long neglected the environmental issues it was facing. It is most likely that large cargo ships may remain similar in design to those of the present while adapting to the use of hydrogen with the adoption of electric drive systems powered by turbogenerators or fuel cells. They may also see increased use of retrofit supplemental wind and solar power hardware with newer designs optimizing their use.

However, passenger vessels face significant changes as the storage of large volumes of cryogenic hydrogen fuel may be considered too hazardous for passenger travel. The role of passenger travel is also likely to change, with a shift away from vacation cruising to the earlier role of true transit as increasing numbers of people seek alternatives to air travel. Wind power will be favored, but traditional sailing technology leaves much to be desired. Thus this author anticipates the emergence of a new class of 'packet sailing ships' based on the combination of solar power and rigid wing-sail systems that eliminate the large amount of labor and skill traditional sail required and can achieve much larger sail sizes. These may first appear at modest scales, originating with luxury yachts intended for celebrities whose air travel has drawn increasingly public criticism of late, and so to facilitate a faster and more comfortable ride at these scales than was possible with ships of the past novel small-water-area hull designs are likely to be employed. Thus we imagine various solar-wing-sail catamarans and trimarans with submerged or blade-like pontoon structures. As this transportation increases in volume and moves to the mainstream public, larger and more utilitarian designs may emerge.

But much of this development may be delayed until the middle Solarpunk era as ships of large scale demand large capital investments and, if Global Warming impacts cause significant economic and political disruption, this kind of development may not be possible for small cities and communities to manage, particularly in the midst of crisis. Much like the revived rail infrastructures, this may have to wait for the new regional cooperative organizations that can muster the needed resources. There could be a phase of generally disrupted intercontinental transit, which may never return to traffic volumes of the past as the culture structures-in a reduced need for it.

However, we can anticipate that maker-activists will most certainly experiment with the smaller scales of these new kinds of marine vehicles even if they cannot manage to develop ones able to fully meet the demand of mainstream travel. We see hints of this in the current 'fair trade' shipping phenomenon where social entrepreneurs have restored - sometimes with the aid of crowdfunding - remaining sailing ships from the early 20th century to serve the exploited coastal communities of eastern South America and western Africa. Some plan the creation of new higher tech packet sailing vessels much as this author has described. And we may see in this early generation of new sailing vessels many of the characteristics seen in the early generation of independently developed electric cars, aesthetically distinguishing them from the similar but extravagant vessels devised by yacht manufacturers; a high reliance on modularity, utilitarian design, space frame construction, 3D printing, and unconventional materials.

By the late Solarpunk era robotic or self-construction with advanced materials may see much marine and air travel supplanted by high speed rail systems able to maintain themselves and span oceans with little difficulty.

Aircraft: The most difficult transportation systems to adapt to renewable energy are aircraft because of the criticality of power-to-mass ratios in their function. While many projects exist today to develop electric and alternative fuel aircraft, results may be poor for a long time to come. It's just that difficult to convert renewable energy into a portable form with the density of energy common to fossil fuels, thus presenting severe trade-offs in payload fraction. Consequently, for a long time there will be attempts to provide aircraft with exceptions in this necessary transition. The carbon overhead for military aircraft will be ignored by politicians for as long as the public allows. There will be transitions to biofuels or synthetic fuels that may be deemed 'carbon neutral'. There will be various gimmicks attempting to 'offset' their huge carbon overhead. But, eventually, air travel will have to adapt or die like everything else and, though they may never completely go obsolete, it seems quite likely that there will ultimately be a decline for long range conventional commercial aircraft use. This presents a big lifestyle change for a cosmopolitan middle-class that grew very accustomed to casual air travel across the latter-half of the 20th century.

But there is likely to be much experimentation leading to interesting alternatives and, much as with marine transport, revivals of old technology. One that already makes frequent appearances in Solarpunk themed art is the airship - almost as common as in Steampunk art! This is a likely eventuality for two important reasons. The first, obviously, is that airships can actually provide an option on intercontinental travel relying entirely on solar energy. The flexible photovoltaic, battery, and motor technology for this exists today - indeed, has for some time. Without having to spend energy on lift, a practical power-to-mass ratio is a little more accessible for renewable power. This is why airships preceded fixed wing aircraft even when relying on the crude performance of early internal combustion engines too heavy and inefficient to function with early winged aircraft. And while they cannot match the airspeeds of fixed wing aircraft - which is often pointed to as a reason for their obsolescence - they can more than double the speed of powered marine vessels, which a lot of former intercontinental air transit is fated to soon be relegated to.

But perhaps the more important reason airships may return is that they have far lower operational economies of scale than any other aircraft with intercontinental capability. Not only is the conventional aircraft faced with the problems of a necessary obsolescence of fossil fuel, it is faced with the collapse of a world economy keyed to it, with the new economics that may emerge in the wake of that unable to support the operational economies of scale large airliners and their airports demand. In the early Solarpunk era, making and maintaining things like giant airliners may become an outright impossibility. Many airports will be compelled to close. New kinds of aircraft will have to come down in economy of scale to exist at all in a context of more independent communities. It takes the market created by a regional population of many millions to justify the existence of an international airport. Airships may be just modest enough in their economy of scale for cities to create and manage them independently.

But airships do have their issues. Helium is often suggested to be in short supply and may not be sustainable long-term, this because it's extraction is a by-product of natural gas extraction. Hydrogen is the obvious alternative but long feared because of its association with historic airship disasters of the past. In truth, the use of hydrogen lift gas, which is not at the sort of density of liquid hydrogen, proved generally safe over the long history of airships. The rate of airship accidents overall, for all causes, was lower than for fixed wing aircraft which we generally regard as far safer than driving - and this despite quite crude materials engineering and fabrication technology compared to the present. What really spelled the historic demise of the airship was not a few dramatic accidents, which conventional aircraft have far surpassed in scale and frequency, but rather its characterization as a terror weapon followed by its becoming impractical for military use once fixed wing aircraft became practical. In general, few kinds of aircraft technology have persisted without a complementary military role - that's the mentality of the industry. But the cultural perception of airships may remain difficult to overcome without a long period of more recent experience. That may fate it to experimental use and reluctant investment for a long time.

With the advent of nanotechnology and the super-strong materials it may afford, there is a possibility of realizing the dream of 'vacuum lift' based on ultralight rigid composite structures. But that is most likely a prospect of the late Solarpunk era, by which time a global high speed rail system may become the conventional means of global travel.

Another possible revival is the ekranoplane or 'wing-in-ground effect' vehicle which has long persisted in rogue entrepreneurial and experimental development. Though limited to skimming across the sea at low altitude (thus requiring ship-like avoidance of severe weather) and requiring calm water surfaces for take-off, ekranoplanes can be designed to extremely large scales and the efficiency of surface-effect flight affords superior fuel efficiencies while allowing comparable airspeeds to airliners. If operating aircraft on liquid hydrogen fuel ever proves commercially viable, it may do so with the ekranoplane. But, again, the complexity and hazard of handling cryogenic liquid hydrogen may preclude such aircraft from ever being used for mainstream passenger travel. Like the airship, it's apparent impracticality as a weapon has also doomed it for mainstream aircraft industry acceptance. Still, necessity will likely continue to compel experimentation with this.

One new area in aircraft technology likely to be explored in the future is hybrid sailplane aircraft based on combining the characteristics of high altitude gliders with solar-hybrid electric power employing integral photovoltaic arrays, regenerative electric motors, supercapacitor power storage, backed up by methanol fueled microturbines. Such aircraft would use brief periods of powered flight to achieve high altitudes allowing gliding travel for long distances. With the additional aid of advanced real-time weather sensing and the use of AI to optimize flight profiles to intercept thermal updrafts, these might be capable of even intercontinental travel with some compromise in travel times and some necessary uncertainty in flight performance and range. Probably limited in maximum vehicle scale, it could prove to be the future of small scale civil aviation.

Computers and Communications: Visibly, computer and communications hardware will likely be subject to the same design trends obsolescing plastics and encouraging repairability and recyclability seen with domestic goods. The exception may be with mobile devices which, being on a trend toward optimum thinness (likely reaching its limits somewhere under 5mm) and completely solid-state composition, are less likely to tolerate the physical 'bulking up' other goods would see in the near-term. This points out the problem that, in general, digital systems will resist the trend to independent and more sustainable production likely with everything else because they demand the most sophisticated methods of fabrication in use today. In the early Solarpunk era this may result in shortages of the more advanced forms of this hardware, such as smartphones, large displays and microprocessors, as companies die-out and communities struggle somewhat to take-up the slack with alternative production and open source designs. Without lower-tech open-source alternatives, communications may suffer some backsliding in some places.

Some interesting alternative designs may result from this situation. Long neglected in contemporary computing, audio computing environments may be explored to provide an alternative to reliance on scarcer displays. Displays are already the most expensive and power-hungry components of mobile devices and, with the advent of speech recognition and synthesis, voice-controlled smartphones and computers could offer much of their functionality with the advantage of much reduced size and power consumption. A trade-off, certainly, but the primary applications of all computers remain variations on word processing. If you can manage that in sound, you've got most of what you need. Similarly, gesture sensing techniques, subvocal speech detection, and chord keypads offer alternatives to the complex hardware of conventional keypads. It's an interesting situation where advancing machine intelligence is enabling physically simpler kinds of user interfacing. Thus one might see voice assistant devices picking up more of the functionality of the general purpose personal computer, thin pen-like or wearable screenless smartphones, and iPod-like mobile computers you operate with earphones and sign language. Perhaps there may be some return to CRT-like devices as well, but they too were very power-hungry and very dependent on large scale highly-specialized industry and so alternatives based on other methods of raster-scanning images might emerge, such as laser rear-projection displays.

However, the biggest changes in computing across the Solarpunk future may not be visible. Rather, it would be an adoption of a 'resilience doctrine' in systems design much akin to the global resilience movement in communities, compelled by the brittleness of our corporate-built digital infrastructure made apparent through the experience of increasingly common weather disasters, government digital suppression of activism, and corporate abuse through hegemonies created by centralized, siloed, systems architectures. The early Solarpunk era may be a period where Internet connectivity cannot be taken for granted and so we will see expanded use of 'meshnet' and 'outernet' technologies, peer-to-peer systems architectures, and asynchronous communications systems able to cope with intermittent connectivity while protecting user's rights to privacy and control of their own digital assets. Already we are seeing the emergence of 'disaster proof' alternative operating systems intended to be less dependent on Internet connectivity and more hardware-agnostic. This may not see much visible reflection in product designs, but may produce significant changes in patterns of use.

In the late Solarpunk era we may see the most visible differences in computing and communications hardware design as much of it becomes more embedded in the infrastructure of the built habitat and clinical nanotechnology affords the convenient use of devices embedded in the human body. Futurists have long predicted that computers would 'disappear' into the infrastructure with a general user reliance on lean mobile devices. Though design trends still point to this, the possibility seems to have been delayed by corporate compulsion toward capture and control of the public information commons and the securing of market share through the manipulation of consumer behavior. The walls and fences may finally be broken down in this more utopian period of the Solarpunk future and thus an era of true Ubiquitous Computing may be realized.

Though the notion often seems dystopian to us today (familiar, as we are, with the compulsive perversion of media and communications by the corporate culture), the convenience of doing away with any physical contraptions for personal communications and computing may be attractive for many leading to increased use of bodily-implanted PAD (personal access device) systems affording tacit conversational computing, AR user interfacing, and deeply immersive VR. This may enable new nomadic lifestyles where people can wander freely, carrying little more than the clothes on their backs, their most important possessions digital in nature and hosted on an indestructible distributed cloud storage environment with roots in the blockchain technology of cryptocurrencies. This author imagines such capability encouraging further use of human augmentation to allow comfortable, casual, nomadic living in even the harshest wilderness environments - perhaps even on the open sea. The ultimate in lean lifestyles!

Robots: Lacking in the cross-industry platforms and architectures that facilitated the emergence of an 'industrial ecology' in computers and electronics in the late 20th century, robotics has long remained behind the curve of other technical advancement and a viable 'general purpose' robot platform has remained elusive. Most important impacts have been in the transition to robotic industry led by the introduction of digital fabrication and the demand for increasing automation in materials handling and package delivery.

The early Solarpunk era may see little change in this situation and the imminent economic disruptions will not be helpful to robotics development. Communities will be much more concerned about the transition to renewables - and in some cases survival - than when robots will finally turn up in their homes. However, they will increasingly enter communities through the side-door of local production and the automation of labor intensive aspects of recycling and agriculture.

Though most of this will involve specialized systems largely out of sight, there is one application area compelled by environmental concerns that may see early expanded use of multipurpose designs; telepresence robots as an alternative to transportation and means to remote work in harsh environments. Already a number of companies have developed telepresence robots for use primarily by corporate executives and physicians. (though in some experiments they have been used as restaurant wait staff and, sadly, we have already seen attempts at 'telexploitation' of foriegn labor for teleoperation of delivery robots, circumventing political obstacles to cheap labor migration) Acceptance has been poor as these machines remain limited in mobility and capability, unsuited to outdoor environments, small in stature, and offer no real improvements over other forms of teleconferencing. (with emerging AR teleconferencing likely to further widen the gap) Where this may see improvement is with construction and maintenance applications. (teleoperation of excavators has already been experimented with) Long suppressed space telerobotics development may also prove crucial to this development, compelled by a likely decline in manned spaceflight.

Personal robots as a hobby and art form will most certainly persist, even though the past decade's strategy of defining them as 'companion robots' proved to be something of a failure due to the poor pace of advance in mechatronics and thus their limited cost-effective capability for expression. Design trends in other electronics will be seen here, with the shift away from plastics. Companies continue to experiment with personal robots, but will likely be superceded in the application by voice assistants, enhanced by conversational ability and procedural graphics animation, offering a far less expensive means to expressive personalized companion characters.

By the mid Solarpunk era the increased capability of AI may see expanding capability for robots in the diverse 'everyday' environment, compensating for still limited mechatronics. More general purpose shop robots may appear as a means to integrate the sets of more specialized machine tools common to the local workshop and facilitate the robotic assembly of larger diverse artifacts. We can anticipate an increased use of architectural 3D printing as larger community building projects become possible.

Self-driving vehicles will finally become commonplace for passenger use - even as car use declines generally - and realize a new class of robots based on modular 'roadway mobility' platforms for which passenger conveyance is just one of their many uses depending on which application modules are attached.

The systematic restoration of wilderness environments will also be greatly assisted by robotics and we may see vast uninhabited territories left to the management of AI at remote 'telebases' hosting fleets of robots designed to wander the wilds and perform forestry work and science monitoring with modest human supervision.

By the late Solarpunk era we may finally overcome the limitations of mechatronics with the appearance of a diversity of self-contained free-moving robots more akin to synthetic animals in design. A robust nanotechnology will greatly blur the distinction between machine and organism. There's no particular practical point to visually mimicking living animals, but many aspects of their forms may prove useful, particularly for robots serving in the maintenance of the restored natural environment. Legged robots - though not particularly energy efficient - have an advantage over wheels in the wilderness, both in mobility and reduction of physical impact on the environment. Lifelike androids will finally become a practical possibility and, though there has never been much of a truly practical point to them, may see extensive use as 'avatars' for people routinely using telepresence instead of travel - though AR/VR will remain strong competition in this application. And should a transhuman lifestyle option become a possibility, very life-like augmentations and avatars will become an important matter of personal aesthetics and fashion, now unhinged from the constraints of natural biology and resulting in an accelerating physical diversification of society.

Plants and Farming: Plants are to Solarpunk what gears are to Steampunk. Iconic and characteristic to the aesthetic, but potentially superficial. Of necessity, the Solarpunk world would be a more verdant one. Plants are a critical tool to combat Global Warming, clean-up the environment, provide more sustainable materials, and improve the liveability of the urban environment. There would be a greater cultural veneration of the craft of gardening, perhaps aided by the development of UBI and the greater personal freedom it affords. And we can expect a new veneration of them in future design as well, with revivals of Art Nouveau, Arabesque, Organic, and Taoist aesthetics.

But plants can be used stupidly and superficially too. Certainly, Solarpunk habitats are likely to feature much use of parks, green roofs, living walls, and gardening containers. There will be many novel approaches to integrating greenery with architecture. Towns and cities would feature extensive use of urban farming and many homes will employ novel indoor farming/gardening systems. But how that architecture is built, what it's made of, and how it functions in relation to the environment is much more characteristic of the culture than mere decoration. Plants are living things and have an overhead in care. How much time and work can the society/community actively put into that? What industrial design and technological aids, like robots, life-support infrastructure, and genetic engineering, might they apply to that? What kinds of plants make the most sense in functional and decorative roles throughout the habitat? How do seasons impact the look and function of the habitat?

Like so many of the designs of the early Solarpunk era, new urban farming and gardening would rely heavily on adaptive reuse and upcycling of various cast-offs that would be especially characteristic of Urban Nomad/Outquisition intervention. Most of this would employ various forms of container gardening/farming, sub-irrigation containers, 'living wall' gardening based on capillary fabric/felt covers, more elaborate hydroponics based on scratch-built systems repurposing random industrial hardware and recyclable plastics. Various kinds of easily retrofit and makeshift greenhouse/solarium structures would be added to rooftops, balconies, and terraces. More intensive urban farming would rely on the adaptive reuse of whole buildings and structures, adapted using things like Kee-Klamp, industrial shelving, scaffolding with solar powered artificial light or more efficient fiber-optic lighting with rooftop heliostats. Abandoned/underused warehouses and industrial buildings, office buildings, abandoned subway tunnels and stations, parking structures, aircraft hangars, barges, shipping containers, semi-trailers, and many others could be used for such applications.

Modern office buildings are one of the few buildings adaptive by design, as they were intended for different companies to lease variable amounts of space and adapt them to their needs. They also often feature hanging wall facade systems which are mechanically attached and easily stripped and replaced as needed. Thus these buildings may become a special focus of adaptive intervention as they can most easily be stripped down to a skeleton and retrofit for alternative use. Each floor in these buildings could be adapted to different roles; residence, recreation, workshop, farming, etc. Thus we may see these buildings converted into 'micro-arcologies' or 'proto-arcologies' that host all the features of a small eco-village in one building or across a former corporate campus.

Plants would also often be used in this era as a tool of protest and activism, with 'insurgent' farming and gardening and the devising of various 'seed bombs' deployed by hand, machine, or even dropped by drones. Various insects and other organisms may also be employed this way.

By the middle era there would be much more new architecture dedicated to the role of urban farming and reconfigured urban planning would emerge with designs specifically incorporating municipal gardening and farming features. New structural systems and materials (some in development today) intended to host parasitic plant life on their surface would come into use. In this era we begin to see the creation of very large dedicated urban farming structures, new parks, large enclosed wintergardens, and an infrastructure that specifically includes systems for plant life monitoring and support with the application of horticultural robotics.

As noted before, a key feature of the later Solarpunk era would be so-called 'urban landscape superstructures' which would effectively turn the entire urban environment into a system of park and farm topped terraces - much like the mountain farming terraces of Asia and South America - with habitation in the edges of those terraces and transportation largely internalized. Indeed, housing and other building uses would be almost entirely hidden, visible mostly by their particular choice of facades or the use of flowing weather-sheltering PV-glass canopies. Based on technologies like architectural 3D printing and eventually 'self-growing' architecture employing nanotechnology, these superstructures would be built and managed by distributed AI systems that learn - through extensive 'sensor webs' like a kind of nervous system - and evolve the urban landscape to achieve optimal passive energy performance and a balance between human living needs and environmental sustainability. The urban plant life would also be considered an 'inhabitant' for these systems to care for. Thus we arrive at the ultimate integration of plant life into the urban environment, turning the urban habitat into a kind of self-aware symbiote humans themselves live symbiotically with.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Solarpunk: Post-Industrial Design and Aesthetics

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Solarpunk: Post-Industrial Design and Aesthetics [Eric Hunting - 7/20 - Illustrations by Dustin Jacobus] Introduction: Overview of the Solarpunk World: Phases of Solarpunk History: Core Principles of Post-Industrial Design: Packaging, and Living Without It: Energy: Modular Building Systems: Domestic Goods: Clothing: Architecture and Housing: Furnitecture: Vehicles and Transportation Systems: Computers and Communications: Robots: Plants and Farming: Introduction: In recent years a futurist aesthetic movement has emerged in response to renewed public concern for the environment and a seeming lack of reflection of that concern in much contemporary art and design.

# data[].attributes.headline
SOLARPUNK IS A TUMBLR VIBE. IT’S ALSO A PRACTICAL MOVEMENT.

# data[].attributes.subject
SOLARPUNK IS A TUMBLR VIBE. IT’S ALSO A PRACTICAL MOVEMENT.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Scan the #solarpunk hashtag on Tumblr or the 30,000-plus-member r/solarpunk subreddit and you'll likely encounter several examples of a certain subgenre of architectural rendering: dramatically geometric towers dotted with rooftop forests or tree-sprouting condos, far easier imagined than built. Or you might see the 3D-art cousin to such renderings - grander and greener still.

So why, when I ask Jay Springett - longtime co-administrator of solarpunks.net - about what solarpunk looks like in practice, does he talk about an old phone box that was converted into a seed library?

"That wouldnt be out of place in a solarpunk story," Springett said. "But also its real life"

The humble example gets to the true crux of solarpunk. It centers ecological responsibility, and it maintains a fundamentally DIY impulse - community-minded, self-sustaining and, importantly, hopeful.

What Is Solarpunk?

Over the last six or so years, solarpunk has graduated from an aesthetic to something more akin to a practical movement, but it began in earnest primarily as a visual vocabulary and literary subgenre of science fiction. The "punk" suffix places it in a sci-fi lineage that includes dieselpunk, steampunk and cyberpunk, but the vision and iconography of solarpunk is dramatically different.

In fact, Solarpunk is often framed specifically in opposition to cyberpunk. Blade Runner and its brethren envisioned a dystopian singularity and, as Springett has noted, were rooted in the anxieties of the 1980s - urban decay, monolithic corporatism and, in sadly xenophobic streaks, Asia's growing influence. Solarpunk, on the other hand, imagines a world in which today's existential threat - the climate crisis - is either resolved or being approached with camaraderie and adaptive ingenuity.

As Keisha Howard, a video game developer and entrepreneur, said in a 2018 TED Talk, "advances in technology and science don't lead to a dystopia" in solarpunk, but rather "harmony with the Earth" and a more egalitarian civilization. Sure, Howard had long admired the cool, tech-noir aesthetics of cyberpunk, but that vision "isn't the future that I want to look forward to," she said.

In solarpunk fiction, protagonists might be working to rewild an Australian suburb in the near future, or competing factions in a devastated landscape might be uniting to disseminate sustainable innovations. Cover art often favors the lush greenery and plant-like curves of Art Nouveau. It's not all unmitigated harmony - this is fiction, after all, with narrative tension and dramatic obstacles. Still, a resolute sense of optimism pervades.

In the words of preeminent solarpunk thinker Rhys Williams, solarpunk stands " against a shitty future." The planet is on the clock, and there's just no time for fashionable pessimism, it implies.

Art Nouveau became an aesthetic touchstone for solarpunk not only because of its penchant for earthy, organic forms, but also because it's both ornate and approachable, according to Rosie Albrecht, editor of solarpunk zine Optopia. "One of the most iconic pieces of Art Nouveau architecture is the Paris Métropolitain station - and public transit is super solarpunk," she told Enchanted Living, pinpointing solarpunk's combination of beauty, sustainability and collectivist spirit. Not surprisingly, Arts and Crafts, the late-19th-century decorative arts movement that stood in opposition to the industrial revolution's wasteful habits, is another reference point.

In terms of architecture, towering vertical forests still frequently populate solarpunk social channels. But the subculture also maintains a skeptical eye on any leafy cosmetics that might adorn unsustainably built projects. Truly green materials and approaches, like treated wastewater, geothermal heating, and urban greenhouses and gardens, are key.

Because the climate anxiety that solarpunk engages is so palpable in the real world - "science fiction is really about now," as Margaret Atwood has said - solarpunk has come to encompass a practical movement and subculture too. It considers how technology, sustainable agriculture and reoriented social and economic systems might help communities grapple with a world besieged by climate threats.

Like solarpunk the aesthetic, solarpunk the movement can seem almost collagist in its wide-ranging scope. Renewable energies, solar power, rainwater harvesting, DIY community gardening, decentralized technologies and more all fit into the framework - though never uncritically. Any ethically sourced, community-focused solution that might stand resilient in the face of natural or manmade disaster will likely get a look.

A Fundamental Shift in Network Architectures

The term solarpunk dates back to at least 2008, but the term started reaching wider, if still niche, audiences around 2015. From the beginning, technology's role has been a consistent thread.

Technology isn't excluded from the ecological stewardship that solarpunk centers, but it isn't fetishized either. Rather, certain tech approaches might help reorient our trajectory - "the possibilities of changing power relations through changing technology," Springett said.

Perhaps the most important strain is decentralization. By the nature of their architecture, decentralized platforms would likely stand more durable than those atop traditional network architecture in the event of catastrophe. That's because there isn't a central "brain" controlling the body.

"There's a general instinct toward, if youre going to have this kind of ecological future that has more responsiveness to the local environment, then there are questions about, which things are you hooking up into these giant, centrally organized star topology architectures?" Adam Flynn, another solarpunks.net administrator, said.

"If your rendering of the future has no people in it, it's not solarpunk."

Solarpunk doesn't ask you to surrender technology, or even social media. It looks toward decentralized social media, which, thanks to its network resilience, could offer community-building capabilities even after a disaster. The decentralized social-network ecosystem Scuttlebutt is popular among solarpunks. In fact, several of its developers self-identify as solarpunks.

Scuttlebutt eschews the star-pattern, hub-and-spoke architectures that predominate the internet, where network nodes connect to a central hub. Instead, the network is peer-to-peer. Individual social networks run atop Scuttlebutt, and users within those networks essentially act as servers themselves. They sync feeds directly when they're near each other geographically. (They can also synchronize feeds even if they're not directly connected, through so-called pubs.)

Not surprisingly, peer-to-peer networks have resonated with off-gridders who want to disconnect from the web entirely - one logical endpoint of solarpunks many factions.

Given its nature, it's easy to imagine prepper culture being attracted to peer-to-peer and other solarpunk-friendly technologies, but solarpunk has nonetheless managed to stay animated by principles of community and hopefulness rather than collapse terror.

"Its one of those lines that has been walked by the community since its inception," Springett acknowledged.

To illustrate the sense of community, Flynn invoked the work of Darius Kazemi, who's built tools like Run Your Own Social, a guide to running a small social network site for a few dozen or so friends, and Home Town, which lets users create their own small-scale social network sites. (Home Town is a fork of Mastodon, which isn't peer-to-peer, but is nonetheless decentralized.)

During an appearance at the New Public Festival, an event that explored the current state of digital public infrastructure and alternative social-media models, Kazemi was asked what motivates him to build such platforms. His reply: "Yeah, Im building this 'cause I want to have a nice time on the internet with my friends."

Related Is an Open Web Still Possible?

Beauty is a cornerstone of solarpunk, but the movement is also vigilant against "green-washed eco-modernism." | Image: Shutterstock

What About Actual Solar Technology?

Of course, you can't talk about solarpunk and technology long without getting into solar tech. But the relationship is more complex than, "solar is good; buy some panels."

First, there's a keen awareness of the relationship between the pre-installation production of solar technology and harmful resource extraction from energy-poor areas.

"If these relations of production remain the same as at present, [photovoltaic] infrastructure will not present a radical break but rather business as usual," Williams wrote.

He cautioned against the green-grabbing pitfalls of some concentrating solar power (CSP) plants, which are large-scale constellations of mirrors that harness solar energy to produce and send electricity to various corners of the globe.

"Using local land ... and draining scarce water reserves for cooling and cleaning the panels, these CSP plants are designed to generate energy at utility scale and send it north, to the U.K. and Europe, rather than to their own energy-poor populations," he wrote.

"I have always considered solarpunk to be focused on the practical as opposed to the wishful thinking."

Second, the current solar technology paradigm often conflicts with solarpunks long-term approach to design - "things that are repairable, reusable and built to last" - Flynn told Built In. (That doesn't just mean your phone.)

Williams writes: "Solar technology provides energy autonomy, but only for as long as the product works, only for the lifespan of a solar cell, before the question of production arises again. A genuine transition requires a transition of the means of production - a socially just means of solar technology production."

On-the-ground implementation can be challenging too. Springett points to the so-called solar tax in Spain. The controversial levy, which was suspended in 2018, charged homes outfitted with solar panels an extra 7 percent to stay on the grid, should the panels not generate enough electricity. It was a discouraging example of how grid limitations might prompt governments to enact policies that chill alternative-energy adoption, when they should be encouraging it.

That all might sound pretty fatalistic for a movement/aesthetic rooted in optimism, but it's more a recognition of incremental realities. Energy transition is a series of "stepping stones," still not extricable from fossil fuel and the present-day economic motives that solarpunk aims to one day transcend, but eyeing something more transformative all the while, Williams wrote.

Which Version of Solarpunk Is 'Right?'

Like most internet-birthed subcultures, the medium is to some extent the message for solarpunk. As Elvia Wilk noted in " Is Ornamenting Solar Panels a Crime? " the platforms on which a given version of solarpunk is parsed inevitably shape that particular vision of solarpunk.

Indeed, some of the more visual platforms can reinforce the vision of solarpunk as skyscrapers with green garnish - or "green-washed eco-modernism," as Springett calls it. He fondly recalled one such rendering that featured Photoshopped-in cyclists and anarchist graffiti.

"If your rendering of the future has no people in it, its not solarpunk," he said.

Such critical pushback seems to be a hallmark of the community. On Reddit, an eye-grabbing biophilic 3D-art design might be subjected to real-world emissions number-crunching, or a user may call " techno-green bullshit " on a contemporary green design that lacks density and suboptimally positions its solar panels. That may scan as killjoy pedantry, but such points come from a place of constructive criticism, that very solarpunk reminder that our crises demand practical attention.

Powering the Dream, or perhaps some other cornerstone solarpunk text.

"I would love to see the solarpunk that would've emerged from old-school message boards," Flynn added. "I think it could be really thoughtful and inventive."

That's happening to some extent. The closest analogues to the internet forums of yore are where some of the most practical conversations take place, according to Springett.

"The real thing for me within the communities is the dialogue that happens in the comments, on discord or in Slacks between authors and fans and other people," he said.

Related Why Climate Tech Funding Is on the Rise Again

'It Is What Everyone Collectively Agrees It Is'

The movement that provided solarpunk its suffix has proven remarkably flexible since its late-'70s inception, mutating into hardcore, pop-punk and many other strands. Solarpunk is similarly malleable. It's been around long enough to have built up its own set of visual and thematic principles and bullet-point-friendly genre specs, but Springett stresses caution against too much codification or prescription.

Because so many are unfamiliar with the technologies that might help ameliorate the climate crisis, solarpunk is almost by definition "partly propaganda" for those approaches, he said. But it's not necessarily didactic, and, in solarpunk fiction, it's "just part of the world building."

And for all of solarpunk's openness toward technology, there are always broader considerations beyond gadgetry, said Springett, who was as eager to discuss the work of rainwater-harvesting designer Brad Lancaster and 3D ocean farmer Bren Smith as he was Scuttlebutt.

As solarpunk inches its way further into the mainstream, it might become more difficult to keep the parameters open. Subcultures tend to lose, rather than gain, nuance as they hit mass culture. And that arrival has certainly begun to happen, from solarpunk novel reviews in major publications to a recent call for solarpunk-inspired games in the wake of the Cyberpunk 2077 debacle. Even the long-gestating decentralization push seems to be meaningfully emerging from the shadows.

But such a tradeoff is probably inevitable. And it might ultimately be worth it for a speculative movement that's so uniquely fixated on how things manifest in practice - one that makes some space for the fantastical but remains rooted in, as Wilk described it, "technological realism." (Not surprisingly, Springett used the word "practical" nearly a dozen times in our conversation.)

"I have always considered solarpunk to be focused on the practical as opposed to the wishful thinking," Springett said. "And its a discussion thats becoming more and more prominent."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Solarpunk Is a Tumblr Vibe. It's Also a Practical Movement.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Scan the #solarpunk hashtag on Tumblr or the 30,000-plus-member r/solarpunk subreddit and you'll likely encounter several examples of a certain subgenre of architectural rendering: dramatically geometric towers dotted with rooftop forests or tree-sprouting condos, far easier imagined than built. Or you might see the 3D-art cousin to such renderings - grander and greener still.

# data[].attributes.body
10 annotated short stories

# data[].attributes.headline
THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO SOLARPUNK: FASHION, MOVIES, AESTHETIC & MORE

# data[].attributes.subject
THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO SOLARPUNK: FASHION, MOVIES, AESTHETIC & MORE

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
We've all heard of Steampunk and Cyberpunk. Their iconic styles and bold images have always distinguished those who choose to stand apart from the status quo. In fact, Cyberpunk has become one of the most popular subcultures ever with the release of blockbuster movies like Blade Runner 2047 and the recent blockbuster video game Cyberpunk 2077. Both these movements grew in prominence in the 1980s and their presence is felt to this day. However, with the turn of the century, it's time for a new subculture to emerge: Solarpunk.

Like any punk culture, Solarpunk was born out of anti-establishment sentiment. The movement, at its heart, is centered around the environment and sustainability. Its name is quite literally derived from the potential of solar poweras a form of renewable and sustainable energy. Solar energy has become the most widely used form of renewable energy, and the optimism of a new world where we live in harmony with nature instead of destroying it drives what Solarpunk is truly about. Instead of doom and gloom, the movement chooses to envision a utopian society. Despite the horrors we see on the news everyday, Solarpunks choose to believe in hope, hope for a better future for all.

Solarpunk.net writes, "We are starved for visions of the future that will sustain us, and give us something to hope for, ideas of life beyond the rusted chrome of yestermorrow or nightmare realms of radiated men eating the flesh of other radiated men".

And so, the main ethos of this movement lies in finding solutions to achieve consistent and sustainable progress as opposed to painting terrifying pictures of the future we may inherit. How Solarpunk hopes to find solutions for a healthier planet diverges from how we live today - but perhaps not in the ways you may think. Rather than fixating on the potential doom and gloom of the future - which only leads to unproductive panic - Solarpunk has a clear emphasis on solutions. As seen in New York, a clock was reprogrammed to countdown the time until climate change effects hit a point of no return for humanity. While this may not have led to direct change, it did make headlines. Its reveal led to uproar for and against the need for such a blatant display of the inevitable. Perhaps all that energy may have brought about change had it been geared towards environmental progress.

Solarpunk has given rise to a community that seeks to redirect all that negative energy into solutions for a better world. This beautiful, new, sustainable, and egalitarian vision for the world is reflected in all things Solarpunk, from clothes, architecture, and music to politics, technology, and community.

Solarpunk Aesthetic

Ask anyone who knows punk culture and they'll tell you its defining trait is always the distinctive imagery. Where ideology may get lost within the constant buzz of the internet community, aesthetics help to attract and hold the attention of the masses. Arguably, visuals have never been more important than they are today, with our attention spans only getting shorter as technology gets faster.

Paris 2050 - Vincent Callebaut Architectures

When one thinks of Cyberpunk, the image that comes to mind is a dystopic concrete jungle with dark and bleak coloring, whereas steampunk has a reputation for Victorian styles and visible machinery. So then, what makes up Solarpunk aesthetic? Well, picture a green future, where plants grow freely, coexisting with human architecture of natural colors and stained-glass windows. It is a society that isn't trying to tear down what we have already built - but rather incorporates sustainability into the world we already have.

The Solarpunk aesthetic is heavily influenced by Art Nouveau visually. Art Nouveau is a form of art that was characterized by its use of organic and sinuous lines. It was meant to break away from historic imitation, and hence create a new style. In the same way, Solarpunk attempts to break away from popular dystopic themes that have informed punk culture for the past century. While Solarpunk does not shy away from colors in the style of Art Noveau, it does drift towards muted tones. The inspiration comes from, you guessed it, nature's colors. Thus, earthy tones and soft colors outline the aesthetic of Solarpunk visuals. From architecture to fashion, the color palate strays towards gentle shades that work along with the natural setting.

When you look at images reflecting Solarpunk aesthetics, it is not unheard of to feel a sense of balance and calm overtake you. What else would you expect from a movement grounded in optimism? The images convey a world that "could be" - that is, if we worked in tandem with nature instead of exploiting it.

Solarpunk Fashion

Ah, fashion. Cyberpunk had trench coats and shiny black leather while steampunk became synonymous with waistcoats and visible gears and screws. The punk movement fashion is what makes it stand out within a sea of ideas. Though the ideology of past movements is not as commonplace anymore, their fashion lives on in pop culture and continues to influence styles of the general population.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CD6a3UQHi-X/

True to its organic and free-living message, Solarpunk seeks to incorporate comfort and functional style into its fashion aesthetic. Though light and loose-fitting garments form the image of Solarpunk fashion, the main takeaway is responsible sourcing. It is encouraged to repair and repurpose items instead of the constant cycle of disposing and replacing them.

The simplest way to partake in Solarpunk fashion? Thrifting. Which is a simple, inexpensive way for anyone to integrate Solarpunk fashion into their lives. The idea is simple: think about the sustainability of your garments before you make a purchase.

Fast fashion may be trendy, but peek behind the fashionable curtains and you'll find a whole mess of hidden skeletons. The rampant exploitation of humans and nature to stay ahead of the curve is not only wrong but unsustainable. The cost of production appears low today because no one is paying attention to how much it'll cost to clean up climate change - if any cleanup happens at all.

This is everything Solarpunk stands against. Fashion can be expressive yet sustainable. Though Solarpunk fashion has come to be associated with more earthy or floral tones to reflect nature's colors, its core message lies in sustainability. It is not restricted by any set rule; you can still be expressive in your sense of style as long as you consider its cost.

Solarpunk Architecture

One of the major conflicts that has arisen with modern developments is the current architecture versus nature argument. Currently, civilization exists at the expense of the environment. Forest reserves are being disestablished to make way for the skyscrapers that now dominate our skylines. So much so that "concrete jungle" has taken on a more literal meaning.

Singapore's Changi Airport

However, this conflict is not a thing in Solarpunk's utopic vision. Instead, Solarpunk architecture makes a point to incorporate nature into our existing structures. This movement has no intention of tearing down the walls of skyscrapers and returning to days of extreme labor and modest living, but rather to focus on the art of modern architecture working symbiotically with nature.

One of the simplest ways homeowners can do this is by installing solar panels on their rooftops. One might even argue that skyscrapers are the best-suited architecture for this initiative seeing as they receive a large amount of sun exposure. Plus, such a large building is bound to be consuming a lot of power, which could and should be coming from a sustainable source.

Now, what if solar panels are a little out of your price range right now? Don't worry, Solarpunk is a large community with spaces for people from all walks of life. Unsurprisingly, nature motifs play a part in Solarpunk architecture. You could incorporate hanging gardens or nature-inspired structures into your living, as so many buildings have started to do recently. The green and grey don't have to be separated. For example, the Gardens by the Bay in Singapore and the Golden Bridge in Vietnam both exhibit the Solarpunk vision.

In a world dominated by shades of grey, Solarpunk reimagines the future where colors and architecture are amalgamated to be in balance with nature. Since Art Nouveau is the inspiration at heart, glass and metal are the go-to materials to form bold and elaborate architecture. Think of stained-glass windows that direct sunlight to light up interiors with beautiful colors. It is nature made even more beautiful by the hands of humans, which is exactly what Solarpunk visualizes when painting the future.

Solarpunk Technology

When we think of anti-establishment, it's easy to think of technology as inherently evil or detrimental to the environment. Yet, if it is a future utopia we are chasing, then there has to be space for technology. Solarpunk's vision of moving to renewable energy cannot happen without the technological advances of this age. And as technology continues to advance, humanity will be able to conceptualize more ways to harness energy.

Windmill Bridge - Vincent Callebaut Architectures

Modernization is not the enemy in Solarpunk culture. There is an understanding that one cannot exist without the other. The Solarpunk motto of "doing" rather than "watching" effectively pushes and advocates for the use of technology to ensure sustainable sourcing.

So let's have a look at some ways technology has come in line with what Solarpunk envisions for us. Solar grids, wind turbines, hydroelectricity and other renewable energy are just a few. With Norway producing 98% of its energy from renewable sources and renewable energy surpassing traditional sources in electricity production in Germany, the Solarpunk ideology is not radical and far-fetched. In fact, these countries show us that the vision is attainable if we choose to pursue it.

On a micro-scale, technology has become one of the more wasteful aspects of modern society. The rise in usage and production of smart gadgets and handphones could not have been predicted just two decades ago. Uncontrolled capitalism has led to rife competition between companies to produce the next big thing. Products are being released and replaced at an unprecedented pace. Everyday items are no longer made to be long-lasting, forcing consumers to keep purchasing new ones as companies chase their bottom line. This is one of the reasons Solarpunk has adopted an anti-capitalist stance.

If we are to overcome this new consumerism and save our future, the world is going to have to practice some mindful buying. More than that, companies will need to start producing products that last longer and are ethically sourced. Technology is an integral part of our future and Solarpunk does not want you to give up your smartphones. The choices made with the technology that we have is what will form the kind of utopia that Solarpunk envisions - not an iPhone in the bin.

Solarpunk Politics

This piece wouldn't be complete without a politics section, would it? Like any punk movement, political thought plays a role in securing Solarpunk's vision for the future. The envisioned future may be bright and shiny, but to get there, radical progress is necessary. Arguably, a not so pretty path to a utopian future.

In the current political climate, it is safe to say that Solarpunk ideology leans heavily towards leftist beliefs. Where else would you find a community that actively opposes fascism and capitalist culture while emphasizing the fight for equality? In Trump's America, Solarpunk firmly pushed back against his fascist remarks. It is a movement that believes in active engagement in politics. Solarpunks employ diverse tactics including but not limited to voting and demonstrating.

While Solarpunk does not advocate the use of violence, it doesn't shy away from it when needed for self-defense and against enemies with extreme intentions. The thought of more aggressive actions to achieve environmental justice is starting to gain traction. Recent political movements have demonstrated that even though peaceful protests help, sometimes harsher measures are necessary for a better future. With frustrations mounting against governments who continue to cater to oil producers and logging companies, environmentalists are primed to take a more aggressive approach to push forward an agenda that might just save us all.

In comparison to other punk communities that prefer to adopt more fictional narratives - such as Cyberpunk, Steampunk, and especially Dreampunk - The Solarpunk community errs on the side of reality. The very real looming threat of climate change has played a role in this. A blog post from 2008 put it best: "A major difference between Solarpunk and steampunk is that Solarpunk ideas, and Solarpunk technologies, need not remain imaginary..."

Solarpunk is a symptom of resistance. It exists because the current political order has failed to address a very real threat against humanity. However, what makes the Solarpunk resistance even more special is the way it has influenced traditional protests. Wherein most issues people may not have the power to shape the future they want, in Solarpunk, resistance may come in simple but manageable ways. From refusing to engage in the capitalist culture of instant purchases with a short shelf life to the reuse of existing infrastructures in creative ways, Solarpunk allows progress to take place within the resistance. Though larger powers at play may have bigger impacts on the movement's vision, people get to make contributions in their own meaningful ways.

Solarpunk Music

Though Solarpunk does not have a defined or outlined genre of music, some artists have been founded on its ideology. Tonzi, a performance artist from Canada, wanted to create a Solarpunk Village. She had a 3-year plan of music projects to solarize said village. There was also a band called Sieudiver that released a track titled " Solarpunk City ".

Though Solarpunk does not have a specific genre of music associated with it, nature sounds and field recordings - with a touch of techno - has been used to describe it. The music leans more towards instrumentals and soothing melodies. Ambient nature samples with an undertone of techno beats combine both aspects of Solarpunk. Nature and technology cooperating to create something new and beautiful.

The Solarpunk community is a creative lot who have compiled playlists of sounds that represent their movement, which can be found on multiple platforms such as YouTube and Spotify. The Solarpunk sound can be described as tranquil trance music. Soft beats on top of a soothing melody make this music easy to listen to while doing any tasks. Literally the perfect background playlist as you fight the system and save the planet.

Solarpunk Movies

Most punk movements have left lasting impressions on pop culture. Ahead of its time, Blade Runner is considered the most influential cinematic Cyberpunk film. On the other hand, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, though it may not sound like it, is one of the more recent appraised Steampunk films. Furthermore, the classic '60s series Wild Wild West was a pioneering example of Steampunk in film/TV (although it's probably best that we forget about the terrible 1999 movie adaptation that starred Will Smith).

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind

Solarpunk is still new, and so we might not be seeing a notable influence until much later. Though there haven't been any direct references to Solarpunk in pop culture, there have been movies created where their ideology is apparent.

The most famous recent example would be one of Marvel's most celebrated releases, Black Panther. The nation of Wakanda is perhaps the closest depiction of what a Solarpunk utopia would look like. When the film was released, there were many discussions surrounding the utopian land it portrayed. People respected each other and valued nature, which created a harmony that we don't see today. Evidently, a direct contrast to our modern cities. The Solarpunk community hailed the movie for showcasing what the future could look like if progress was made instead of talked about. Traditional living existed side by side with the most innovative technological advancement. It is no surprise that Blank Panther has managed to transcend through multiple communities. Wakanda presents a city where technological advancement can exceed anything we've seen before without the destruction of our environment or humanity.

On the other hand, if you enjoy animated films, nothing fits the Solarpunk aesthetic more than Studio Ghibli films. With stories centered around the harmony between humans and nature set in the most idyllic backgrounds, these movies may help bring an understanding to the conversation around Solarpunk. Inspired by true stories and literature, these movies have strong messages that are subtly shown and easy to digest by any audience. It is a studio that has managed to insert life lessons into a carefully curated story wrapped in enchanting visuals. The colors of Studio Ghibli movies are vibrant and soft. Moreover, these stories almost always wrap up in a neat and satisfying ending, reflecting of the warm and utopic vision of the Solarpunk community. Among these movies, the ones that truly stand out and represent the Solarpunk ethos are Castle in the Sky and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind.

Solarpunk Literature

Perhaps the richest source of Solarpunk material can be found in literature, which has always consistently expanded the boundaries of any punk movement. Like all movements before it, the Solarpunk theme and universe are mainly explored through fiction. A genre that allows the imagination to run through endless possibilities, it is the platform that gives birth to new and innovative ideas. Literature is the source of many punk material due to its rich nature. Through literature, Solarpunk ideas have been shared and interpreted into the set of understandings that define the movement today.

Solarpunk literature was born amidst the dystopic movements of steampunk and cyberpunk. It ended up branching out into its own entity due to its optimistic outlook. In line with that, it explores a semi-utopic future with fantastical elements that exaggerate more positive advancements that allow for its ideals to prosper. Within the Solarpunk realm, this of course includes a complete integration of technology and nature. For example, solar-powered air transportation which is made entirely out of biodegradable materials. These ideas may seem outlandish and impossible, and yet, nothing is impossible in fiction. Solarpunk loves reality, but can you blame them for indulging in fiction when the future looks so bleak?

Some of the most popular examples of Solarpunk literature include The Summer Prince by Alaya Dawn Johnson as well as Orion Shall Rise by Poul Anderson. These stories explore the relationship between man, nature and technology. Though written in different decades, these stories are perhaps more relevant today than they were then.

"We're Solarpunks because the only other options are denial or despair."

Solarpunk poses an interesting and new take on the problems we are facing in this century. The beauty of Solarpunk lies in its non-restrictive and varying aesthetics. All parts of this movement aim towards achieving a bright and welcoming future for everyone. From fashion to music, as long as it follows the core values, anyone can be a part of this positive movement. Adam Flynn of ASU's Hieroglyph writes, "We're Solarpunks because the only other options are denial or despair." The heartbeat of Solarpunk is looking to the future with optimism and people moving towards more conscious consumption. To make a choice. The choice to move towards a more sustainable lifestyle, the choice to resist the current lifestyle and the choice to make a change for a better future. With all the existing troubling topics that we are bombarded with every day, Solarpunk provides solace in its hope for a better future.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Definitive Guide To SOLARPUNK: Fashion, Movies, Aesthetic & More

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
We've all heard of Steampunk and Cyberpunk. Their iconic styles and bold images have always distinguished those who choose to stand apart from the status quo. In fact, Cyberpunk has become one of the most popular subcultures ever with the release of blockbuster movies like Blade Runner 2047 and the recent blockbuster video game Cyberpunk 2077.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Solarpunk

Key motifs

Stained glass solar panels, plant life, art noveau, African and Asian patterns.

Key values

Inclusion, community, environmental awareness, local businesses over corporations, renewable energy.

Solarpunk is a genre of speculative fiction that is also its own distinguished aesthetic, focusing mainly on renewable energy, living in harmony with nature, and the better future envisioned through both. Solarpunk also emphasizes handcrafted wares (as opposed to mass-produced products) and community. The 'punk' in Solarpunk comes from the genre's anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalist nature, as well as its strong focus on community and prefigurative politics, which separates it from aesthetics like Cyberprep.
Solarpunk futurism is not nihilistic like cyberpunk and it avoids steampunk's potentially quasi-reactionary tendencies: it is about ingenuity, generativity, independence, and community. At its core, Solarpunk is a vision of a future that embodies the best of what humanity can achieve: a post-scarcity, post-hierarchy, post-capitalistic world where humanity sees itself as part of nature and clean energy replaces fossil fuels.

The Solarpunk Manifesto may be found here. A reference guide for all things Solarpunk may be found at this link, and more content may also be found at r/solarpunk and on solarpunks.net.

Elements of Solarpunk

Everything from a positive imagining of our collective futures to actually creating it: 3D printing, afrofuturism, art, cooperatives, DIY, ecological restoration, engineering, fiction, futurism, gardening, geodesic domes, green architecture, green design, green energy, ingenuous indigenous practices, intentional community, maker spaces, materials science, music, permaculture, repair cafes, solar, solar power, sustainability, tree planting, urban planning, and volunteering (amongst other things).

Visual Aesthetics

The visual aesthetics of Solarpunk are open and evolving. They include a mash-up of the following:

1800s age-of-sail/frontier living (but with more bicycles)

Creative reuse of existing infrastructure (sometimes post-apocalyptic, sometimes present-weird)

Art Nouveau

Hayao Miyazaki

Jugaad-style innovation from the non-Western world

High-tech backends with simple, elegant outputs

While Solarpunk is a relatively young literary sub-genre, there are stories that take place in a solarpunk world or contain solarpunk elements, as well as older novels that helped inspire the genre. There are also numerous non-fiction works that relate to Solarpunk culture and applications in real life.

List originally compiled by u/dwarrowly on r/solarpunk

Octavia Butler

Xenogenesis Series (Dawn, Adulthood Rites, Imago)

Earthseed Series (Parable of the Sower, Parable of the Talents)

Films and TV Shows

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind

Princess Mononoke

Earthlock

Obduction

Botworld adventure

Atelier series

Legend of Zelda series

Terra Nil

Bastion

Oiligarchy

Flower(Thatgamecompany game)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Solarpunk is a genre of speculative fiction that is also its own distinguished aesthetic, focusing mainly on renewable energy, living in harmony with nature, and the better future envisioned through both. Solarpunk also emphasizes handcrafted wares (as opposed to mass-produced products) and community.

# data[].attributes.headline
A brief Wiki article with many examples 

# data[].attributes.subject
A brief Wiki article with many examples 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Climate fiction (sometimes shortened as cli-fi) is literature that deals with climate change and global warming. Not necessarily speculative in nature, works may take place in the world as we know it or in the near future. The genre frequently includes science fiction and dystopian or utopian themes, imagining the potential futures based on how humanity responds to the impacts of climate change. Technologies such as climate engineering or climate adaptation practices often feature prominently in works exploring their impacts on society. Climate fiction is distinct from petrofiction which deals directly with the petroleum culture and economy.

Although the term "climate fiction" only became used in the 2010s, climate change has been a topic of fiction since the 20th century, pioneered by authors such as J. G. Ballard and Octavia E. Butler. Prominent climate fiction authors include Margaret Atwood, Kim Stanley Robinson and Richard Powers.

University courses on literature and environmental issues may include climate change fiction in their syllabi. This body of literature has been discussed by a variety of publications, including The New York Times, The Guardian, and magazine, among other international media outlets. The role of fiction in communicating climate change has been the topic of study.

The term "cli-fi" was coined by freelance news reporter and climate activist Dan Bloom in 2007 or 2008. Bloom had used the term to describe his novella Polar City Red, a post-apocalyptic story about climate refugees in Alaska set in 2075, which was not commercially successful. It later came into mainstream media use in April 2013, when Christian Science Monitor and NPR ran stories about a new literary movement of novels and films that dealt with human-induced climate change. Bloom had been critical of the lack of mention of his role in coining the term in these features. Scott Thill wrote in in 2014 that he had popularised the term in 2009, inspired by the mixture of science and fiction in Franny Armstrong's film The Age of Stupid.

A number of literary works also dealt with climate change many decades before this, and the term has been retroactively applied to them.

Jules Verne's 1889 novel The Purchase of the North Pole imagines climate change due to tilting of Earth's axis. In his posthumous Paris in the Twentieth Century, written in 1883 and set during the 1960s, the eponymous city experiences a sudden drop in temperature, which lasts for three years.

Laurence Manning's 1933 serialized novel The Man Who Awoke has been described as an exemplary work of ecological science fiction from the golden age. It tells the story a man who awakes from suspended animation in various future eras and learns about the destruction to the Earth's climate, caused by overuse of fossil fuels, global warming, and deforestation. People of the future refer to 20th century humans as "the wasters". They have abandoned over-industrialization and consumerism to live in small self-sufficient villages based around genetically engineered trees that provide all their necessities. Isaac Asimov credited The Man Who Awoke for bringing the " energy crisis" to his attention 40 years before it became common knowledge in the 1970s.

Several well-known dystopian works by British author J. G. Ballard deal with climate-related natural disasters. In The Wind from Nowhere (1961), civilization is devastated by persistent hurricane-force winds, and The Drowned World (1962) describes a future of melted ice-caps and rising sea-levels caused by solar radiation. In The Burning World (1964, later retitled The Drought) his climate catastrophe is human-made, a drought due to disruption of the precipitation cycle by industrial pollution.

Frank Herbert's 1965 science fiction novel Dune, set on a fictional desert planet, has been proposed as a pioneer of climate fiction for its themes of ecology and environmentalism.

Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower (1993) imagines a near-future for the United States where climate change, wealth inequality, and corporate greed cause apocalyptic chaos. Here, and in sequel Parable of the Talents (1998), Butler dissects how instability and political demagoguery exacerbate society's underlying cruelty (especially with regards to racism and sexism) and also explores themes of survival and resilience. Butler wrote the novel "thinking about the future, thinking about the things that we're doing now and the kind of future we're buying for ourselves, if we're not careful."

As scientific knowledge of the effects of fossil fuel consumption and resulting increase in atmospheric CO₂ concentrations entered the public and political arena as " global warming", human-caused climate change entered works of fiction. Susan M. Gaines's Carbon Dreams (2000) was an early example of a literary novel that "tells a story about the devastatingly serious issue of human-induced climate change", set in the 1980s and published before the term "cli-fi" was coined. Michael Crichton's State of Fear (2004), a techno-thriller, was a bestseller upon its release but was criticised by scientists for portraying climate change as "a vast pseudo-scientific hoax" and rejecting the scientific consensus on climate change.

Margaret Atwood explored the subject in her dystopian trilogy Oryx and Crake (2003), The Year of the Flood (2009) and (2013). In Oryx and Crake, Atwood presents a world where "social inequality, genetic technology and catastrophic climate change, has finally culminated in some apocalyptic event". The novel's protagonist, Jimmy, lives in a "world split between corporate compounds", gated communities that have grown into city-states and pleeblands, which are "unsafe, populous and polluted" urban areas where the working classes live.

In 2016, Indian writer Amitav Ghosh expressed concern that climate change had "a much smaller presence in contemporary literary fiction than it does even in public discussion". In The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable, Ghosh said "if certain literary forms are unable to negotiate these waters, then they will have failed - and their failures will have to be counted as an aspect of the broader imaginative and cultural failure that lies at the heart of the climate crisis."

By the 2010s, climate fiction had attracted greater prominence and media attention. Cultural critic Josephine Livingston at The New Republic wrote in 2020 that "the last decade has seen such a steep rise in sophisticated 'cli-fi' that some literary publications now devote whole verticals to it. With such various and fertile imaginations at work on the same topic, whether in fiction or nonfiction, the challenge facing the environmental writer now is standing out from the crowd (not to mention the headlines)." She highlighted Jeff Vandermeer's Annihilation to Nathaniel Rich's Odds Against Tomorrow as examples.

The popular science-fiction novelist Kim Stanley Robinson focused on the theme in his Science in the Capital trilogy, which is set in the near future and includes Forty Signs of Rain (2004), Fifty Degrees Below (2005), and Sixty Days and Counting (2007). Robert K. J. Killheffer in his review for Fantasy & Science Fiction said " Forty Signs of Rain is a fascinating depiction of the workings of science and politics, and an urgent call to readers to confront the threat of climate change." Robinson's climate-themed novel, titled New York 2140, was published in March 2017. It gives a complex portrait of a coastal city that is partly underwater and yet has successfully adapted to climate change in its culture and ecology. Robinson's novel The Ministry for the Future, is set in the near future, and follows a subsidiary body, whose mission is to advocate for the world's future generations of citizens as if their rights are as valid as the present generation's.

British author J. G. Ballard used the setting of apocalyptic climate change in his early science fiction novels. In The Wind from Nowhere (1961), civilisation is reduced by persistent hurricane-force winds. The Drowned World (1962) describes a future of melted ice-caps and rising sea-levels, caused by solar radiation, creating a landscape mirroring the collective unconscious desires of the main characters. In The Burning World (1964) a surrealistic psychological landscape is formed by drought due to industrial pollution disrupting the precipitation cycle.

Similarly, (2006) by Cormac McCarthy is set after an unspecified apocalypse or environmental catastrophe. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2007. Although it does not explicitly mention climate change, it has been listed by The Guardian as one of the best climate change novels, and environmentalist George Monbiot has described it as "the most important environmental book ever written" for depicting a world without a biosphere.

Ian McEwan's (2010) follows the story of a physicist who discovers a way to fight climate change after managing to derive power from artificial photosynthesis. The Stone Gods (2007) by Jeanette Winterson is set on the fictional planet Orbus, a world very like Earth, running out of resources and suffering from the severe effects of climate change. Inhabitants of Orbus hope to take advantage of possibilities offered by a newly discovered planet, Planet Blue, which appears perfect for human life.

Other authors who have used this subject matter include:

Fallen Angels (1991) by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Michael Flynn. Set in North America in the "near future", a radical technophobic green movement dramatically cuts greenhouse gas emissions, only to find that manmade global warming was staving off a new ice age.

Mother of Storms (1994) by John Barnes describes a catastrophic, rapid climate and weather change brought on by a nuclear explosion releasing clathrate compounds from the ocean floor, based on the clathrate gun hypothesis.

Forty Signs of Rain (2004), Fifty Degrees Below (2005), and Sixty Days and Counting (2007) comprise the Science in the Capital series, a hard science fiction trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. Set primarily in Washington, D.C., abrupt climate change causes weather disasters in the US capitol and flooding of the fictional island nation of Khembalung. Main characters are American scientists, politicians, and Buddhist monks.

State of Fear (2004) a techno-thriller by Michael Crichton concerning a group of eco-terrorists attempting to create "natural" disasters to convince the public of the dangers of global warming. The book is critical of the scientific consensus on climate change, to the point it has been criticised by scientists for denying climate change.

The Stone Gods (2007) by Jeanette Winterson. This novel opens on the planet Orbus, a world very like Earth, running out of resources and suffering from the severe effects of climate change. Inhabitants of Orbus hope to take advantage of possibilities offered by a newly discovered planet, Planet Blue, which appears perfect for human life.

Far North (2009) by Marcel Theroux, in which the world is largely uninhabitable due to climate change. However, the novel implies that scientists got it wrong and that it was our actions combating global warming that irrevocably altered the climate.

Arctic Drift (2008) by Clive Cussler and Dirk Cussler. A thriller involving attempts to reverse global warming, a possible war between the United States and Canada, and "a mysterious silvery mineral traced to a long-ago expedition in search of the fabled Northwest Passage."

Devolution of a Species by M.E. Ellington focuses on the Gaia hypothesis, and describes the Earth as a single living organism fighting back against humankind.[non-primary source needed ]

The Carbon Diaries: 2015 (2009) by Saci Lloyd is set in a future where power is scarce and the UK has just begun carbon rationing. The story is told in diary form by Laura Brown, a teenager living in London in the aftermath of the Great Storm.

(2010) by Ian McEwan follows the story of a physicist who discovers a way to fight climate change after managing to derive power from artificial photosynthesis.

Barbara Kingsolver's novel, Flight Behavior (2012), employs environmental themes and highlights the potential effects of global warming on the monarch butterfly.

Norwegian author Maja Lunde has released a "Climate Quartet" of novels, beginning with Bienes histore (The History of Bees) in 2015, which examines pollinator decline through a number of human storylines throughout history, followed by The End of the Ocean (2017), Przewalski's Horse (2019) and an upcoming fourth instalment.

The Overstory (2018) by Richard Powers, which won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The novel revolves around nine disparate characters with close associations to individual trees, that come together to address deforestation.

The New Wilderness (2020) by Diane Cook is set in North America where climate change has affected the natural environment. It was shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize.

Bewilderment (2021) by Richard Powers was shortlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize. It was also longlisted for the 2021 National Book Award for Fiction. It was selected by Oprah Winfrey as part of Oprah's Book Club on 28 September 2021.

Welcome to the Greenhouse (2011) US edited by Gordon Van Gelder

Loosed Upon the World: The Saga Anthology of Climate Fiction (2015) US edited by John Joseph Adams

Drowned Worlds (2016) UK edited by Jonathan Strahan

Possible Solutions (2017) US by Helen Phillips - Many of the short stories concern climate change.

Author and editor Bruce Meyer and creative writing professor at Georgian College edited a 2017 anthology of stories about "changing ocean conditions, the widening disappearance of species, genetically modified organisms, increasing food shortages, mass migrations of refugees, and the hubris behind our provoking Mother Earth herself", which he labels as "cli-fi". The anthology includes works by George McWhirter, Richard Van Camp, Holly Schofield, Linda Rogers, Sean Virgo, Rati Mehrotra, Geoffrey W. Cole, Phil Dwyer, Kate Story, Leslie Goodreid, Nina Munteanu, Halli Villegas, John Oughton, Frank Westcott, Wendy Bone, Peter Timmerman, and Lynn Hutchinson-Lee.

Many journalists, literary critics, and scholars have speculated about the potential influence of climate fiction on the beliefs of its readers. To date, three empirical studies have examined this question.

A controlled experiment found that reading climate fiction short stories "had small but significant positive effects on several important beliefs and attitudes about global warming - observed immediately after participants read the stories", though "these effects diminished to statistical nonsignificance after a one-month interval". However, the authors note that "the effects of a single exposure in an artificial setting may represent a lower bound of the real-world effects. Reading climate fiction in the real world often involves multiple exposures and longer narratives", such as novels, "which may result in larger and longer-lasting impacts".

A survey of readers found that readers of climate fiction "are younger, more liberal, and more concerned about climate change than nonreaders", and that climate fiction "reminds concerned readers of the severity of climate change while impelling them to imagine environmental futures and consider the impact of climate change on human and nonhuman life. However, the actions that resulted from readers' heightened consciousness reveal that awareness is only as valuable as the cultural messages about possible actions to take that are in circulation. Moreover, the responses of some readers suggest that works of climate fiction might lead some people to associate climate change with intensely negative emotions, which could prove counterproductive to efforts at environmental engagement or persuasion."

Finally, an empirical study focused on the popular novel The Water Knife found that cautionary climate fiction set in a dystopic future can be effective at educating readers about climate injustice and leading readers to empathize with the victims of climate change, including environmental migrants. However, its results suggest that dystopic climate narratives might lead to support for reactionary responses to climate change. Based on this result, it cautioned that "not all climate fiction is progressive", despite the hopes of many authors, critics, and readers.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Climate fiction (sometimes shortened as cli-fi) is literature that deals with climate change and global warming. Not necessarily speculative in nature, works may take place in the world as we know it or in the near future. The genre frequently includes science fiction and dystopian or utopian themes, imagining the potential futures based on how humanity responds to the impacts of climate change.

# data[].attributes.body
One of the Solarpunk's roots

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Afrofuturism is a cultural aesthetic, and philosophy of science and history that explores the intersection of the African diaspora culture with science and technology. It addresses themes and concerns of the African diaspora through technoculture and speculative fiction, encompassing a range of media and artists with a shared interest in envisioning black futures that stem from Afro-diasporic experiences. While Afrofuturism is most commonly associated with science fiction, it can also encompass other speculative genres such as fantasy, alternate history, and magic realism. The term was coined by Mark Dery, an American Cultural critic in 1993 and explored in the late 1990s through conversations led by Alondra Nelson.

Ytasha L. Womack, writer of Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture, defines it as "an intersection of imagination, technology, the future and liberation". She also follows up with a quote by the curator Ingrid LaFleur who defines it as "a way of imagining possible futures through a black cultural lens." Kathy Brown paraphrases Bennett Capers' 2019 work in stating that Afrofuturism is about "forward thinking as well as backward thinking, while having a distressing past, a distressing present, but still looking forward to thriving in the future." Others have said that the genre is "fluid and malleable," bringing together technology, African culture, and "other influences."

Seminal Afrofuturistic works include the novels of Samuel R. Delany and Octavia Butler; the canvases of Jean-Michel Basquiat and Angelbert Metoyer, and the photography of Renée Cox; the explicitly extraterrestrial mythoi of Parliament-Funkadelic, Herbie Hancock's partnership with Robert Springett and other visual artists, while developing the use of synthesizers, the Jonzun Crew, Warp 9, Deltron 3030, Kool Keith, Sun Ra and the Marvel Comics superhero Black Panther.

Afrofuturism within music represents a diaspora of music that is non-traditional, focusing around the topic of blackness and space.

Afrofuturism was a label also retroactively applied to George Clinton and his bands Parliament and Funkadelic with his magnum opus Mothership Connection and the subsequent The Clones of Dr. Funkenstein, P-Funk Earth Tour, Funkentelechy Vs. the Placebo Syndrome, and Motor Booty Affair. This also applies to Jimi Hendrix's work such as Electric Ladyland and " Third Stone from the Sun".

Provoked by Miles Davis to use electric keyboards, Herbie Hancock quickly developed his taste for gadgets into an appreciation for electric and synthesized sounds. He did this in his solo career throughout the 1970s and 1980s, at the same time adopting tribal names for his group and increasingly using electronics in his music, in a techno-primitive direction. His record covers were a very important element in this aesthetic, involving artists such as Robert Springett, Victor Moscoso and Nobuyuki Nakanishi.

In 1975, Japanese artist Tadanori Yokoo used elements of science fiction, along with Eastern subterranean myths, to depict an advanced civilization in his design of the cover art for African-American jazz musician Miles Davis's live album .

Other musicians typically regarded as working in or greatly influenced by the Afrofuturist tradition include reggae producers Lee "Scratch" Perry and Scientist, hip-hop artists Afrika Bambaataa and Tricky, electronic musicians Larry Heard, A Guy Called Gerald, Juan Atkins, Jeff Mills, Newcleus and Lotti Golden & Richard Scher, writers of " Light Years Away", described as a "cornerstone of early 80's beatbox afrofuturism".

During the 1980s, the burgeoning Detroit techno scene also developed a futurist vision specific to Detroit's suburban black community.

A newer generation of artists are creating mainstream Afrofuturist music - for example, Janelle Monáe, Outkast, Missy Elliott and Erykah Badu.

In the early 1990s Mark Dery in his 1993 essay "Black to the Future", began to write about the features he saw as common in African-American science fiction. Dery dubbed this phenomenon Afrofuturism. Afrofuturist art has been written about by scholars like Alondra Nelson, Greg Tate, Tricia Rose, Kodwo Eshun, and others. In an interview, Alondra Nelson explained Afrofuturism as a way of looking at the subject position of black people which covers themes of alienation and aspirations for a utopic future. The idea of "alien" or "other" is a theme often explored.

Additionally, Nelson says that discussions around race, access, and technology often bolster uncritical claims about a so-called " digital divide". Nelson is of the opinion that the digital divide overemphasizes the association of racial and economic inequality with limited access to technology, and that this association then begins to construct blackness "as always oppositional to technologically driven chronicles of progress".

Contemporary Afrofuturism has been noted to be concerned with metaphysical areas such as "cosmogony, cosmology, and speculative philosophy." A new generation of recording artists has embraced Afrofuturism through their music and fashion, including Solange Knowles, Rihanna, and Beyoncé. Other artists such as Erykah Badu, Missy Elliott and Janelle Monáe have expanded on these themes incorporating the use of cyborg and metallic visuals into their style. Other 21st century musicians who have been characterized as Afrofuturist include singer FKA Twigs, musical duo Ibeyi, DJ/producer Ras G, and musician and filmmaker Flying Lotus.

Janelle Monáe has made a conscious effort to restore Afrofuturist themes to the forefront of urban contemporary music. Her notable works include the music videos "Prime Time" and "Many Moons", which explore the realms of slavery and freedom through the world of cyborgs and the fashion industry. She is credited with proliferating Afrofuturist funk into a new neo-Afrofuturism by use of her Metropolis-inspired alter-ego, Cindi Mayweather, who incites a rebellion against the Great Divide, a secret society, in order to liberate citizens who have fallen under their oppression. This ArchAndroid role reflects earlier Afrofuturistic figures Sun Ra and George Clinton, who created their own visuals as extraterrestrial beings rescuing African-Americans from the oppressive natures of Earth. Other influences include Blade Runner and . Additional musical artists to emerge since the turn of the millennium regarded as Afrofuturist include dBridge, SBTRKT, Shabazz Palaces, Heavyweight Dub Champion, and Drexciya (with Gerald Donald).

Nick Cave, known for his Soundsuits project, has helped develop younger talent as the director of the graduate fashion program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Other artists include visual artists Hebru Brantley as well as contemporary artist Rashid Johnson, a Chicago native currently based in New York. In 2013, Chicago resident Ytasha L. Womack wrote the study Afrofuturism: The World of Black Science Fiction and Fantasy, and William Hayashi has published all three volumes of his Darkside Trilogy which tells the story of what happens in America when the country discovers African Americans secretly living on the backside of the moon since before the arrival of Neil Armstrong, an extreme vision of segregation imposed by technologically advanced blacks.

Krista Franklin, a member of University of Chicago's Arts Incubator, is currently exploring the relation between Afrofuturism and the grotesque through her visual and written work with weaves and collected hair. Recently, she also created an audio narrative in collaboration with another Afrofuturist, Perpetual Rebel, called The Two Thousand and Thirteen Narrative(s) of Naima Brown, which explores the ideas of identity and transformation within the context of hair and African-American culture.

The movement has grown globally in the arts. Afrofuturist Society was founded by curator Gia Hamilton in New Orleans. Artists like Demetrius Oliver from New York, Cyrus Kabiru from Nairobi, Lina Iris Viktor from Liberia, famed Nigerian-American solar muralist, Shala., and Wanuri Kahiu of Kenya have all steeped their work in the cosmos or sci-fi.

Today, Afrofuturism has been portrayed in popular movies like the feature film Black Panther. American costume designer Ruth E. Carter brought her vision to life. To best represent her work she borrowed ideas from true African designs. "To imagine the fictional African nation of Wakanda, without the influence of [European colonizers], Ms. Carter borrowed from indigenous people across the continent." In early February 2021, it was announced that the companies of Idris Elba and Sabrina Dhowre (Idris's wife) would be developing an Afrofuturist adult animated, sci-fi, series, tentatively titled Dantai, for Crunchyroll, which would be about a time when biotech has "created an ever-widening gap between the haves and have-nots." The series was also described as an "afropunk sci-fi series". Russell Contreras, in Axios, noted that Afrofuturism is growing in popularity, even as some worry it will be co-opted, and black writers announced, in 2021, "Afrofuturist projects around gaming and virtual reality."

In February 2021, the Center for Afrofuturist Studies, located at Public Space One in Iowa City, celebrated its fifth anniversary, flourishing as a black artist space, and occupied by four artists (Antoine Williams, Donté Hayes, Deborah Goffe, and André M. Zachery), embodying Afrofuturism, flexibly defining the term, as envisioning black people in the future and how that "connects with science and technology and new discoveries" and how parts of black history shape "the future, community, self-determination, [and] working towards a goal" according to the center's coordinator, Dellyssa Edinboro.

The creation of the term Afrofuturism, in the 1990s, was often primarily used to categorize "speculative fiction that treats African-American themes and addresses African-American concerns in the context of 20th-century technoculture," but was soon expanded to include artistic, scientific, and spiritual practices throughout the African diaspora. Contemporary practice retroactively identifies and documents historical instances of Afrofuturist practice and integrates them into the canon. For example, the Dark Matter anthologies edited by Sheree Thomas feature contemporary black science fiction, discuss Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man in her introduction, "Looking for the Invisible", and also include older works by W. E. B. Du Bois, Charles W. Chesnutt, and George S. Schuyler.

Lisa Yazsek argues that Ralph Ellison's 1952 science fiction novel, Invisible Man, should be thought of as a predecessor to Afrofuturist literature. Yaszek believes that Ellison does not offer any other futures so that the next generation of authors can.

A number of contemporary science fiction and speculative fiction authors have also been characterized as Afrofuturist or as employing Afrofuturist themes by one person or another. Nancy Farmer won a Newbery Honor for her afrofuturist young adult novel The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm. Steven Barnes has been called an Afrofuturist author for his alternate-history novels Lion's Blood and . N.K. Jemisin, Nalo Hopkinson, and Colson Whitehead have also been referred to as Afrofuturist authors. Butler inspired a movement with vision amongst the black speculative fiction writers. Octavia Butler's novels are often associated with Afrofuturism; this association has been somewhat controversial, since Butler incorporates multi-ethnic and multi-species communities that insist on "hybridity beyond the point of discomfort". However, the fourth book of the science fiction Patternist series, , particularly fits ideas of Afrofuturist thematic concerns, as the narrative of two immortal Africans Doro and Anyanwu features science fiction technologies and an alternate anti-colonialist history of seventeenth century America. At the most straightforward sci-fi stories (likewise alluded to in this book as Sci-Fi and SF) is a social classification worried about parts of futurism, envisioned advances as well as between planetarism. Those focuses or direction take into consideration a wide scope of enunciations and theories regarding the dystopian or utopian parts of future (or potentially elective) lives or real factors, including, in numerous examples, contact with outsider others. In other words, good fiction writing should not be judged by a person's color or race.

Tim Fielder's 2021 graphic novel Infinitum: An Afrofuturist Tale features the partially historical narrative of an immortal African king.

In February 2021, the New York Times reported that in the coming year, fans would see a number of graphic novels and comics with Afrofuturist themes, including some devoted to the fictional gene, and "reissues of Afrofuturist titles from comic-book houses like DC and Dark Horse." This includes the new novels After the Rain, Hardears, Black Star, and Infinitum, the latter by Tim Fielder, a new installment of N.K. Jemisin's , The Black Panther by Ta-Nehisi Coates and many other re-issued comics like E.X.O., along with an upcoming animated series named . Around the same time, Kenyan artist Kevo Abbra, inspired by Afrofuturism in the 1990s, was interviewed, explaining how artistic expression has developed over time and his current artistic style. The first issue of the new Black Panther series was released on 16 February.

As a part of the MOMA's PS1 festival, King Britt curated Moondance: A Night in the Afro Future in 2014. From noon to six p.m. on 13 April, people could attend Moondance and listen to lectures, live music or watch dance performances in celebration of Afrofuturism in contemporary culture. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture held a seminal group show of Visual Afrofuturists focusing on unambiguous science fiction and fantasy based art. The show, titled 'Unveiling Visions: The Alchemy of the Black Imagination' ran from 1 October 2015 - 16 January 2016. The closing night coincided with the Schomburg Black Comic Book Day. Unveiling Visions was curated by artist John Jennings (Co-founder of artist duo, Black Kirby w/Professor Stacey Robinson) and Afrofuturist Scholar, Reynaldo Anderson (founder of The Black Speculative Arts Movement). The show featured artists such as Tony Puryear, Sheeba Maya, Mshindo Kuumba, Eric Wilkerson, Manzel Bowman, Grey Williamson, Tim Fielder, Stacey Robinson, and Shawn Alleyne. Unveiling Visions liner notes state: "exhibition includes artifacts from the Schomburg collections that are connected to Afrofuturism, black speculative imagination and Diasporan cultural production. Offering a fresh perspective on the power of speculative imagination and the struggle for various freedoms of expression in popular culture, Unveiling Visions showcases illustrations and other graphics that highlight those popularly found in science fiction, magical realism and fantasy. Items on display include film posters, comics, T-shirts, magazines, CD covers, playbills, religious literature, and more."

In April 2016, Niama Safia Sandy curated an exhibit entitled "Black Magic: AfroPasts / Afrofutures" at the Corridor Gallery in Brooklyn, New York. The multidisciplinary art exhibit looks at the relationship between magical realism and afrofuturism through the black diaspora. In a description of the collection, Sandy stated: "There's a lot of looking back and looking forward happening in this work... [and there's a lot of] celebrating those journeys whether they are intentional or forced journeys."

The exhibition Afro-Tech and the Future of Re-Invention ran from 21 October 2017 until 22 April 2018 at Dortmunder U in Dortmund, Germany and looked at "speculative visions of the future and current developments in the field of digital technology by artists and inventors from Africa and the African diaspora...."

These Afrofuturist artists used their art as revolution in that they saw its purpose as inspiring black people to imagine new possibilities and futures.

'Black Metropolis: 30 Years of Afrofuturism, Comics, Music, Animation, Decapitated Chickens, Heroes, Villains and Negroes' was a one-man show focusing on the career of cartoonist and visual afrofuturist, Tim Fielder. The show, designed to travel over multiple gallery spaces, opened at New York Gallatin Galleries from 23 to 30 May 2016. Curated by Boston Fielder, the exhibit featured both published and unpublished work ranging from independent comics art for alternative magazine, and mainstream comics work done for Marvel Comics. Black Metropolis was revived at "The Hammonds House Museum in Atlanta, GA for the museum's 30th Anniversary 12 October-25 November 2018."

Afrofuturism Art coincides with Afrofuturism Literature occasionally, such as in science fiction comic books. Just as Afrofuturism explores possibilities, so do the art in Afrofuturism comic books. For example, Black Panther, the movie and comic book is a form of Afrofuturism Literature.

In 2021, the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened "Before Yesterday We Could Fly: An Afrofuturist Period Room" an art exhibition engaging themes of Afrofuturism in a "period room" format of installation, envisioning the past, present, and future home of someone who lived in Seneca Village, a largely African American settlement which was destroyed to make way for the construction of Central Park in the mid-1800s.

Jared Richardson's Attack of the Boogeywoman: Visualizing Black Women's Grotesquerie in Afrofuturism assesses how the aesthetic functions as a space for black women to engage with the intersection of topics such as race, gender, and sexuality. The representation and treatment of black female bodies is deconstructed by Afrofuturist contemporaries and amplified to alien and gruesome dimensions by artists such as Wangechi Mutu and Shoshanna Weinberger.

Beyoncé's 2016 short film included feminist afrofuturism in its concept. The film featured music duo Ibeyi, artist Laolu Senbanjo, actresses Amandla Stenberg, Quvenzhané Wallis, and Zendaya, as well as YouTube singing stars Chloe x Halle, ballet dancer Michaela DePrince, and 2015 Sports Illustrated Sportsperson of the Year Serena Williams, and the sophisticated womanist poetry of Somali-British writer Warsan Shire. The mothers of Trayvon Martin (Sybrina Fulton), Michael Brown (Lesley McFadden), Eric Garner (Gwen Carr) are featured holding pictures of their deceased sons in homage to the importance of their lives.

In the Afro-Surreal Manifesto, Afro-Surrealism is juxtaposed with European surrealism, with European surrealism being empirical. It is consistent with Trey Ellis' essay, "The New Black Aesthetic" in that the art seeks to disturb. Afro-Futuristic art samples from old art pieces updating them with current images. This technique calls to the forefront those past images and the sentiments, memories, or ideas around them and combines them with new images in a way that those of the current generation can still identify. Afro-Futuristic artists seek to propose a deviant beauty, a beauty in which disembodiment is both inhumane, yet distinct; Afro-Futuristic artists speculate on the future, where Afro-Surrealism is about the present.

Afrofuturism takes representations of the lived realities of black people in the past and present, and reexamines the narratives to attempt to build new truths outside of the dominant cultural narrative. By analyzing the ways in which alienation has occurred, Afrofuturism works to connect the African diaspora with its histories and knowledge of racialized bodies. Space and aliens function as key products of the science fiction elements; black people are envisioned to have been the first aliens by way of the Middle Passage. Their alien status connotes being in a foreign land with no history, but as also being disconnected from the past via the traditions of slavery where slaves were made to renounce their ties to Africa in service of their slave master.

Kodwo Eshun locates the first alienation within the context of the Middle Passage. He writes that Afrofuturist texts work to reimagine slavery and alienation by using "extraterritoriality as a hyperbolic trope to explore the historical terms, the everyday implications of forcibly imposed dislocation, and the constitution of Black Atlantic subjectivities". This location of dystopian futures and present realities places science fiction and novels built around dystopian societies directly in the tradition of black realities.

In many different Afrofuturist works, water and black women are symbolically linked in their connection to both the erasure and emergence of black life. These meanings, while seemingly contradictory, actually play off and inform each other. Examples of Afrofuturist work dealing with the theme of water include the 2009 Kenyan film , various songs in Beyonce's Lemonade, the work of Detroit Techno group Drexciya, and Kara Walker's 2019 sculpture Fons Americanus.

Afrofuturism has to do with reclaiming those identities or perspectives that have been lost. When Mark Dery coined the term, he saw Afrofuturism as giving rise to "a troubling antinomy: Can a community whose past has been deliberately rubbed out, and whose energies have subsequently been consumed by the search for legible traces of its history, imagine possible futures?" Furthermore, Afrofuturism is not restricted to any single medium; there are Afrofuturist novels and musical works. But whatever the medium, Afrofuturism involves reclaiming some type of agency over one's story, a story that has been told, throughout much of history, by official culture in the name of white power. It is for this reason that Dery says, "African-American culture is Afrofuturist at its heart."

In film, Afrofuturism is the incorporation of black people's history and culture in science fiction film and related genres. The Guardian's Ashley Clark said the term Afrofuturism has "an amorphous nature" but that Afrofuturist films are "united by one key theme: the centring of the international black experience in alternate and imagined realities, whether fiction or documentary; past or present; science fiction or straight drama". The New York Times's Glenn Kenny said, "Afrofuturism is more prominent in music and the graphic arts than it is in cinema, but there are movies out there that illuminate the notion in different ways."

With the release of Marvel's Black Panther in 2018, Afrofuturism was ushered into the cultural spotlight across the world cinematic stage. In North America alone, it made history as the third highest grossing film in history, reviving mainstream interest in Afrofuturism. It defied stereotypes of Africa as disease- and war-stricken and fueled feelings of black pride in viewers.

In 2019, Nnedi Okorafor, a Nigerian-American writer of fantasy and science fiction, began strongly rejecting the term "afrofuturism" as a label for her work and coined the terms " Africanfuturism" and "Africanjujuism" to describe her works and works like hers. In October 2019, she published an essay titled "Defining Africanfuturism" that defines both terms in detail. In that essay, she defined Africanfuturism as a sub-category of science fiction that is "directly rooted in African culture, history, mythology and point-of-view and does not privilege or center the West," is centered with optimistic "visions in the future," and is written (and centered on) "people of African descent" while rooted in the African continent. As such its center is African, often does extend upon the continent of Africa, and includes the black diaspora, including fantasy that is set in the future, making a narrative "more science fiction than fantasy" and typically has mystical elements. She differentiated this from Afrofuturism, which she said "positioned African American themes and concerns" at the center of its definition. She also described Africanjujuism as a subcategory of fantasy that "acknowledges the seamless blend of true existing African spiritualities and cosmologies with the imaginative."

In August 2020, Hope Wabuke, a writer and assistant professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln of English and creative writing, noted that Afrofuturism, coined by Mark Dery, a white critic, in 1993, treats African-American themes and concerns in the "context of twentieth-century technoculture," which was later expanded by Alondra Nelson, arguing that Dery's conception of blackness began in 1619 and "is marked solely by the ensuing 400 years of violation by whiteness" that he portrayed as "potentially irreparable." Critical of this definition, saying it lacks the qualities of the "Black American diasporic imagination" and ability to conceive of "Blackness outside of the Black American diaspora" or independent from whiteness, Wabuke further explains how Africanfuturism is more specific and rids itself of the "othering of the white gaze and the de facto colonial Western mindset," free from what she calls the "white Western gaze" and saying this is the main difference "between Afrofuturism and Africanfuturism." She adds that, in her view, Africanfuturism has a different outlook and perspective than "mainstream Western and American science fiction and fantasy" and even Afrofuturism which is "married to the white Western gaze." Wabuke goes on to explain Africanfuturist and Africanjujuist themes in Okorafor's Who Fears Death and Zahrah the Windseeker, Akwaeke Emezi's , and Buchi Emecheta's The Rape of Shavi.

In February 2021, Aigner Loren Wilson of explained the difficulty of finding books in the subgenre because many institutions "treat Africanfuturism and Afrofuturism like the same thing" even though the distinction between them is plain. She said that Africanfuturism is "centered in and about Africa and their people" while Afrofuturism is a sci-fi subcategory which is about "Black people within the diaspora", often including stories of those outside Africa, including in "colonized Western societies." Wilson further outlined a list of stories and books from the genre, highlighting Africanfuturism: An Anthology (edited by Wole Talabi), Namwali Serpell's The Old Drift, Nnedi Okorafor's , Nicky Drayden's The Prey of Gods, Oghenechovwen Donald Ekpeki's Ife-Iyoku, the Tale of Imadeyunuagbon, and Tochi Onyebuchi's . Another reviewer called Okorafor's , which "recounts the story of the arrival of aliens in Nigeria," as an Africanfuturist work which requires a reader who is "actively engaged in co-creating the alternative future that the novel is constructing," meaning that the reader becomes part of the "creative conversation."

Gary K. Wolfe reviewed Africanfuturism: An Anthology, which was edited by Wole Talabi, in February 2021. He credits Nnedi Okorafor for coining " Africanfuturism", noting its describes "more Africa-centered SF," although saying he is not sure whether her term " Africanjujuism", a parallel term for fantasy, will catch on. While saying that both are useful, he says that he does not like how they have to "do with the root, not the prefix," with "futurism" only describing a bit of science fiction and fantasy. He still calls the book a "solid anthology", saying it challenges the idea of viewing African science fiction as monolithic. Stories in the book include "Egoli" by T. L. Huchu, "Yat Madit" by Dilman Dila, "Behind Our Irises" by Tlotlo Tsamaase, "Fort Kwame" by Derek Lubangakene, "Rainmaker" by Mazi Nwonwu, "Fruit of the Calabash" by Rafeeat Aliyu, "Lekki Lekki" by Mame Bougouma Diene, and "Sunrise" by Nnedi Okorafor.

Financial Times writer David Pilling wrote that Africancentrism "draws on the past, both real and imagined, to depict a liberated version of the future" which is planted in the African, rather than African-American, experience. He also notes criticism of Black Panther from some like Patrick Gathara, who says its depiction of Africa "differs little from the colonial view" and that one of Okorafor's books, is being "adapted for television by Hulu," arguing that its success is part of a wave of Africanfuturism.

Anderson, Reynaldo; Jones, Charles E., eds. (2015). Afrofuturism 2.0: The Rise of Astro-Blackness. Lexington Books. ISBN 978-1498510509.

Barr, Marleen S. (2008). Afro-future females: Black writers chart science fiction's newest new-wave trajectory. Columbus: Ohio State University Press. ISBN 9780814210789.

Bould, Mark; Rone Shavers, eds. (July 2007). "Special Issue on Afrofuturism". Science Fiction Studies. 34 (2).

Dauphin, Gary (2006). "They Came Before the Matrix". Archived from the original on 15 March 2012. (Afrofuturist Film)

Dery, Mark (2002). "Black to the Future: Afro-Futurism 1.0". rumori (Mailing list).

Dery, Mark (1994). "Black to the future: interviews with Samuel R. Delany, Greg Tate, and Tricia Rose". In Dery, Mark (ed.). Flame wars: the discourse of cyberculture. Duke University Press. ISBN 9780822315407.

David, Mario (2007). "Afrofuturism and Post-Soul Possibility in Black Popular Music". African American Review. 41 (4): 695-707. doi:10.2307/25426985. JSTOR 25426985.

DeFrantz, Thomas F. (2003). "Believe the Hype: Hype Williams and Afrofuturist Filmmaking". Refractory: A Journal of Entertainment Media. 4. Archived from the original on 15 August 2011.

Eshun, Kodwo (1998). More brilliant than the sun: adventures in sonic fiction. Quartet Books. ISBN 9780704380257.

Fielder, Tim (2020). INFINITUM: An Afrofuturist Tale. HarperCollins Amistad. ISBN 9780062964083.

Eshun, Kodwo (2003). "Further Considerations of Afrofuturism". CR: The New Centennial Review. 3 (2): 287-302. doi:10.1353/ncr.2003.0021. S2CID 13646543.

Francis, Reese. "What is Afrofuturism? (series)". Aker: Futuristically Ancient.

Hicks, Cinqué (April 2004). "What is Afrofuturist Art?" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 16 January 2014.

Lewis, George E. (2008). "Special issue on Technology and Black Music in the Americas". Journal of the Society for American Music. 2 (2).

Mayer, Ruth (2000). "'Africa As an Alien Future': The Middle Passage, Afrofuturism, and Postcolonial Waterworlds". Amerikastudien / American Studies. 45 (4): 555-566. JSTOR 41157608.

Nelson, Alondra (Spring 2000). "Afrofuturism: Past-Future Visions." Color Lines: 34-37.

Nelson, Alondra, ed. (3 June 2002). Afrofuturism: A Special Issue of Social Text. Duke University Press. ISBN 978-0822365457.

Rockeymoore, Mark A. (27 February 2002). "What is Afrofuturism?". AuthorsDen. Archived from the original on 29 August 2003.

Weiner, Jonah (20 June 2008). "Lil Wayne, Tha Carter III, and the Afronaut invasion". .

Thomas, Sheree (2000). Thomas, Sheree (ed.). Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora. Warner Aspect. ISBN 0446525839. Dark Matter

Thomas, Sheree (2004). Thomas, Sheree (ed.). Dark Matter: Reading the Bones. Warner Aspect. ISBN 0446693774. Dark Matter: Reading the Bones

Womack, Ytasha (1 October 2013). Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture. Chicago Review Press. ISBN 9781613747964.

Yaszek, Lisa (June 2005). "An Afrofuturist Reading of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man". Rethinking History. 9 (2-3): 297-313. doi:10.1080/13642520500149202. S2CID 19585117.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Afrofuturism is a cultural aesthetic, and philosophy of science and history that explores the intersection of the African diaspora culture with science and technology. It addresses themes and concerns of the African diaspora through technoculture and speculative fiction, encompassing a range of media and artists with a shared interest in envisioning black futures that stem from Afro-diasporic experiences.

# data[].attributes.body
Another root of solarpunk

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Retrofuturism (adjective retrofuturistic or retrofuture) is a movement in the creative arts showing the influence of depictions of the future produced in an earlier era. If futurism is sometimes called a "science" bent on anticipating what will come, retrofuturism is the remembering of that anticipation. Characterized by a blend of old-fashioned " retro styles" with futuristic technology, retrofuturism explores the themes of tension between past and future, and between the alienating and empowering effects of technology. Primarily reflected in artistic creations and modified technologies that realize the imagined artifacts of its parallel reality, retrofuturism can be seen as "an animating perspective on the world".

The word retrofuturism is formed by the addition of the prefix "retro" from the Latin language, which gives the meaning of "backwards" to the word "future", a word also originating from Latin.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, an early use of the term appears in a Bloomingdales advertisement in a 1983 issue of The New York Times. The ad talks of jewellery that is "silverized steel and sleek grey linked for a retro-futuristic look". In an example more related to retrofuturism as an exploration of past visions of the future, the term appears in the form of "retro-futurist" in a 1984 review of the film in The New Yorker. Critic Pauline Kael writes, "[Terry Gilliam] presents a retro-futurist fantasy."

Retrofuturism builds on ideas of futurism, but the latter term functions differently in several different contexts. In avant-garde artistic, literary and design circles, futurism is a long-standing and well-established term.[citation needed ] But in its more popular form, futurism (sometimes referred to as futurology) is "an early optimism that focused on the past and was rooted in the nineteenth century, an early-twentieth-century 'golden age' that continued long into the 1960s' Space Age".

Retrofuturism is first and foremost based on modern but changing notions of "the future". As Guffey notes, retrofuturism is "a recent neologism", but it "builds on futurists' fevered visions of space colonies with flying cars, robotic servants, and interstellar travel on display there; where futurists took their promise for granted, retro-futurism emerged as a more skeptical reaction to these dreams". It took its current shape in the 1970s, a time when technology was rapidly changing. From the advent of the personal computer to the birth of the first test tube baby, this period was characterized by intense and rapid technological change. But many in the general public began to question whether applied science would achieve its earlier promise-that life would inevitably improve through technological progress. In the wake of the Vietnam War, environmental depredations, and the energy crisis, many commentators began to question the benefits of applied science. But they also wondered, sometimes in awe, sometimes in confusion, at the scientific positivism evinced by earlier generations. Retrofuturism "seeped into academic and popular culture in the 1960s and 1970s", inflecting George Lucas's Star Wars and the paintings of pop artist Kenny Scharf alike". Surveying the optimistic futurism of the early twentieth century, historians Joe Corn and Brian Horrigan remind us that retrofuturism is "a history of an idea, or a system of ideas-an ideology. The future, of course, does not exist except as an act of belief or imagination."

Retrofuturism incorporates two overlapping trends which may be summarized as the future as seen from the past and the past as seen from the future.

The first trend, retrofuturism proper, is directly inspired by the imagined future which existed in the minds of writers, artists, and filmmakers in the pre-1960 period who attempted to predict the future, either in serious projections of existing technology (e.g. in magazines like Science and Invention) or in science fiction novels and stories. Such futuristic visions are refurbished and updated for the present, and offer a nostalgic, counterfactual image of what the future might have been, but is not.

The second trend is the inverse of the first: futuristic retro. It starts with the retro appeal of old styles of art, clothing, mores, and then grafts modern or futuristic technologies onto it, creating a mélange of past, present, and future elements. Steampunk, a term applying both to the retrojection of futuristic technology into an alternative Victorian age, and the application of neo-Victorian styles to modern technology, is a highly successful version of this second trend. In the movie Space Station 76 (2014), mankind has reached the stars, but clothes, technology, furnitures and above all social taboos are purposely highly reminiscent of the mid-1970s.

In practice, the two trends cannot be sharply distinguished, as they mutually contribute to similar visions. Retrofuturism of the first type is inevitably influenced by the scientific, technological, and social awareness of the present, and modern retrofuturistic creations are never simply copies of their pre-1960 inspirations; rather, they are given a new (often wry or ironic) twist by being seen from a modern perspective.

In the same way, futuristic retro owes much of its flavor to early science fiction (e.g. the works of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells), and in a quest for stylistic authenticity may continue to draw on writers and artists of the desired period.

Both retrofuturistic trends in themselves refer to no specific time. When a time period is supplied for a story, it might be a counterfactual present with unique technology; a fantastic version of the future; or an alternate past in which the imagined (fictitious or projected) inventions of the past were indeed real.

The import of retrofuturism has, in recent years, come under considerable discussion. Some, like the German architecture critic Niklas Maak, see retrofuturism as "nothing more than an aesthetic feedback loop recalling a lost belief in progress, the old images of the once radically new". Bruce McCall calls retrofuturism a "faux nostalgia"-the nostalgia for a future that never happened.

Although retrofuturism, due to the varying time-periods and futuristic visions to which it alludes, does not provide a unified thematic purpose or experience, a common thread is dissatisfaction or discomfort with the present, to which retrofuturism provides a nostalgic contrast.

A similar theme is dissatisfaction with the modern world itself. A world of high-speed air transport, computers, and space stations is (by any past standard) "futuristic"; yet the search for alternative and perhaps more promising futures suggests a feeling that the desired or expected future has failed to materialize. Retrofuturism suggests an alternative path, and in addition to pure nostalgia, may act as a reminder of older but now forgotten ideals. This dissatisfaction also manifests as political commentary in Retrofuturistic literature, in which visionary nostalgia is paradoxically linked to a utopian future modelled after conservative values as seen in the example of Fox News' use of BioShock's aesthetic in a 2014 broadcast.

Retrofuturism also implies a reevaluation of technology. Unlike the total rejection of post-medieval technology found in most fantasy genres, or the embrace of any and all possible technologies found in some science-fiction, retrofuturism calls for a human-scale, largely comprehensible technology, amenable to tinkering and less opaque than modern black-box technology.

Retrofuturism is not universally optimistic, and when its points of reference touch on gloomy periods like World War II, or the paranoia of the Cold War, it may itself become bleak and dystopian. In such cases, the alternative reality inspires fear, not hope, though it may still be coupled with nostalgia for a world of greater moral as well as mechanical transparency.

Genres of retrofuturism include cyberpunk, steampunk, dieselpunk, atompunk, and Raygun Gothic, each referring to a technology from a specific time period.

The first of these to be named and recognized as its own genre was cyberpunk, originating in the early to mid-1980s in literature with the works of Bruce Bethke, William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, and Pat Cadigan. Its setting is almost always a dystopian future, with a strong emphasis either upon outlaws hacking the futuristic world's machinery (often computers and computer networks), or even upon post-apocalyptic settings. The post-apocalyptic variant is the one usually associated with retrofuturism, where characters will rely upon a mixture of old and new technologies. Furthermore, synthwave and vaporwave are nostalgic, humorous and often retrofuturistic revivals of early cyberpunk aesthetic.

The second to be named and recognized was steampunk, in the late 1980s. It is generally more optimistic and brighter than cyberpunk, set within an alternate history closely resembling our Long 19th century from circa the Regency era onwards and up to circa 1914, only that 20th-century or even futuristic technologies are based upon steam power. The genre themes also often involve references to electricity as a yet-as-of-now mysterious force that is considered the utopian power source of the future and sometimes even regarded as possessing mystical healing powers (much as with nuclear energy around the middle of the 20th century). The genre often strongly resembles the original scientific romances and utopic novels of genre predecessors H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, and began in its modern form with literature such as Mervyn Peake's Titus Alone (1959), Ronald W. Clark's Queen Victoria's Bomb (1967), Michael Moorcock's A Nomad of the Time Streams series (1971-1981), K. W. Jeter's Morlock Night (1979), and William Gibson & Bruce Sterling's The Difference Engine (1990), and with films such as The Time Machine (1960) or Castle in the Sky (1986). A notable early example of steampunk in comics is the Franco-Belgian graphic novel series Les Cités obscures, started by its creators François Schuiten and Benoît Peeters in the early 1980s. At times, steampunk as a genre crosses into that of Weird West.

The most recently named and recognized retrofuturistic genre is dieselpunk aka decodence (the term dieselpunk is often associated with a more pulpish form and decodence, named after the contemporary art movement of Art Deco, with a more sophisticated form), set in alternate versions of an era located circa in the period of the 1920s-1950s. Early examples include the 1970s concept albums, their designs and marketing materials of the German band Kraftwerk (see below), the comic-book character Rocketeer (first appearing in his own series in 1982), the series of video games, and films such as (1985), (1989), The Rocketeer (1991), Batman Returns (1992), The Hudsucker Proxy (1994), The City of Lost Children (1995), and (1998). Especially the lower end of the genre strongly mimic the pulp literature of the era (such as the 2004 film Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow), and films of the genre often reference the cinematic styles of film noir and German Expressionism. At times, the genre overlaps with the alternate history genre of a different World War II, such as with an Axis victory.

Although loosely affiliated with early-twentieth century Futurism, retrofuturism draws from a wider range of sources. To be sure, retrofuturist art and literature often draws from the factories, buildings, cities, and transportation systems of the machine age. But it might be said that 20th century futuristic vision found its ultimate expression in the development of Googie or Populuxe design. As applied to fiction, this brand of retrofuturistic visual style began to take shape in William Gibson's short story "The Gernsback Continuum". Here and elsewhere it is referred to as Raygun Gothic, a catchall term for a visual style that incorporates various aspects of the Googie, Streamline Moderne, and Art Deco architectural styles when applied to retrofuturistic science fiction environments.

Although Raygun Gothic is most similar to the Googie or Populuxe style and sometimes synonymous with it, the name is primarily applied to images of science fiction. The style is also still a popular choice for retro sci-fi in film and video games. Raygun Gothic's primary influences include the set designs of Kenneth Strickfaden and Fritz Lang.[citation needed ] The term was coined by William Gibson in his story " The Gernsback Continuum": "Cohen introduced us and explained that Dialta [a noted pop-art historian] was the prime mover behind the latest Barris-Watford project, an illustrated history of what she called 'American Streamlined Modern'. Cohen called it 'raygun Gothic'. Their working title was The Airstream Futuropolis: The Tomorrow That Never Was."

Aspects of this form of retrofuturism can also be associated with the late 1970s and early 1980s the neo-Constructivist revival that emerged in art and design circles. Designers like David King in the UK and Paula Scher in the US imitated the cool, futuristic look of the Russian avant-garde in the years following the Russian Revolution.

With three of their 1970s albums, German band Kraftwerk tapped into a larger retrofuturist vision, by combining their futuristic pioneering electronic music with nostalgic visuals. Kraftwerk's retro-futurism in their 1970s visual language has been referred to by German literary critic Uwe Schütte, a reader at Aston University, Birmingham, as "clear retro-style", and in the 2008 three-hour documentary Kraftwerk and the Electronic Revolution, Irish-British music scholar Mark J. Prendergast refers to Kraftwerk's peculiar "nostalgia for the future" clearly referencing "an interwar [progressive] Germany that never was but could've been, and now [due to their influence as a band] hopefully could happen again". Design historian Elizabeth Guffey has written that if Kraftwerk's machine imagery was lifted from Russian design motifs that were once considered futuristic, they also presented a "compelling, if somewhat chilling, vision of the world in which musical ecstasy is rendered cool, mechanical and precise." Kraftwerk's three retrofuturist albums are:

Kraftwerk's 1975 album Radio-Activity showed a contemporary 1930s radio on the cover, its inlay (which for its later CD re-release was widely expanded as a booklet illustrated in the same nostalgic style) showed the band photographed in black and white with old-fashioned suits and hairdos, and the music in its instrumentation as well as its ambiguous lyrics were (besides the other obvious theme of nuclear decay and nuclear power referenced by the album's titular pun) in hommage to the "Radio Stars", that is the pioneers of electronic music of the first half of the 20th century, such as Guglielmo Marconi, Léon Theremin, Pierre Schaeffer, and Karlheinz Stockhausen (due to whom the band referred to themselves as but the "second generation" of electronic music).

The European version of the band's 1977 album Trans-Europe Express had a similar 1930s-style black and white photo of the band members on the cover (the U.S. version even had a cover of a vintage-style colored photograph in the style of Golden Age Hollywood stars), the style of the sleeve design as well as the design of promotional material tying in with the album were influenced by Bauhaus, Art Deco, and Streamline Moderne, the record came with a large, hand-tinted black and white poster of the band members in early-1930s style suits (where band member Karl Bartos later said in Kraftwerk and the Electronic Revolution that their intention was to visually resemble "an interwar string orchestra electrified" and that the background was meant to be a pictorial Switzerland where the band was making a resting stop in-between two legs of their European tour on the eponymous Trans-Europe Express), the song lyrics referenced the "elegance and decadence" of an urban interwar Europe, and in the promo clip made for the album's title song (shot in black and white on purpose) and other promotional material, the eponymous Trans-Europe Express was portrayed by the Schienenzeppelin first employed by the Deutsche Reichsbahn in 1931 (footage of the large original was used in outdoor shots, and a miniature model of it was used for shots where the TEE moved through a futuristic cityscape strongly reminiscent of Fritz Lang's 1927 film Metropolis).

The cover and sleeve design of the 1978 album The Man-Machine exhibits an obvious stylistic nod to the Constructivism of 1920s artists such as El Lissitzky, Alexander Rodchenko, and László Moholy-Nagy (due to which band members have also referred to it as "the Russian album"), and one song references the film Metropolis again. From this album on, Kraftwerk would also use their "show-room dummies" aka robot lookalikes on stage and in promotional material and increase the use of slightly campish make-up on band members that also resembled 1920s' expressionist make-up that to a lesser degree had already appeared in the promotional material for their 1977 album Trans-Europe Express.

From their 1981 album Computer World onwards, Kraftwerk have largely abandoned their retro notions and appear mainly futuristic only. The only references to their earlier retro style today appear in excerpts from their 1970s' promo clips that are projected in between more modern segments in their stage shows during the performance of these old song.

Retrofuturistic clothing is a particular imagined vision of the clothing that might be worn in the distant future, typically found in science fiction and science fiction films of the 1940s onwards, but also in journalism and other popular culture. The garments envisioned have most commonly been either one-piece garments, skin-tight garments, or both, typically ending up looking like either overalls or leotards, often worn together with plastic boots. In many cases, there is an assumption that the clothing of the future will be highly uniform.

The cliché of futuristic clothing has now become part of the idea of retrofuturism. Futuristic fashion plays on these now-hackneyed stereotypes, and recycles them as elements into the creation of real-world clothing fashions.

"We've actually seen this look creeping up on the runway as early as 1995, though it hasn't been widely popular or acceptable street wear even through 2008," said Brooke Kelley, fashion editor and magazine writer. "For the last 20 years, fashion has reviewed the times of past, decade by decade, and what we are seeing now is a combination of different eras into one complete look. Future fashion is a style beyond anything we've yet dared to wear, and it's going to be a trend setter's paradise."

Retrofuturism has appeared in some examples of postmodern architecture. To critics such as Niklas Maak, the term suggests that the "future style" is "a mere quotation of its own iconographic tradition" and retrofuturism is little more than "an aesthetic feedback loop" In the example seen at right, the upper portion of the building is not intended to be integrated with the building but rather to appear as a separate object-a huge flying saucer-like space ship only incidentally attached to a conventional building. This appears intended not to evoke an even remotely possible future, but rather a past imagination of that future, or a reembracing of the futuristic vision of Googie architecture.

The once-futuristic Los Angeles International Airport Theme Building was built in 1961 as an expression of the then new jet and space ages, incorporating what later came to be known as Googie and Populuxe design elements. Plans unveiled in 2008 for LAX's expansion featured retrofuturist flying-saucer/spaceship themes in proposals for new terminals and concourses.

Retrofuturism has been also applied to video games, such as the following:

Modern electro style, influenced by Detroit-based artist in the early 80s (such as Drexciya, Aux 88, Cybotron). This style blend old analog gear (Roland Tr-808 and synths) and sampling methods from the 80's with modern approach of electro. The records labels involved in this journey are AMZS Recording, Gosu, Osman, Traffic Records and many others.

Canadian band Alvvays's music video, "Dreams Tonite", which includes archival footage of Montreal's Expo 67 was described by the band as "fetishizing retro-futurism".

English band Electric Light Orchestra released their concept album "Time" in 1981. This album follows a man who wakes up in the year 2095 and how he reacts to this sudden change as well as his longing to be back in 1981. There are multiple descriptions of life and what technology is like in 2095.

Informational notes

Citations

Further reading

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Retrofuturism (adjective retrofuturistic or retrofuture) is a movement in the creative arts showing the influence of depictions of the future produced in an earlier era. If futurism is sometimes called a "science" bent on anticipating what will come, retrofuturism is the remembering of that anticipation.

# data[].attributes.body
Environmental psychologist

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
If we want to change the trajectory of the world, we must first change the way we lead.

Evidence suggests that people do care, but our past leadership experiences have not prepared us to engage people on the right terms. Psychology, when combined with strategy and scale, holds a profound and untapped key to effective engagement on complex change. Research shows that if people are truly heard, understood and included, we deliver more quickly on our goals - together. To achieve this, we need to build a new mindset and skill set as leaders. These inner capabilities drive our outer goals.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Evidence suggests that people do care, but our past leadership experiences have not prepared us to engage people on the right terms. Psychology, when combined with strategy and scale, holds a profound and untapped key to effective engagement on complex change.

# data[].attributes.headline
Chapter from the book "Environmental Melancholia"

# data[].attributes.subject
Chapter from the book "Environmental Melancholia"

# data[].attributes.body
by R. Lertzmann

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In this groundbreaking book, Renee Lertzman applies psychoanalytic theory and psychosocial research to the issue of public engagement and public apathy in response to chronic ecological threats. By highlighting unconscious and affective dimensions of contemporary ecological issues, Lertzman deconstr…

# data[].attributes.headline
Can you guess the meanings of these words?

# data[].attributes.subject
Can you guess the meanings of these words?

# data[].attributes.body
solastalgia
terrafurie
reef grief
snow anxiety
winter grief
snow relief

Read about the Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht or check out here:

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Climate grief comes in many forms. There is the bereavement-like grief and trauma when a climate change-enhanced "natural disaster" hits you or your close ones. Think of people in the Amazon basin or Australia after the catastrophic fires. Then there is transitional grief: a growing awareness that things are changing, and feelings of grief and sadness because of the many losses involved. The range of things (and creatures) that people mourn for is wide: loss of human, animal and plant life, but also loss of identities, beliefs, and lifestyles.

Many people use the term "climate grief" to refer to a wider loss and anxiety related to the overall effects of climate change. Often the lines between climate change and other major ecological catastrophes become blurred, which is understandable, since climate change has an effect on so many other problems. Climate grief becomes a description of a general "ecological grief" or "eco-anxiety".

For the last five years, I have been researching eco-anxiety and thinking about how to frame it constructively. I've invited psychologists to lead discussion groups on the matter together with me. I've guided workshops and given dozens of public lectures, especially in Finland, my home country. And I've met a lot of people with climate grief and eco-anxiety.
You might also like:
* A radical plan to protect nature
* Should we be hopeful about climate change?
* The thicket visible from space

These two phenomenon are profoundly interlinked. If grief is not recognised, it can manifest itself as anxiety. There are many kinds of anxiety, but a key factor in practically all of them is a feeling of uncertainty. When we experience anxiety, we know something of a threat or a problem, but not everything. Anxiety is borne of encountering problematic uncertainty.

With the climate crisis, there is lots of uncertainty. There is the often-exaggerated scientific uncertainty. Nowadays most people know that things are indeed changing rapidly, but it is difficult to know the exact changes in the ecosystems around us and how quickly they are taking place. Then there is all the social uncertainty, related both to disputes and to practical choices. Uncertainty about which social norms to follow brings anxiety.

The sense of homesickness over environmental changes has led to the creation of new words like "solastalgia" (Credit: Getty Images/Javier Hirschfeld)

Climate grief is related both to changes that have already happened and to changes that are coming, or are in the process of happening. Thus, climate grief often has elements of what the grief theorists call "anticipatory grief" or "transitional grief". This complicates things. All kinds of grieving can be difficult in our contemporary societies, where an understanding of private or public grieving has long been neglected. But anticipatory grief is always hard. What is truly lost, or will be? When do we grieve those losses - when they begin, or when they end? It is easier to grieve concrete losses that have happened, such as the loss of a certain part of an ecosystem or community. But how does one grieve losses which are ongoing for decades?

Earlier theories of grief do not discuss ecological grief, but they still contain highly useful insights. One of the current tasks is to apply earlier grief theories - and grief wisdom - into climate grief. An example of the insights are the terms coined by grief researchers William Worden and Thomas Attig. Worden defined that one of the key tasks in a grief process is "the adjustment to a new environment". Attig depicted the whole grief process as "relearning the world". Something has profoundly changed, something or someone is either lost or in the process of going away, and grief can help to us adjust.

Worden and Attig often had in mind the loss of a loved one, usually a human being. But these definitions match the needed scale of climate grief. The world around us has changed, and is changing still. We need to adjust to a new kind of social and ecological environment, with ongoing social disputes around climate politics and the ongoing physical effects of climate change. We need to relearn the world: it is not like it was, or like we thought it was.

For many middle-class citizens of industrialised nations this brings a profound existential challenge. The world is revealed to be much more tragic and fragile than people thought it was. For many young people, the climate crisis is the first enormous existential crisis that they face. And our societies have not been very good in recent decades at building emotional or existential resilience.

What, then, can be done? Luckily, much, although it is not easy. Many people have already engaged in relearning grieving skills with others. There are "Good Grief" peer groups in the US, grief workshops in the UK, and communities revitalising ancient weeping practices in Finland - to name a few, rather countercultural practices. It can be profoundly relieving to admit and share feelings of grief and sadness in a safe setting. However, this often takes time, and requires trust to be built. These practices are also much easier, in general, for women than for men, because of cultural conditioning.

One useful practice, which can also be done alone, is naming emotions. My latest book in Finnish is about this: naming "ecological emotions" and "climate emotions". When things have a name, they can be more easily encountered, and experiences about them can be more easily shared. This naming practice has grown gradually in the 2000s. The Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht has been one pioneer in this, with words like solastalgia, homesickness because of environmental changes, and terrafurie, rage because of mindless destruction of nature.

The realisation that the world is much more tragic and fragile than we thought is leading to emotions such as "winter grief" (Credit: Getty Images/Javier Hirschfeld)

Place-specific words can be invented, such as "Reef Grief" or "Snow Anxiety". At the moment, numerous Finns - and other Nordic people - suffer from "winter grief" (talvisuru), loss of traditional winters because of climate change.

We need more vocabulary of the various forms of climate grief, and we need more thinking about the tasks and stages of grief in relation to them. We also need more thinking about the various other emotions that are connected with grief and anxiety, such as anger, frustration, and guilt. Study on "eco-anger" or "climate rage" has only just begun, as has research on "climate burnout" and "climate depression". Trauma dynamics is another area that needs more attention.

At its best, a grief process leads to the revitalisation of a person's energies, to an ability to reinvest meaning in those practices of life that seem elementary. The world is now different and I am different, but there can still be meaning in life. There are people who have gone through this kind of process of climate grief or a process of post-traumatic growth, usually over several years, and their experiences provide much-needed encouragement. The way forward leads not through a by-pass lane of grief, but instead through a grieving process, hopefully with the support of understanding peers.

A brief vocabulary for climate grief related to winters

(A Nordic perspective)

snow anxiety: anxiety because people don't know if they will receive snow this winter. Problematic uncertainty brings anxiety. Snow anxiety (in Finnish: lumiahdistus) is felt by many residents in the North, both young and old alike. Children love to play in the snow, while older people either ski or feel more at home in the traditional snowy conditions. The loss of light, which comes with the loss of snow which reflects light, increases the health impacts of climate change, both physical and mental.

winter grief: grief for the loss of traditional winter conditions (in Finnish: talvisuru). As with grief in general, this has many forms. A strong winter-lover may feel bereavement. Many others feel a more vague sense of longing and loss, which can increase "eco-nostalgia" (Glenn Albrecht's term). Depending on whether there is a possibility to constructively engage in a grief process, eco-nostalgia can lead either to a melancholy-like and passive longing for the past, or an effort to protect that good which remains.

" talvihaikeus", a kind of joyful sadness as related to winters: haikeus is a Finnish word for a sense of simultaneous sadness and gratitude. A person who feels haikeus senses that something is changing or going away, but she is still able to feel joy and gratitude for the parts of the desired thing that remain.

winter joy / snow relief: because of winter grief and snow anxiety, the arrival of snow can feel exceptionally joyful and relieving. Sadness and joy are connected.

* Panu Pihkala specialises in research on "eco-anxiety" and climate grief at the University of Helsinki, where he works as an adjunct professor in environmental theology. He has written several books on the subject in Finnish, and is a well-known public speaker on the topic.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Climate grief: How we mourn a changing planet

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Climate grief comes in many forms. There is the bereavement-like grief and trauma when a climate change-enhanced "natural disaster" hits you or your close ones. Think of people in the Amazon basin or Australia after the catastrophic fires. Then there is transitional grief: a growing awareness that things are changing, and feelings of grief and sadness because of the many losses involved.

# data[].attributes.headline
A BBC survey on climate anxiety among children

# data[].attributes.subject
A BBC survey on climate anxiety among children

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
How do you feel when you think about climate change and the state of the planet? Do you feel optimistic, worried or uncertain?

We at Newsround know young people are passionate about the environment, so we wanted to find out more about how you feel about climate change and what's being done to tackle it.

We also wanted to know how you felt about the impact changes to the environment could have on your future.

When asked about their futures:

Most children told us they are worried about the impact that climate change will have on them when they're older, and

One in five have even had a bad dream about it.

But when asked about the action being taken by grown-ups to tackle the problem:

Two in five don't trust adults to tackle the challenges that climate change presents, and

Two-thirds say leaders aren't listening enough to young people's views.

We worked with a specialist company called Savanta-ComRes to do a survey of 2,000 eight to 16-year-olds and what we've learned shows that young people are frustrated and anxious about what's happening.

We've summarised the main themes below.

You can take the survey yourself, and see how other young people responded to it here. We also want to hear what YOU think. You can also leave a comment below.
If you cannot see the quiz, click here.
What you told us in the survey

How do you feel about the state of the planet?

We asked aver 2,000 young people aged eight to 16 a series of questions about their attitudes to climate change and to the environment.

Four out of five of them (80%) said the problem of climate change was important to them, with over a third saying it was very important.

Just three out of every 100 said that the environment wasn't important to them.

Nearly three quarters (73%) said they are worried about the state of the planet right now - including 22% who say they are very worried.

When asked about their futures, almost three in five (58%) children said they're worried about the impact that climate change will have on their lives.

How are children being affected?

These worries and concerns about climate change can come out in unusual ways.

Nearly one in five of those we asked admitted to having a bad dream about climate change (19%)

A similar number (17%) told us that they have had their sleeping and eating habits affected by their concerns.

Are adults listening enough to young people?

One of the biggest movements of 2019 was the "Fridays for future" campaign led by Greta Thunberg.

The teenage environmental activist inspired a series of school strikes around the world. They led to children leaving school to try to make their voices heard by making signs and joining marches, calling on world leaders to do more to protect the planet and to take bolder action to try to cut climate change.

Despite millions of young people all around the world taking part in these protests it's clear that you feel that it's not making the difference you hoped it would.

The survey reflects feelings of frustration in young people towards what adult are doing - or not doing.

More than half (59%) of them don't think their voices are being heard on climate change.

Nearly two thirds (64%) don't believe people in power are listening to them enough when they do talk about it.

But when asked about the action being taken by grown-ups to tackle the problem, more than two in five (41%) said they don't trust adults to tackle the challenges that climate change presents.

What is 'climate anxiety'?

One of the reasons we did the survey was that experts have told us they've seen a rise in the number of young people they see who say worries about climate change are making them anxious about the future.

Susan Clayton is a professor of psychology and environmental studies at the College of Wooster in Ohio, USA. She says: "We can say that a significant proportion of people are experiencing stress and worry about the potential impacts of climate change, and that the level of worry is almost certainly increasing."

Although it's not a medical term, lots of researchers call this feeling eco-anxiety or climate anxiety.

Feeling anxious can happen when we feel nervous, frightened or uneasy about something. It's normal to feel this way sometimes but when it lasts for a long time or it happens too often it's important to talk to someone.

We worked with one expert, child psychologist Emma Citron, who told us that part of the difficulty for young people is the scale of the problem of climate change, the challenges tackling it presents and what often seems like the slowness of the response shown by governments and world leaders.

Getty Images

Young people are clearly worried about climate change and their futures as this survey reveals. Public figures like David Attenborough and Greta Thunberg have helped young people to voice their worries and we have to make sure that we as adults listen to them and empower them by giving talks at school and in their communities to help them become involved in positive change

Emma Citron, Consultant clinical child psychologist

When you read stories about fires in the Amazon and Australia, ice melting in the Antarctic and Arctic, sea temperatures rising and plastic destroying wildlife in the oceans, the scale of the problem can sometimes make the idea of dealing with it feel hopeless.

Getty Images

"We need to support young people not to feel hopeless but rather to present to them hopeful and balanced messages about their futures and ensure that they get the right professional help if their anxiety is unduly high," Emma says.

These are serious issues, but it's important to remember that there are also lots of examples of real measures being taken to try to rise to the challenge.

There is a general feeling that the future is so uncertain and it's extremely hard to live with.

Are there ways to feel less worried?

If your feelings about the environment are regularly stopping you from going out and enjoying yourself and are affecting the way you live your life then it's important that you speak to someone.

Your first contact should probably be an adult you trust, such as a parent, teacher or counsellor. You can also contact Childline - a counselling charity for people aged 18 and under - on 0800 1111 for free at any time.

But psychologists also say that taking actions in your own life, however small, can help relieve feelings of anxiety or helplessness - in addition to the positive difference these small actions make to the environment.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Climate anxiety: Survey for BBC Newsround shows children losing sleep over climate change and the environment - CBBC Newsround

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
How do you feel when you think about climate change and the state of the planet? Do you feel optimistic, worried or uncertain? We at Newsround know young people are passionate about the environment, so we wanted to find out more about how you feel about climate change and what's being done to tackle it.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Solarpunk is about finding ways to make life more wonderful for us right now, and for the generations that follow, extending life at the species level, as well as individually. Solarpunk futurism is...

# data[].attributes.headline
How Do You Like It So Far?: Sarena Ulibarri and Ed Finn on Solarpunk (Part Two)

# data[].attributes.subject
How Do You Like It So Far?: Sarena Ulibarri and Ed Finn on Solarpunk (Part Two)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
HJ: A lot of the worldbuilding is going on not simply in the stories, but in the art and people are designing solarpunk worlds whichever radically different aesthetic from much science fiction art previously, they definitely don't look like the Apple store that Serena was talking about.

SU: Yeah, I think the aesthetic is really important to the movement. I think it's what gets people's attention, more than the messaging necessarily, at least in the beginning. And yeah, it's kind of, it's a nature-based, it's kind of maximalist. And it's inspired by Art Nouveau, oftentimes - not all solarpunk is but I think Art Nouveau is a really important aspect of the aesthetic. Not only because it's a beautiful way to work in like nature imagery, but also historically, the Art Nouveau movement was a reaction against industrialization and capitalism. So it kind of fits in that way too. Art Nouveau rejects the idea that beauty is something that's just reserved for the rich. This was an artistic movement that everybody is entitled to a beautiful world. And that beauty and practicality are not mutually exclusive. So that's very much in line with solarpunk ideals. I'd love to see more solarpunk works really fully embrace the Art Nouveau aspect.

EF: Yeah and art is this technology for feeling, right? It's helping you. And I think imagination, one of its fundamental jobs is empathy, and allowing us to imagine the lives of other people and to feel things that we haven't felt before. And I think that some of the most interesting solarpunk art that we've been involved with at CSI has done that.

We did this project a few years ago called Luna City, which was like an immersive, theatrical experience of living in a city and on the moon in 2175, you got to go on a tour of this neighborhood. And it had lots of bamboo and a river running through the middle of it, and all these green plants totally unlike, you know, the Star Trek future or the 2001 future, and really organic and everybody was wearing these like flowing, you know, robes that that don't feel like space futures at all. And that I think was really powerful as a way to - it was a solarpunk future on the moon, right? It was a way to experience this integration of technology and the natural and the human in a way where, where people could actually live there. You can actually say, like, "Oh, I can actually live here." Whereas if you pause, you will get a lot of this sort of classic science fiction, these really Stark, modernist lines and you're like, "Would I want to live there?" You know, like, where do you put your trash? You know, does nobody own anything? Or always the most challenging question, "How could you raise a child?"

CM: Everything is sharp, it's all pointy!

HJ: Well, you're touching on the design aspect and the fashion aspect of, again, if you look up solarpunk online and add fashion, you will see these remarkable designs taking place there as well, which is how it starts to bleed over into a lifestyle or a way of living in the world that solarpunk might represent. So can either you say a little more about fashion or music or some of these other embodied aspects of solarpunk?

SU: I keep waiting to see like really good solarpunk cosplay. And maybe when we come back to being able to do you know, cons again, after the pandemic, maybe we will be able to see more of that. But I, it's I've seen it mostly conceptual, rather than really embodied. But I might just be running in the wrong circles to really be seeing it. I think there's ton of ton of potential. And there's some really interesting, like sustainable fabrics, you know, mushroom leather, for example. And, you know, things like that, using different types of sources to create fashion. That I yeah, that I think have a lot of potential and are right now just very niche and probably too expensive to really be considered like solarpunk. But I mean, what if you can not only grow your own food, but what if you can grow your own clothes, like that would be amazing. That would be a really interesting change to fashion.

HJ: And is angry as hell, right? To cyberpunk, which has a certain ambivalence about technological change, and progressively became more and more rancid, in its vision of the future. And at once embraced the integration of human and machine, the cyborg identity, so forth, but then, at the same time, was horrified by it. And it's that push-me-pull-you around technology that it sought to express.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How Do You Like It So Far?: Sarena Ulibarri and Ed Finn on Solarpunk (Part Two) - Henry Jenkins

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
HJ: A lot of the worldbuilding is going on not simply in the stories, but in the art and people are designing solarpunk worlds whichever radically different aesthetic from much science fiction art previously, they definitely don't look like the Apple store that Serena was talking about.

# data[].attributes.headline
In stories "The Boston Hearth Project" or some others...

# data[].attributes.subject
In stories "The Boston Hearth Project" or some others...

# data[].attributes.body
“zie/zir” pronouns are used - the linguistic equivalent of “he/him” or “she/her” as used by those in the gender binary—offering representation for non-binary gender identities. Look up for more information here:

# data[].attributes.headline
A Brief History of Gender Neutral Pronouns

# data[].attributes.subject
A Brief History of Gender Neutral Pronouns

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
A brief history of gender neutral pronouns

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Sam Smith asked fans to use they/them but history shows these pronouns aren’t new in language.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
those ones : those people, animals, or things; -used to refer to people in a general way or to a group of people who are not specified; -used with a singular indefinite pronoun antecedent... See the full definition

# data[].attributes.headline
Part I. Around the World in 80 Books: A Guide to Ecological and Climate Themes in Fiction

# data[].attributes.subject
Part I. Around the World in 80 Books: A Guide to Ecological and Climate Themes in Fiction

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Around the World in 80 Books: A Guide to Ecological and Climate Themes in Fiction

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A year ago, I began a world eco-fiction series at Dragonfly.eco. This article is an extension of that project. “Around the World in 80…

# data[].attributes.headline
Part II. Around the World in 80 Books: A Further Look at Climate Change and Ecologically Oriented Fiction

# data[].attributes.subject
Part II. Around the World in 80 Books: A Further Look at Climate Change and Ecologically Oriented Fiction

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In 2018 I began a world eco-fiction series at Dragonfly.eco, and a year later I wrote my first Around the World in 80 Books article, which looked at fiction from every continent that diversely explores climate and ecological changes and landscapes. Because lists are limited and can exclude important works, I've decided to continue this series every so often. In the stories presented today, you'll find fungi, aliens, rivers, augmented worlds, hurricanes, whales, wild fires, and so much more.

These stories are ecologically oriented but also fall into every genre: political, science fiction, romance, adventure, crime, horror, fantasy, mystery, literary, magical realism, humor - the list is long, and it seems that genres are blurring more than they used to. Maybe that's a result of our weirder and weirder world. When the bush fires broke out in Australia late last year, the New York Times posted: "The bookstore in the fire-ravaged village of Cobargo, New South Wales, has a new sign outside: Post-Apocalyptic Fiction has been moved to Current Affairs." And it's so true. Science fiction becomes the present, a cautionary tale for realities that already exist.

These stories are eclectic and come from unique voices, perspectives, and places. Tropes include harsh survival, advocacy, veneration of the world around us, the slow apocalypse, the storms, the haunted, the weird, and the psychological. These books reflect cultural diaspora, horror, and loss. For instance, colonialism, alluded to in many novels, has always had, and still has, dreadful effects on environment and culture. The stories take place in the past, present, and future, sometimes all three, making for a beautifully fluid reading experience. Most are from the last decade, or are upcoming, but a handful are historical. The list is divided into the regions and continents where the stories are imagined, with a few at the end that have no map point.

One thing is clear: fiction captures our imagination. It has the power to move us in ways that data cannot, even though we need science to understand what's happening in our post-truth world. Climate and ecological ruin are often denied outright; even when people realize it's happening intellectually, they often brush it under the rug because it seems like it's a problem for another day. Fiction is bringing these stories to the forefront, to our hearts, so that we might begin to take our world more seriously. I'm excited by the ways authors are wildly exploring storytelling that infuses literature with the natural world, rather than leaving out that crucial connection.

Previous listings: Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James, Efuru by Flora Nwapa, by Deon Meyer, The Fisherman by Chigozie Obioma, The House of Rust by Khadija Abdalla Bajaber, Oil on Water by Helon Habila, P etals of Blood by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Starbook by Ben Okri, War Girls by Tochi Onyebuchi, and Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor.

The Deep Blue Between, by Ayesha Harruna Attah, moves between the Gold Coast of Africa and Brazil. Twin sisters Hassana and Husseina (Vitória) are torn apart after a slave-raid on their home, and they end up divided by the sea as they evolve into their adult lives. This young adult novel is eye-opening and imaginative, and it contextualizes slavery and post-colonialism (it's set in the 19th century). The dream-like story is told poetically as historical fiction, with elements of magical realism. The sisters stay connected through shared dreams of water as they try to find their way back to one another.

, by Nnedi Okorafor, is a beautiful Nigerian tale set near the coast of Lagos. I want to bring up Okorafor because this past year she has explained the difference between Afrofuturism and Africanfuturism (and also talks about Africanjujuism), and I think it's helpful to be aware of these categories of fiction. Lagoon isn't her newest novel, but the story includes the nearby sea and marine life, which are so much more important than just a background setting. The environment is wrapped around Nigerian mythology, language, and culture - and shape-shifting aliens landing in the sea, which a marine biologist, rapper, and soldier investigate.

, by Rivers Solomon (featuring Daveed Diggs), takes place where pregnant African slave women were dumped overboard into the Atlantic Ocean on their way to America. The novella was inspired by the song " The Deep" by clipping - which talks about fish going belly-up and crumbling coral. The women become water-dwelling creatures called wajinru and give birth to their children in the sea. They don't remember their past tragedies, so their life is idyllic. The only one who remembers is Yetu, the historian. The weight of what she remembers is so deep it pains her, and she must share these memories with the wajinru in order for them to regain their identity.

By Library of Congress Life - Ngũgĩ Reading

Author and American journalist Jim Dwyer, who wrote Where the Wild Books Are: A Field Guide to Ecofiction, said that Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o "May be Africa's most environmentally oriented novelist. Resisting the Mau Mau call for liberation at any cost, he believed that the land and animals must be preserved and restored to reduce the cost of liberation and to prevent the replacement of one form of oppression and degradation with another." Of four books, written under the pen name James T. Ngũgĩ, The River Between (1965) is just one that evokes Kenyan spiritual and ecological values. It's the story of Christian missionaries trying to outlaw female circumcision, which divides two Kikuyu communities set apart from one another, with a river between them. Note that Dwyer's field guide is now a decade old, and in the past ten years, stories relevant to eco-fiction have come out in spades.

In the short story Eclipse our Sins, by Tlotlo Tsamaase, a Motswana writer of fiction, poetry, and architectural articles, two children observe their family's illnesses as "Mother Earth, Mama Earth, Mmê Earth," ravaged by climate change, acts as a vengeful spirit against the sins of humanity. The complex and haunting story is online at Clarksworld, and an audio version is available here. The deeply moving story is full of stark imagery (my breath is smog; the sun is menstruating; and we held our unborn and lay open beneath the cirrus veils of sky, catching sunlit stars).

Shadow Flicker, by Melissa A. Volker, dishes up a budding romance, with surfing and ocean culture at its heart. This is a well-told story that tries to find both sides of an environmental issue: whether or not wind farms should be built near St Francis Bay in Eastern Cape province, South Africa. It's the second environmental novel by Volker, the first being A Fractured Land. I spoke with the author here, who said: "The beach has eroded so much over the years due to the development of the town, a golf course, a man-made canal system, the introduction of alien vegetation, and other factors. The Sand River (a literal river of sand) used to deposit sand on the beaches and into the ocean. Sand covered the rocks and created banks, but this no longer happens. Bruce's might have always been a fickle wave, but it is even more fickle now and only breaks like it did in the Endless Summer when a perfect set of circumstances, swell, wind, and tide come together simultaneously."

Tade Thompson's The Wormwood Trilogy, which won 2017's African Speculative Fiction Society inaugural Nommo Award for Best Novel, includes three books: Rosewater, The Rosewater Insurrection, and the Rosewater Redemption. As the LA Review of Books stated, when comparing the trilogy to its namesake, the wormwood plant, "When a story engages the planetary disaster of the Anthropocene and histories of colonization, perhaps readers shouldn't be able to shrug off a sense of bitterness." The trilogy goes through past, present, and future, contrasting colonialism with a type of alien invasion. The alien Wormwood, in Nigeria, seeds the planet and prepares to terraform it. Though science fiction, the Rosewater books reflect the realities of our late-stage capitalistic society and our connection to others in it. The world in an alien transformation is stunningly depicted in this trilogy and involves our biological surroundings.

Previously listed: by multiple artists, Bangkok Wakes to Rain by Pitchaya Sudbanthad, The Blind Earthworm in the Labyrinth by Veeraporn Nitiprapha, The Butterfly Effect by Rajat Chaudhuri, The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh, The Green Gold of Borneo by Emin Madi, The Man with Compound Eyes by Wu Ming-Yi, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy, Siberia by Ann Halam, The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin, by Chen Quifan, and The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi.

Katy Yokom's manuscript for Three Ways to Disappear won the 2016 Siskiyou Prize for New Environmental Literature, and then the novel was published in 2019. Though the novel takes place partly in Louisville, Kentucky, it also travels to a Bengal tiger preserve in India. The novel is about coming to terms with one's past and revisiting place and memory to resolve tough issues. But the story also centers around wildlife preservation in the Aravali forests. I talked with Katy about her novel, and she was inspired to write it mostly because of her own visits to Ranthambore, Rajasthan, and the Sundarbans. Three Ways to Disappear is an unforgettable novel about saving all that is precious, from endangered species to the indelible bonds among family.

Shubhangi Swarup's Latitudes of Longing spans much of India, traveling from the Andaman Sea - bounded by the coasts of Myanmar and Thailand - to the Irrawaddy Delta to Nepal and to the glaciers of Karakorams. The landscapes within these places, in all their beauty and danger, inspire four connected lyrical stories full of interesting people: a tree scientist, a clairvoyant who talks to trees, a lord, a glacier scientist, a dictator, a mother, a yeti, a turtle, a ghost, and more. It's such an interesting cast of characters, all exploring their visions of life. While the plot is grand in an epic sense, and the story itself is dream-like, the detailed character development brings it home.

The Last Wave, by Pankaj Sekhsaria, takes us to the Andaman Islands, home of the indigenous Andamanese and part of an ancient trade route between India and Myanmar. A drifter named Harish and a local woman Seema, who was born on the islands but did not live there for years and returns to learn more about her family origins, join a few others, including the director of the Institute for Island Ecology, to explore the island and the native Jarawa community. You might come away thinking, however, that in this look at such a delicate place where ecological balance is needed to sustain local culture - yet is always threatened by outsiders - that sometimes the most interesting characters are the rainforests, sea turtles, crocodiles, and more.

A Pale View of Hills, by Kazuo Ishiguro, takes place in the English countryside, where a woman named Etsuko is hurting over her eldest daughter's suicide. As she observes the goings-on of her remaining daughter and her husband (a carefree spirit), she also reflects back on her life. Flashbacks take her back to Nagasaki, Japan, where she and her friends lived after World War II. In that sense, it's a ghost story as the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki haunt the present. Where this turns ecological is the wilderness surrounding a cottage that Etsuko rented after the war - a place that had not been rebuilt or tended to. Physical landscape that has been ruined (industrial waste pools, a dirty river) mirror the suffering of one's psyche when internal wars happen.

Yun Ko-eun's The Disaster Tourist takes place in South Korea and on a fictional island off the coast of Vietnam. I have an interview with the author at Dragonfly.eco later this year. Tourist takes a rare approach to climate and ecological disaster found within fiction. We often read about catastrophic events in which people need to fix things, such as after a hurricane or wild fire. But in this novel, a dark tourism company sells trips to disaster hotspots, which visitors flock to. Lamentations of Zeno's author Ilija Trojanow told me once: "We have had an enormous amount of dystopian narratives in recent years, not only in literature but also in the movies, on the TV screen. We lean back, munch popcorn and delight in the apocalypse. That's pathological." Yun Ko-eun cleverly satirizes this concept, and it works.

The Turtle of Oman, by Naomi Shihab Nye, is a children's story about a young boy, Aref, living in Oman, whose parents want to go to grad school in Michigan. But he doesn't want to leave home, and he goes on adventures with his grandfather Siddi, in order to see things one more time and make memories to take with him - most of them involving the wonder of the natural world, such as camping in the desert and watching stars, fishing in the Gulf, and visiting the nature reserve to view sea turtles. It's an example of remembering the great fascination of the natural world that we learned as children, and how that can carry with us to adults. While Dragonfly.eco mostly focuses on adult fiction, a newer section called Turning the Tide: The Youngest Generation is geared toward children's and teen/young adult fiction themed around the environment. The Turtle of Oman is aimed toward a middle-school audience, but many of these stories will be enjoyed by adults as well.

Julia Phillips' Disappearing Earth is set in the Kamchatka peninsula in northeastern Russia. I chatted with the author here, and she shared some thoughts about writing natural landscape into the story. "Kamchatka is an incredibly compelling setting... I am so interested in writing about how Kamchatka's unique history shapes its residents, and how, more generally, the places we all exist in shape us, informing how we perceive ourselves, each other, and the world." Connecting to the physical environment and bringing it to the story is central in Disappearing Earth. The novel is structured polyphonically and begins with the kidnapping of a child, and then fans out to include other women's voices and events on the peninsula. Phillips told me, "I wrote Disappearing Earth to run the range of violence in contemporary womanhood, because I'm fascinated by how those hurts echo each other, overlap, and connect us."

Cities of Salt, by Abdul Rahman Munif - three books translated to English by Peter Theroux - is a quintet of historical novels set in the Persian Gulf in 1930s. It was first published in Lebanon in 1984 and later translated. The author explained the title, "Cities that offer no sustainable existence. When the waters come in, the first waves will dissolve the salt and reduce these great glass cities to dust. In antiquity, as you know, many cities simply disappeared. It is possible to foresee the downfall of cities that are inhuman. With no means of livelihood they won't survive." This political fiction was banned in several oil-producing countries, including Saudi Arabia, and it became the first in a trilogy. Colonization, oil, and political handshakes ruined the original landscapes and culture of this fictional gulf kingdom, and this novel tells all.

Previously listed: Beneath the Mother Tree by D.M. Cameron, by James Bradley, Closing Down by Sally Abbott, The Flooded Earth by Mardi McConnochie, The Natural Way of Things by Charlotte Woods, The Orchardist's Daughter by Karen Viggers, Potiki by Patricia Grace, The Swan Book by Alexis Wright, Te Kaihau: The Windeater by Keri Hulme, Where Oceans Hide their Dead by John Yunker, and The World Without Us by Mireille Juchau.

As Stars Fall, by Christie Nieman, is a young adult novel set in Australia. It starts with a bush stone-curlew watching a bush fire rage through the forest after losing its mate; the bird also witnesses the death of a woman. Robin just moved to the city from the country in Murramunda, where the same bush fire ruined her home and killed all the birds. She's not happy to be in the concrete city, with a lack of the diversity of birds she's used to studying. Told from the perspective of Robin, a girl named Delia, whom she meets at her new school in the city, and Delia's brother Seth, it's a story of teenagers suffering from loss due to the fire that spread through their county. But not all is lost as the three become tied together by their love for birds. It's a beautiful and moving lament over the growing number of wild fires happening each summer in Australia, a coming-of-age story of friendship and personal growth, and an environmental lesson.

Tara June Winch's is an award-winning novel about Albert "Poppy" Gondiwindi, who knows he is about to die but wants to preserve his life spent at Prosperous House on the Murrumby River near the Plains Massacre, and so he writes a journal. The Yield is about language, which derives from what surrounds us - rivers, people, vistas, natural resources. Great Escape Books said of the word yield: "Yield in English is the reaping, the things that man can take from the land. In the language of the Wiradjuri yield is the things you give to, the movement, the space between things - baayanha, baayanma." With dignity for the Australian Aboriginal Wiradjuri, the story switches from Poppy's journal to his granddaughter, August's, homecoming to the river, when she learns more about her kin as well as has to deal with the news that her grandfather's lifelong home is about to be repossessed by a mining company.

Ghost Species, by James Bradley, is set mostly in Tasmania and depicts a planet devastated by climate catastrophe, something that is becoming deeply familiar to eastern Australia as wild fires ravished them last summer. Kate Larkin is a scientist who hopes to re-engineer the planet to combat climate change. In doing so, she and her partner Jay use genetic engineering to bring back a Neanderthal. Doing so brings further ethical questions into our humanity, however, which Kate realizes heavily after the fact, wanting to release the Neanderthal, Eve, from the laboratory. Bradley has been writing climate/ecological fiction and nonfiction for quite a while now, and I'm particularly drawn to his work, including essays. His other fiction exploring these themes includes Clade and The Silent Invasion, also covered at Dragonfly.eco.

Richard Flanagan's Death of a River Guide takes us to Tasmania as river guide Aljaz Cosina realizes he's drowning, trapped under a waterfall. His life begins to come back to him in flashes, which provides the narrative structure of the novel. He sees his own life piece together before him, from his birth in Italy to his partner Couta and the death of their child Jemma - also to a river incident. He learned from his grandmother that his relatives were convicts, not just regular European settlers in Tasmania - and, he understands with sorrow, that many Aboriginal people have been displaced or vanished. The natural world is not lost on Alijaz, as he recalls a beautiful rainforest and a blooming tree in winter, along with other flora and fauna - in that journey that takes him home.

Daughter of Bad Times, by Rohan Wilson, offers a vision of the future when climate change has destroyed islands, leaving behind many climate refugees. These refugees are promised a better life but first must spend one year at a facility where they have to work, which equates to manufacturing trivial junk, such as cheap toys. The story centers on Rin, grieving the death of her lover Yamaan, and whose mother runs one of these corrupt labor centers also known as immigration centres. This political thriller isn't far off from our world, as injustice leads to protests and riots.

Dyschronia, by Jennifer Mills, is set in Australia in a coastal village called Clapstone, where the locals wake up one morning to find that the sea around them has vanished - leaving behind a waterless basin. It's a nightmare that main character Sam has been envisioning for years, the visions always accompanied by migraines. This novel focuses on resource depletion and climate change as the community finds a squid washed up on shore and wonders if they can use the species to cure the fossil fuel problem. The narrative structure flips between three timelines and has been described as a circular tale with a strong sense of place.

The Sea and the Summer, by George Turner, published as The Drowning Towers in the U.S., is an example of an early work (late 1980s) about modern climate change and ecological disasters. Taking place in Australia, this speculative tale imagined the 2040s as a dystopian time, when to stay safe from rising seas, it would be best to live in high-rise towers. It's a story about many things, told from the lens of the "swill" - the term applied to the underclass, rather than the "sweet," who still have jobs and some stability. It's interesting to look back to a few decades ago, since there were few speculative fiction novels about human-caused global warming, even after climate scientists first confirmed global warming in the 1970s. Arthur Herzog's novel , published in the late 1970s, was probably the first. I had an interesting discussion with Herzog's widow Leslie (now passed away) about her husband's work, which I think probably typifies how earlier science fiction authors - similar to today's - research the plausibility of climate change's future impact on the world.

The Glad Shout, by Alice Robinson, takes a look at motherhood in times of apocalyptic events - a focus other authors, such as Kassandra Montag ( After the Flood) and Jeff VanderMeer ( Borne), have taken on when building stories that explore parental type relationships in worlds ravaged by climate change. Isobel must flee to higher ground with her husband and daughter after a storm ruins Melbourne. Note that in these stories, motherhood isn't always biological, and impulses to protect, of course, are there for fathers as well. There may be symbolism in such fiction about mothers, in the tune of Mother Earth, but I do find it interesting, as a mother, to read stories that echo loss and love in the form of parenthood. I have recurring dreams that a huge storm has wrecked my life, and in these dreams, my children are always babies or toddlers and I'm doing everything possible to save them. I think it's from instinct that all guardians of children will understand the nature of protection, and climate change novels offer a perfect example of this heart-rendering, age-old story. Now, if we could just try to save them before the storms get even worse.

On the Beach, by Nevil Shute, is an older novel published in 1957. It was an imagining of what nuclear war would do the world, where deadly radiation fall-out reaches Australia last. A haunting novel, it has been reprinted multiple times and is still popular. The novel is so impactful because of its strong sense of place - the ocean, the beaches, the vacationers. It's a story of everyday people whose sudden fate of absolute death hits them squarely, where everything on the Earth will die. It is an end-times story, a cautionary tale, and an example of how fiction can create awareness of issues that people do not always take to heart.

The Island will Sink, by Briohny Doyle, is another story about climate change events changing lives, and really the world, forever. But there's something else going on here too, edging on slip-stream, a man who cannot remember his life due to memories being outsourced. This makes the novel surreal and weird, as the main character Max, a disaster film-maker, decides to make a new blockbuster movie about the real-time sinking of the Pitcairn Islands. There's a lot going on here, not the least of which is the concept of marketing climate change events for entertainment value, down to mascots, logos, and catchy slogans, which is evident today. As if the seriousness of climate change isn't already overlooked, sometimes satire can clue us into how audiences peek in to something real, and dangerous, but with the popcorn syndrome, seeking entertainment and escape instead.

The Octopus and I, by Erin Hortle, is set on the Tasmanian Coast. It's a story of Lucy and her husband Jem, living near Eaglehawk Neck. Lucy is recovering from major surgery due to breast cancer and is surrounded by not just wild landscape and a growing interest in the octopi she starts to observe but also by people who make the sea their way of life and study, such as Flo, who teaches Lucy some things about octopi and Jem, who is an abalone diver. Some animal cruelty exists in the story, so be forewarned. The wildlife-focused narratives make this a good read for those who like stories centered on our relationships with animals, and ones that come after personal crises, such as Lucy's cancer and disfigurement.

Previously listed: Compass Rose by Anna Burke, Dr. Franklin's Island by Ann Halam, Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin, Journey to the Heart of the World by John Lundin, The Mosquito Coast by Paul Theroux, Solarpunk-Histórias Ecológicas e Fantásticas em um Mundo Sustentável by Gerson Lodi-Riberio, Undergrowth by Nancy Burke, Wide as the Wind by Edward Stanton, and Wondering, the Way Is Made by Luke F.D. Marsen.

La Loca de Gandoca, by Anacristina Rossi, is an autobiographical novel about Rossi's attempt to save the Gandoca-Manzanilla Wildlife Refuge in Costa Rica's Limón province, when it was found that private investors and government officials had a secret plot to develop the area. The refuge is one of the most biologically diverse areas in the world, and allegedly protected by the Costa Rican constitution. Even today, this area is endangered by oil interests, tourism, and unregulated development. It's also a love story, as her marriage is an arc throughout.

Accidentals comes from the same author of Carbon Dreams. Three years ago, I talked with author Susan M. Gaines and enjoyed our discussion and her genuine concern for the natural world. If you like stories about the environment and birding, this one's for you. When Gabriel's immigrant mother decides to move back to Uruguay, he, bored with his job, decides to go with her. There, he falls for Alejandra, a biologist. This novel is many things: a coming-of-age story, a love story, and a significant look at Uruguayan politics and culture - but it's also an environmental story, which, like Gaines' other writings, closes the gap between science and fiction, while also telling an illuminating story.

, by Terry Trueman, is a middle-grade fiction novel based upon category 5 Hurricane Mitch's devastation of Honduras in 1998. José, his family, and the community endure hours of darkness, cold, and the sounds of the hurricane surrounding their homes. When it's all over, his town, Rupa, is destroyed, and people in the village begin to search for survivors. Dead bodies, open sewers, a lack of water, and sickness overcome the small town. José's dad and older brother are missing. A survivalist story, wrought with emotion, it is an eye-opening cautionary tale based upon realities that already exist, but which we do not see every day.

Published in 2000, Tierra del Fuego, by Sylvia Iparraguirre, portrays the tragedy of the "Noble Salvage" concept and European arrogance in capturing natives - based upon the true story of Orundellico, later named Jemmy Button, a Yaghan native from the island of Tierra del Fuego, off the extreme southern coasts of Chile and Argentina, who was abducted by Captain Robert Fitzroy. Charles Darwin's The Voyage of the Beagle partially documented this event. Both a suspenseful seafaring tale and a psychological thriller, it won the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Award for the best work of fiction written by a woman and The Best Book of the Year Award at the Buenos Aires Book Fair. The story is an example of how colonialism takes over cultures and ecologies, ruining things that worked better in the first place. Today the island's main economies are oil, natural gas, sheep, and ecotourism.

, by Márcio Souza, translated by Thomas Colchie, is an anti-capitalistic novel based upon the strange cast of characters involved in bringing to life the Madiera-Mamoré Railroad in Brazil, which was supposed to bring Bolivian rubber to the rest of the world, albeit the project didn't last long once built and was considered a failure. Souza writes with concern for the environment surrounding the railroad, which seems to be a repeating issue throughout history: Natural resources are found, foreign investors slash their way in, uninvited, and poor laborers are hired cheaply to construct something that will take advantage of the resource, the locals, the land, and the culture while a profit is hoped for.

Dark Constellations, by Pola Oloixarac, is a slim science fiction novel set mostly in Argentina that has its feet in biological exploration and and its eyes in the future - to hacking and DNA research. Dark, mysterious, and surreal, the story has three main characters whose works connect with each other over the course of 150 years; vivid images of the jungle also fill the story. One Goodreads reviewer described it: "The three timelines revolve around researchers of different types, in the modern and near future narratives on computer scientists and geneticists, the past on botanists. The novel gives a hyperbolic version of the promises of some of these fields; the perceived potential for imminent significant insight by increased computational power, or an increased volume of genetic data, which struggles to be realised."

100 Years of Solitude, by Gabriel García Márquez, is probably my favorite novel of all times, if I could list one favorite, that is. Is it eco-fiction, one might ask? I'm still working on a piece discussing that now. I think it can be categorized as such, since the natural landscape enters the story so meaningfully. The Buendía family settles in a fictional place called Macondo after its patriarch, José Arcadio, conceives of the settlement as a city of mirrors that reflects everything around it. Of course, these mirrors are also a product of his own perceptions, which get crazier throughout the years. But they also represent a microcosm of the politics and technology of Columbia, which comes to the isolated settlement by nomadic travelers. It's a comical story of seven generations of family, and the weird stuff humans do, like selling snake oils. It's also a city reflecting the river, the wild jungles around it - a utopian island of sorts, which José believes is surrounded by water. Lawrence Buell, who was a pioneer in eco-critical readings, published "An eco-critical reading of One Hundred Years of Solitude," noting in the summary his discussion of background canonical literary texts for an understanding of nature and technology in the novel as well as eco-critical readings of other novels by Márquez.

Previously listed: All Rivers Run Free by Natasha Carthew, Lost Objects by Marian Womack, Memory of Water by Emmi Itäranta, Metro 2033 by Dmitry Glukhovsky, The Old Axolotl: Hardware Dreams by Jacek Dukaj, by Loranne Vella, Sleeping in the Forest by Sait Faik, The Story Collector by Evie Gaughan, Where the River Runs Goldby Sita Brahmachari, and The Willows by Algernon Blackwood.

The Bone Clocks, by David Mitchell, is a collection of six stories about Holly Skyes' life, beginning when she's 15 in 1984 and concluding in 2043. In the time period that the book takes place, 59 years, most of us get it: a person can change. A lot. And so can the planet. For instance, in the last portion of the novel - far from the folly of youth in the first part - the Endarkment has taken place, a time when climate change has depleted natural resources and government rations force many people to return to living off the land and fending for themselves. The story of Holly, which mostly takes place in Ireland, is intricate and stunning. The layer of planetary change dropping into Holly's world brings about one of The Washington Post's conclusions about The Bone Clocks: "Mitchell's book is long and complex, but it might just become the 1984 of the climate change movement. It dramatizes the consequences of our improvident modern economy in the way George Orwell's novel awakened people to the 'Big Brother' mentality of Soviet communism."

When the Lights Go Out, by Carys Bray, is the story of a couple of parents, Emma and Chris, struggling through what I think can best be described as eco-grief, a real thing that has been reported in media. Defined in Nature and Climate Change: "The grief felt in relation to experienced or anticipated ecological losses, including the loss of species, ecosystems, and meaningful landscapes due to acute or chronic environmental change." Solastalgia is another related term. Bray's story focuses on this phenomenon. Of the couple, Emma is the more positive and pragmatic of the two; Chris is drowning in dread due to the modern world's harsh realities: namely, global warming. Taking place during Christmastime in northern England, the marriage in crisis parallels a climate in crisis, and something's gotta give.

"Brita's Holiday Village" is a short story in the collection by Karen Tidback called . I think it's important to continue to investigate how some weird fiction has strong ecological elements, and Tidback is no stranger to this concept. She is a Swedish author whose weird fiction is inspired by folklore and her social anthropology background. She writes into her stories a strong sense of Swedish landscape. "Brita's Holiday Village" is about a young woman writer who escapes to her Aunt Brita's resort to finish writing a novel. She scraps her old pieces and begins a fiction based on her life. She gets out into the village for walks and swims and notices pupae hanging all over the place; then it hatches. What follows is a series of dreams about the villagers, whom she finds are distantly related. It's an example of the new weird, much like the other stories in Jagannath.

Elena Maffioletti's Il Principio Della Terra (in English, Where the Earth Begins - in Search of the Aral Sea) is a novel based upon the true story of diversion of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers between the 1960s through 1980s to support irrigation for intensive cotton farming and continued destruction of the Aral Sea area. As Maffioletti explained to me, "In the same period, an island in the middle of the Aral Sea named Vozrozdenye (Rebirth Island) was used by the Soviets as a bioweapons testing range. Relics of laboratory complex now lie in the dust, just as rusty fishing vessels lie on the dry soil where a large part of the Aral Sea used to be, both on Kazakh and Uzbek sides. The landscape is dramatic and beautiful, a sort of primordial world, but pollution from pesticides and desiccation have had a terrible impact on the local ecosystem and population over the last 50 years. I traveled through Uzbekistan some years ago, and I was fascinated by the contrast between the richness of culture and tradition of the country and the dusty scenery of Lake Aral." The novel was born as a collection of short stories that created a tapestry, joined together in a bigger story.

As William Blake said, in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, "In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy. Drive your cart and drive, over the bones of the dead. The road to excess leads to the palace of wisdom." Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, by Olga Tokarczuk, is set in a rural Polish village and the woods surrounding it. Its main character Janina is seen as curmudgeonly by those in her community. She has some hobbies: translating William Blake's poetry, studying astrology, and preferring animals for company rather than people. When her neighbor, whom she had nicknamed Big Foot, turns up dead, others follow, and Janina begins to investigate the deaths herself. In her life and investigations, Janina observes nature and understands the the importance of ecosystems and species that rely upon each other.

The Forbidden Place, by Susanne Jansson, takes place in Sweden's wetlands at a fictional village called Mossmarken on the edge of a mire. A biologist named Nathalie comes to this remote place to study peat bogs, most particularly "How the Greenhouse Effect Influences the Process of Decomposition in the Wetlands." As with many isolated places that haven't lost their natural landscape, this one is dripping with fog, rain, mist, storms...and secrets, deaths, and mysteries. This story can be described as Scandi-Noir, a type of crime fiction set in Scandinavian countries.

Natural Histories: Stories is a collection of stories by Guadalupe Nettel, translated by J.T. Lichtenstein; the short stories are mostly set in Paris. Mexican author Nettel's writings about fish, fungus, snakes, cockroaches, and more in this compelling throng of tales mostly concentrate on natural and human cohabitation, reproduction, and connection. These masterfully poignant stories twist the mundane into the extraordinary, equating animal and people instincts as peculiarly similar. While some stories venture into the absurd, most are grounded in reality.

Previously listed: American War by Omar El Akkad, Beasts of the Southern Wild by Lucy Alibar and Benh Zeitlin, Californiaby Edan Lepucki, Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver, by Jennifer Dance, The MaddAddam Trilogy by Margaret Atwood, The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline, The Overstory by Richard Powers, Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler, Protectors of the Wood by Jon KixMiller and team, Tentacle by Rita Indiana, The Troika by Stephan Chapman, and by Cory Doctorow.

Andrew Krivak's is the story of the last two people on Earth, a sort of antipodal story to Adam and Eve's in the beginning. Inspired by the author's time growing up in the rural forests of the northeastern US, it's a story of a girl and her father surviving on the side of a mountain. The prose is simple but complex, delicate but strong. Stunning descriptions of landscape and wildlife, survival wisdom, love, sadness, and joy splash page after page. It's a lyrical fable for humankind, with elements of magical realism. You can read more about The Bear in my chat with Krivak.

The Veins of the Ocean, by Patricia Engel, takes place in the coastal and Caribbean communities of Miami, the Florida Keys, and Cuba, as well as Cartagena, Columbia. Reina Castillo's brother is serving a death sentence. After he's gone, she meets Nesto Cadena, from Cuba, who is waiting for the arrival of his children. Their companionship, and suffering, is soothed by the healing powers of nature, most particularly the ocean surrounding them. It's an example of how natural entities, such as the sea, can become a focused character and protagonist in fiction.

T.C. Boyle's The Terranauts was published in 2016 and takes place in Arizona, in a small, desert town 40 miles from Tuscon. The Terranauts, which are made up of eight scientists, are selected to test out life under glass, in an attempt to see if that kind of living would be plausible in the future, possibly outside of Earth. This experiment is the result of trying to find another existence, since life on the planet is threatened by climate change. It's interesting that the eco-sphere has different biomes: rainforest, savanna, desert, ocean, and marsh. This isn't Boyle's first novel dealing with climate. He also wrote the well-known A Friend of the Earth, originally published in 2000.

Jessica Cory, editor of the anthology Mountains Piled Upon Mountains: Appalachian Writing in the Anthropocene, chatted with me last fall about her newly published collection of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction, which has stories from nearly fifty writers from across Appalachia, including Indigenous authors. Having spent a lot of time in the eastern Kentucky Appalachian region, I was thrilled to read this anthology whose authors give insights on the human-nature relationship in an era of rapid environmental change. It seemed I was part of their stories, from my own early childhood experiences to the concerns of today. The contributors write about experiences from northern Georgia to upstate New York, invite parallels between a watershed in West Virginia and one in North Carolina, and often emphasize connections between Appalachia and more distant locations. In the pages of Mountains Piled upon Mountains are celebration, mourning, confusion, loneliness, admiration, and other emotions and experiences rooted in place but transcending Appalachia's boundaries. And while I'm at it, if you're reading this, you might pronounce Appalachia as apple-ay-sha. That's not the correct pronunciation, and I'm going to throw an apple-at-cha if you don't get it right!

John Atcheson's A Being Darkly Wise impacted me quite a bit when I read it seven years ago. The novel is set in the Boreal forest of British Columbia, with strong influence from the Dunne-za (the real people). In Being, a group of K-street and environmentalist-activist types from Washington D.C. travel on a wilderness survival trek to one of the most isolated areas of northern BC with a mysterious man named Jake. The novel is set in the present day. Unlike some climate change novels, where the literary characters need to adapt to climate change in the future, Atcheson's novel gathers people to adapt to the idea of where we're at and very closely heading now. It's also rich with descriptions of the wilderness-the place beyond that I (we) so want to reconnect with. In my talk with John, back in 2013, he even told me a bear story. John and I kept in touch throughout the years, about writing, politics, and environment. I'm sad to report that he died in January 2020 in a tragic car accident.

Jesmyn Ward's Salvage the Bones tells the growing familiar story of a hurricane heading toward land, in this case the coastal town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi. We all remember Katrina, and climate scientists tell us that there will be more like it and worse. Obviously, this is a fictionalization of what happened, but fiction is a creative art form that allows us to get outside ourselves and peer deeply into situations that happen around us all the time, which raises empathy and can establish an emotional connection with others. In the story, a teenage pregnant girl named Esch lives with her alcoholic father and three brothers. Influenced by the myth of Jason and Medea, she gets by with imagination and love for her family and community. It's a story in which hope rises above tragedy.

, by William Meikle, takes place on the east coast of Canada and is an example of fungoid fiction, which obviously involves fungi (a little sub-genre all on its own) and may also overlap with eco-horror. It's an example of how stories found within the field of eco-fiction do not always have to be human-caused, as in global warming. Sometimes in weird fiction, nature attacks. Or sometimes nature doesn't attack, it just happens for whatever reason. Nevertheless, it's another scenario that can imbalance ecosystems and threaten survival. This apocalyptic novel looks at the smaller things that can devastate, in this case something that escapes from a lab.

, by Esther Figueroa, has the director (Flora Smith) of an environmental organization struggling to keep her NGO afloat while trying to create awareness of Jamaica's fragile ecosystems. Part love story, part murder-mystery, the novel delves into the dark sides of exploitative industries taking advantage of native peoples as well as ruining Jamaica's natural landscapes. It's an advocacy novel with seasonings of humor, romance, and struggle. It's also a beautiful story about place and vistas that will capture readers' imaginations.
Arctic
Previously listed: The North Water by Ian McGuire, Arctic Drift by Clive Cussler, The Ice Child by Elizabeth McGregor, and Far North by Marcel Theroux.

Migrations, by Charlotte McConaghy, is a new novel out in the summer of 2020. Franny Stone, from Galway, Ireland, is a wanderer and lover of oceans and birds, has experienced a lot of loss in her life. As wildlife accelerates toward extinction everywhere, she can't bear the thought of further losses. With the help of Ennis Malone, captain of the ship Sahgani, she travels to Greenland to find the last flock of Arctic terns. It's the story of vanishing: of wildlife and one's own self. One word of caution, it's a tearjerker.

, by playright Chantal Bilodeau, takes place in Nunavit, Canada and is the Inuktitut word for air, climate, or breath. The play examines the competing interests shaping the future of the Canadian Arctic and local Inuit population. Set on Baffin Island, it follows seven characters, including a climate scientist, an Inuit activist, two Coast Guard officers, and a polar bear, as they see their values challenged and their lives become intricately intertwined. Equal parts Inuit myth and contemporary Arctic policy, Sila uses puppetry, spoken word poetry and three different languages (English, French and Inuktitut). The playwas inspired by a three-week trip to Baffin Island. You can read more about Bilodeau's plays in my chat with her. Of interest, Bilodeau also runs the wonderful site Artists & Climate Change.

Split Tooth, by Canadian Inuk throat singer Tanya Taqaq, is a story of a girl growing up in Nunavut in the 1970s, who becomes pregnant and tries to navigate the world of violence, abuse, drugs, alcoholism, and family troubles. But the healing begins with the wilderness and nature around her, the myths and spirit world of her ancestors. A lyrical and poetic story, broken down by beautiful vignettes and Taqaq's memories of growing up in that culture and place, it's a visceral tale that will stick with the reader for a long time.

The Word for Woman Is Wilderness, by Abi Andrews, is about Erin, age 19, who leaves her home in England and sets out to journey through the U.S. and the Arctic Circle. Wilderness is not a mere backdrop to Erin's trek; it's the main thoroughfare and landscape to learning more about one's world and self. Breaking the male archetype of discoverers and survivalists, Erin ends up in a lonely cabin in the wilds of Denali, hoping to make do better than Christopher McCandless did in his final Alaskan adventure, and begins to document her surroundings and the people she comes across. Drawing upon Inuit beliefs, she is worried about the natural environment of the place she's traveled, the community and wilds into which she seemed destined to arrive. She narrates in the story, "If running into the wild is so often a wounded retreat from societal constraints and oppressions, then shouldn't anyone but straight white men be doing it more?"

After the Flood, by Kassandra Montag, is another envisioning of our future after climate change has caused floods and rising seas, where mountains are our new homes, and they are surrounded by a horizon of sea. Myra and her daughter Pearl lived in Nebraska when a deluge ruined their home and her oldest daughter Row was kidnapped by her father. When Myra finds out that Row might be alive in Alaska, she and Pearl embark on a northward journey to find Row. A "raw and atmospheric" story, it strongly connects readers to the emotional response to what may be our future world - while at the same time providing a thrilling ride.
Antarctic
Previously listed: My Last Continent by Midge Raymond, Antarctica by Kim Stanley Robinson, "Sur" by Ursula K. Le Guin, Chasing the Light by Jesse Blackadder, and Lamentations of Zeno by Ilija Trojanow.

, by Crawford Killan, was written in the 1980s. Killan wrote an article at The Tyee (an independent journal I enjoyed back when I lived in British Columbia). The gist: "My Old Sci-Fi Novel Is Coming True." He said, "It was a strange sensation to check Google News on a lovely spring morning and find a new headline: Irreversible collapse. The collapse is of a major part of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet under the steady erosion of warming sea water. Pretty dramatic, no doubt." In the novel, a team of 27 scientists resides in the Shackleton Station, studying seismic activity of the region, when a nearby volcano erupts and sends icequakes through the area.

South Pole Station, by Ashley Shelby, is a refreshing story with a woman's viewpoint, as the main character, Cooper Gosling, gets a chance to enter an Antarctic Artists & Writer's Program, which happens at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, where -50 degrees and colder is the norm. Cooper grew up fascinated by polar expeditions, particularly by Apsley Cherry-Garrard's account of Robert Scott's misadventurous journey, and the chance to go to the station is a godsend after the death of her brother. She joins others there, in a somewhat comical story, where discussions of politics surrounding climate change is central around the numerous other loners at the station.

, by Craig Russel, has a wildlife-killing shockwave dislodging a massive sheet of ice in the Antarctic, a captain of an atomic submarine heading to the rescue with his teams, and survivors of the polar research team panicking. Meanwhile, it's all over the world news, which is exactly how this story would happen, with the world taking notice. This may sound like a specualtive sort of event we face in the future, due to global warming, but it's more of a cautionary tale - it's not if but when. Beneath the water is a blue whale, also fighting for the survival of its species.

Previously listed: by Jeff VanderMeer, Broken Earth Trilogy by N. K. Jemisin, The Other Side of the Mountain by Michael Bernanos, The Sandcastle Empire by Kayla Olson, and Wilder Girls by Rory Power [post-publication correction, Wilder Girls is set on an island off Maine].

, by Dempow Torishima, is an interesting look into the future of genetic engineering. Falling into the genres of fantasy, science fiction, biopunk, and the new weird, Sisyphean is a mosaic of four story fragments - Plunder, Jewel, Genesis, and Exile - that together hint at the truth behind the Great Dust Plague. Torishima also illustrates the story, making it more visually awesome. In Greek mythology, Sisyphus, found in Homer's Iliad, was known for his cunning and trickery, and he was forced to roll a boulder up a hill for eternity as punishment in the underworld - sisyphean means "of a task such that it can never be completed." A novel with complex and dense ideas on every page, ultimately it challenges our perspectives from every day things to life itself.

The Ministry for the Future, by Kim Stanley Robinson, takes place around the globe. He's one of the most prolific environmental science fiction authors around - and his new novel coming is coming out next month, so get ready! It's a near-future tale that has multiple eyewitnesses giving their perceptions of climate change effects happening in their part of the world, whether it's a massive heat wave in India, the African Union taking back mines, a flood in Los Angeles, and so on. The novel also has two main characters, Mary, who is the head of the Ministry for the Future (an advocacy group to protect all living creatures) and Frank, the sole survivor of the heat wave in Lucknow. Robinson generally writes with positivity, despite the harsh reality of global warming - such as his novel New York 2140 - one which, to me, seems like an excellent example of solarpunk.

, by Frank Herbert, is classic eco/science fiction. Herbert used fiction to relay some complex relationships among humans, ecology, ideology, and technology. Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn in The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction called Dune the "first planetary ecology novel on a grand scale". I blogged more about that here a few years ago after seeing a documentary about Alejandro Jodorowsky's vision for filming the movie. I would have loved to see his vision of Dune, but it never came to fruition. As much as I love David Lynch, I never thought his film, the original one in 1984, was as deep as the book. Now a new version is coming out this December, by Denis Villeneuve. The trailer looks pretty good, but I'm reserving judgment until I see it!

Mary Woodbury (pen, Clara Hume) was born in Kentucky and now lives in Nova Scotia with her husband and cats. She and her husband enjoy puttering around their big meadow, where they planted 28 trees in 2020 and are growing gardens. Mary's other hobbies are curating the site Dragonfly.eco, reading, writing, interviewing authors, and spending time on the trail hiking or running. While she hasn't been able to run lately, due torn ligaments in her left ankle, she dreams of being able to again. She enjoys being in the ocean, having bonfires in the summer, and planning a return to Ireland, if only in her dreams.

With degrees in English literature and anthropology from Purdue University, Mary has worked in writing and publishing for years. Her novel Back to the Garden, first published in 2013 (Moon Willow Press), was printed as a 2nd edition in 2018 and was discussed in Dissent Magazine, Ethnobiology for the Future: Linking Cultural and Ecological Diversity (University of Arizona Press, 2016), and Uncertainty and the Philosophy of Climate Change (Routledge, 2014). It was recommended reading by Sierra Club, Queensland University, and LitHub. The second part of the duology, The Stolen Child, is expected out in 2022. Mary is also writing Up the River, a story about an oil spill threatening an aquifer in Kentucky's Appalachian Mountains, coming in 2021. Her young adult novella Bird Song, which combines a Greek myth with a climate catastrophe parable, is due out November 4, 2020. Mary is a guest author at Artists and Climate Change and Climate Cultures. In the past she has written for Fjord's Review, SFF World, and Free Word Centre. She was a contributing writer to Tales from the River: An Anthology of River Literature (Stormbird Press, 2018), winner of the 2016 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Indigenous Writing; she wrote about her experiences rafting on the Atnarko River, near Bella Coola, BC, in search of grizzly bears hunting salmon. Her work has been translated into Italian for Zest Letteratura Sostenibile and into Chinese for Science Creation Magazine.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Part II. Around the World in 80 Books: A Further Look at Climate Change and Ecologically Oriented...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In 2018 I began a world eco-fiction series at Dragonfly.eco, and a year later I wrote my first Around the World in 80 Books article, which looked at fiction from every continent that diversely explores climate and ecological changes and landscapes. Because lists are limited and can exclude important works, I've decided to continue this series every so often.

# data[].attributes.body
A collection of science fiction stories, art, and essays exploring human futures powered by solar energy, with an upbeat, solarpunk twist. What will it be like to live in the photon societies of tomorrow? How will a transition to clean, plentiful energy transform our values, markets, and politics?

The Weight of Light emphasizes that the design of solar energy matters just as much as the shift away from fossil fuels. Solar technologies can be planned, governed, and marketed in many different ways. The choices we make will profoundly shape the futures we inhabit. The collection features stories by award-winning science fiction authors, working in collaboration with illustrators, graphic designers, and experts in policy, ethics, climate science, and electrical, environmental, civil, and aerospace engineering.

Stories by: Brenda Cooper, Andrew Dana Hudson, Corey S. Pressman, Cat Rambo

Essays by: Stuart Bowden, Ed Finn, Wesley Herche, Christiana Honsberg, Samantha Janko, Darshan M.A. Karwat, Lauren Withycombe Keeler, Joshua Loughman, Clark A. Miller, Esmerelda Parker, Dwarak Ravikumar, Ruth Wylie

Illustrations by: Michael Duah, Brian Miller, Kirsten Newkirk, Laura Wentzel

# data[].attributes.headline
Fridays for Future treffen Science Fiction: Was ist eigentlich Solarpunk?

# data[].attributes.subject
Fridays for Future treffen Science Fiction: Was ist eigentlich Solarpunk?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Die Welt der Science Fiction ist bunt und vielfältig. Das zeigen Untergenres wie Cyberpunk und Steampunk - die mittlerweile weithin bekannt sind. Solarpunk ist hingegen nur wenigen ein Begriff. Dabei passt dieses Genre so gut in unsere Zeit wie kein anderes. Denn Solarpunk zeichnet eine Welt, in der wir unseren Planeten noch retten können. Von Michael Förtsch
Junge Menschen gehen auf die Straße. Sie fordern eine saubere, ökologischere Zukunft, eine Wende der Energiegewinnung, eine 180-Grad-Drehung unserer Konsumkultur. Kurz gesagt: Sie fordern eine Zivilisation, die im Einklang mit der Natur existiert - und nicht gegen sie. Blickt man allerdings auf die Mehrheit der derzeit populären Science-Fiction-Visionen, scheint es, als wäre das ein ziemlich aussichtsloses Unterfangen. Die porträtieren oftmals eine Menschheit, die erst den eigenen Planet zugrunde gerichtet hat, dann selbst zugrunde geht oder notgedrungen zu fremden Planeten aufgebrochen ist.

In Blade Runner, Ready Player One, Biokrieg oder Alle Vögel unter dem Himmel sind weite Teile der Erde verseucht, Kontinente untergegangen und Wälder zu Wüsten verdorrt. Diese Science-Fiction-Werke warnen eindringlich vor einer „Weiter so"-Mentalität und einer Handlungsunfähigkeit der Politik. Sie zeigen dramatisch die möglichen Folgen des steten Strebens nach Wachstum und sie kritisieren die Ausbeutermentalität von Großkonzernen. Erdrückend und schwer sollen sie auf der Seele liegen. Auch wenn diese Welten nicht immer völlig ohne Hoffnung sind - eine neue und bessere Welt, einen positiven Gegenentwurf zeichnen sie selten.

Jedoch existiert ein ganzes Untergenre der Science Fiction, das sich genau das zur Aufgabe gemacht hat. Neben dem bekannten Cyberpunk-Futurismus mit seinen biomechanisch verbesserten Menschen und allmächtigen Konzernen gibt es noch zahlreiche Derivate: den Steampunk, in dem die Dampfmaschine das Maß der Dinge ist, den Clockpunk, in dem selbst Raumschiffe mit Sprungfedern und Aufziehmechanik funktionieren oder den Atompunk, in dem die Begeisterung für Atomenergie nie abgeebbt ist. Der entscheidende Ableger aber, um den es hier gehen soll, ist der Solarpunk. Seit rund fünf Jahren weckt er eine langsam aber sicher wachsende Begeisterung.

Solarpunk postuliert und imaginiert Zukünfte, in denen es die Menschheit geschafft hat, all die Kern- und Kohlekraftwerke abzuschalten und zu einer harmonischeren Koexistenz mit der Umwelt zu finden. Strom wird per Solar-, Wind-, und Wasserkraft erzeugt und die Städte werden in grüne Metropolen verwandelt. Nicht immer ist dabei der Umschwung ganz geglückt, aber der Blick in die kommenden Jahre ist positiver. Der Klimawandel ist zwar nicht unbedingt abgewendet, aber keine solche Bedrohung mehr. Vor allem aber: Die Menschheit ist vernünftiger geworden. Sie versucht sich selbst, die Technologie und die Natur in Einklang zu bringen - jedenfalls, so gut es geht.

Visuell, narrativ, grün

Wer im Netz nach „solarpunk" sucht, der stößt auf Zeichnungen und 3D-Renderbilder von grünen Hightech-Städten, die von den organischen Bauten der Zaha Hadid, den leichtgewichtigen Konstruktionen von Renzo Piano und einer mit asiatischen und afrikanischen Einschlägen vermischten Jugendstil-Architektur inspiriert sind. Kokon-artige Häuser drücken sich an Felswände, begrünte Wolkenkratzer schmiegen sich in Waldstücke und hyper-moderne Dorfhäuser gliedern sich zu idyllischen Gemeinden. Dazwischen finden sich Wind- und Solarkraftanlagen und kleine Bäche. Auch tauchen immer wieder Fotos des futuristischen Parkgeländes Gardens by the Bay in Singapur auf, das glatt aus einem Öko-Science-Fiction-Streifen stammen könnte.

Tatsächlich findet das Genre des Solarpunk bislang weniger in Roman- und Geschichtsform statt. Stattdessen lebt es vor allem in Online-Foren, auf Tumblr, Twitter und in Facebook-Gruppen, wo Ideen, Vorstellungen und solche Bilder geteilt und Diskussionen über hypothetische Solarpunk-Zukünfte angestoßen und ausgestaltet werden. Es ist also eine Science-Fiction-Vision, die mehrheitlich im Netz existiert und dort großgezogen wird. Erstmals erwähnt wurde Solarpunk als Titel einer brasilianischen Science-Fiction-Antho logie im Jahr 2013. Verbreitung fand Solarpunk als Genre allerdings erst durch einen Tumblr-Beitrag von Olivia Louise aus dem Jahr 2014, in dem sogar erste Leitlinien zur Ästhetik festgelegt wurden.

Kannst du dir vorstellen, wie schön es wäre, überall Buntglasfenster zu haben, die eigentlich Solarmodule sind? Die Technologie ist bereits auf dem Weg in diese Richtung! Oder wie wäre es mit breitkrempigen Hüten oder Sonnenschirmen, die mit dezenter Solarzellen-Technologie ausgestattet sind, vollends in das Design integriert, mit Anschlüssen, in die du dein Telefon einstöpseln kannst?

Olivia Louise
Realistisch oder naiv?

Die sonnengetriebenen Welten sind zwar keine finsteren und durchrüttelten Szenerien aber langweilig oder ohne Spannung sind sie dennoch nicht. Denn wo Menschen aufeinandertreffen und Technik ist, da existieren natürlich auch Konflikte und Reibungsflächen. In Kurzgeschichten und Erzählungen tun sich Intrigen, Verschwörungen, Machtkämpfe und Verständigungsprobleme auf. Denn ein Sonnenstaat kann freilich auch eine fehlgeleitete Diktatur oder eine rigurose Überwachungsdystopie sein. Menschen hadern mit Techniken wie Künstlicher Intelligenz, es gibt Machtblöcke, die zu Atomenergie und Kohle zurückwollen. Bürger streiten um Rechte und Pflichten. Denn es kann auch in der ökologischsten Zukunftswelt eine Klasse von Menschen existieren, die die unschönen Arbeiten verrichten muss oder von anderen aufgrund irrationaler Vorurteile und Ängste benachteiligt wird. Und natürlich kann eine grüne Welt auch einfach Kulisse für Liebes- und Kriminaldramen oder Alltagsprobleme sein.

Solarpunk ist für seine Anhänger jedoch nicht nur ein Science-Fiction-Genre, eine Kulisse für spannende Geschichten oder eine visuelle Ästhetik. Für sie ist es auch eine Bewegung, eine ökologische und kulturelle Einstellung, ein Lebensgefühl und ein Zivilisationsziel.

Denn die Szenarien des Solarpunk sind zwar fiktive, aber sehr praktische und teils erreichbare Visionen. Viele Technologien, die es für ihre Übersetzung in die Realität bräuchte, sind bereits da: Klar, erneuerbare Energien sorgen für Strom. Elektroautos und automatisierte Fahrzeuge halten die Menschen mobil - ebenso wie Fahrräder. Neue Wohnungen werden aus recyclebarem Material mit 3D-Druckern hochgezogen, Luftschiffe sorgen für einen nachhaltigen Warentransport, Kleidung wird aus Pflanzen gefertigt, Obst und Gemüse in vertikalen Farmen gezüchtet und Fleisch im Labor.

Machbar erscheint vieles davon jetzt schon - oder zumindest in greifbarer Nähe. Nur der kollektive Wille und einige Jahre der konzentrierten Fortentwicklung scheinen zu fehlen, um diese technologischen Ansätze umzusetzen. Aber nicht nur das: Auch gesellschaftlich und politisch wird aktiv zum Umdenken angeregt, wie Andrew Dana Hudson von der Arizona State Universety bereits vor vier Jahren aufschrieb.

Was auch immer Solarpunk ist, es ist zutiefst politisch. Politik ist die Kunst davon, wie wir festlegen, auf welche Weise wir Ressourcen verteilen und anderweitig miteinander in Beziehungen treten. Mit anderen Worten: wer das Zeug herstellt, wer das Zeug bekommt und wie wir Menschen und das Zeug verwalten.

Andrew Dana Hudson
Es geht also auch darum, die Art wie wir Menschen wohnen, konsumieren und existieren, neu zu denken; einen gesellschaftlichen Gegenentwurf zu wagen, sozioökonomische Prioritäten und Werte neu zu definieren. Und dabei auch, die Dinge und Dienste, die wir wirklich benötigen, erneut zu evaluieren. Und das subversiv und vielleicht auch gegen die Widerstände des Establishments. Heißt: Darunter sind nicht nur naive Öko-Utopien, sondern greifbare Visionen, die denkbar und möglich wären - oder im Kleinen sogar schon angegangen werden.

Genau wie die Neon-gespränkelten Straßen von Hong Kong und die Skyline von Shenzen total cyberpunk sind, so finden wir auch jetzt schon Projekte, die voll solarpunk sind: In den Niederlanden etwa wird von der Initiative ReGen ein nachhaltiges und sich selbstversorgendes Dorf geplant. In Brüssel könnte bald der Biocampus einstehen, ein Öko-Bezirk mit bewachsenen Gebäuden und nachhaltigen Bio-Wohnungen auf einer Industriebrache. Solarpunkt, das sind sonnige, grüne und vor allem naturverbundene Visionen.

Ursprung und Technik

Obwohl Solarpunk als Genre erst wenige Jahre existiert, ist nicht losgelöst von früheren Science-Fiction-Varianten. Viele Elemente finden sich bereits in Romanen wie Ökotopia von Ernest Callenbach, der darin schon 1975 von der Reise in eine von der Welt abgekapselten Ökonation erzählt, die sich nach langer Isolation nun zunehmend öffnet. Auch Eiland von Aldous Huxley ist eine Art Vorläufer. Erschienen bereits 1962 berichtet das Buch von einer Insel, deren Bewohner Wissenschaft und Spiritualität vereint haben und nach Selbstverwirklichung und Koexistenz mit der Natur streben.

Dennoch ist Solarpunk anders, moderner, politischer und idealistischer - und steht damit eben auch im Zeichen von Bewegungen wie Fridays for Future. Solarpunkt trifft den Zeitgeist und unterstreicht, dass es sich lohnt, für eine lebenswerte Zukunft zu kämpfen. Damit ist Solarpunk das Science-Fiction-Genre, das wir gerade brauchen. Denn so wichtig Warnungen vor einer völlig vermurksten Zukunft wie in Blade Runner 2049 oder Ready Player One sind, so ist doch das Entwerfen einer lebenswerten und optimistischen Zukunft unabdinglich. Worauf sollen wir sonst hinarbeiten? Solarpunkt befeuert die notwendige Debatte darüber.

Große Solarpunk-Romane sind noch Mangelware. Aber dennoch gibt es einiges an Lesestoff, der durchaus empfehlenswert ist - vor allem in Form von Kurzgeschichtensammlungen.

Solarpunk: Ecological and Fantastical Stories in a Sustainable World

Das brasilianische Original dieser Anthologie hat wohl den Begriff Solarpunk geprägt. Damit ist es auch der beste Einstieg in das Sience-Fiction-Genre. Der Autor André S. Silva träumt in der Geschichte Xibalba Dreams of the West beispielsweise ein modernes Inkareich herbei, das bis in die Jetztzeit überlebte, auf Solar- und Windkraft setzt aber seine Kultur erhalten hat. In Sun in the Heart von Roberta Spindler existieren Tattoos, die, wenn von der Sonne beschienen, den menschlichen Körper auftanken und ein langes Leben garantieren - aber nicht jeder kann sie sich leisten. In Escape von Gabriel Cantareira sind die fossilen Energieträger nach einem Krieg nahezu aufgebraucht. Große Solarsatelliten versprechen die Rettung. Doch die Mächtigen der Welt wollen sie verhindern.

Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Summers

Gleich 17 Geschichten bündelt Glass and Gardens . Darunter Caught Root von Julia K. Patt, die von zwei Gemeinden erzählt, die jeweils auf ihre eigene Art eine neue Zivilisation aufbauen wollen aber zu scheitern drohen, wenn sie nicht zusammenfinden. The Heavenly Dreams of Mechanical Trees von Wendy Nikel berichtet von mechanischen Solarbäumen, die ein Bewusstsein entwickeln. In Cable Town Delivery von M. Lopez da Silva werden Städte in den Ruinen einer Wolkenkratzermetropole hochgezogen - was sie alle verbindet, ist dabei eine Bücherei. Nicht alle der Geschichten sind überragend aber durchaus ein Anlesen wert.

The Weight of Light: A Collection of Solar Futures

Das E-Book The Weight of Light ist wohl eine der besten Übersichten über Solarpunk. Denn das kostenlose Werk der Arizona State University umfasst nicht nur Kurzgeschichten, sondern auch Abhandlungen und Essays, die auf eine ökologische und vor allem saubere Zukunft schauen. Es geht um intelligente Stromnetze, technologische und gesellschaftliche Hürden einer Solarpunk-Zukunft, um die Konstruktion von Solarkraftwerken und so einiges mehr. Nein, das ist keine besonders leichte aber eine lohnenswerte Lektüre.

Biketopia: Feminist Bicycle Science Fiction Stories in Extreme Futures

Eigentlich sagt der Titel schon alles. Es geht in dieser Kurzgeschichtensammlungen nicht nur um Solarenergie und das Leben mit der Natur, sondern auch andere Umbrüche und den Kampf gegen Widerstände. In Taming the Beast von Robert Bose muss eine Radfahrerin ihr neues Rad unter Kontrolle bringen, das mit einem eigenen Bewusstsein ausgestattet ist. Sarena Ulibarri erzählt in Riding In Place wie Mensch und Maschine durch alltägliche Begegnungen langsam eine Beziehung aufbauen.
Teaserbild: Yeo Khee, Unsplash.com

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Fridays for Future treffen Science Fiction: Was ist eigentlich Solarpunk?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Die Welt der Science Fiction ist bunt und vielfältig. Das zeigen Untergenres wie Cyberpunk und Steampunk - die mittlerweile weithin bekannt sind. Solarpunk ist hingegen nur wenigen ein Begriff. Dabei passt dieses Genre so gut in unsere Zeit wie kein anderes. Denn Solarpunk zeichnet eine Welt, in der wir unseren Planeten noch retten können.

# data[].attributes.body
by Reina Rozo

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Occupy movement | World news | The Guardian

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A decade ago Occupy reframed US political debate, trained a generation of activists, and served as a dress rehearsal for movements that followed

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
It is essential for our mission to be present in the spaces where climate decisions are made. However, attending this COP is presenting unprecedented difficulties for our activists.

Thanks to the support of some collaborators, we have been able to raise part of our budget, but we still have a long way to go to ensure that all regions affected by the climate crisis can raise their voices in these spaces.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Fridays For Future is an international climate movement active in most countries and our website offers information on who we are and what you can do.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
It is essential for our mission to be present in the spaces where climate decisions are made. However, attending this COP is presenting unprecedented difficulties for our activists. Thanks to the support of some collaborators, we have been able to raise part of our budget, but we still have a long way to go to ensure that all regions affected by the climate crisis can raise their voices in these spaces.

# data[].attributes.body
Japanese animator, director, producer, screenwriter, author, and manga artist (inspired many solarpunk artists).

# data[].attributes.headline
Book Archive of Arizona State University

# data[].attributes.subject
Book Archive of Arizona State University

# data[].attributes.body
Books on future free for download

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The global cataclysm of COVID-19, and the quarantines and social distancing that have accompanied the still-unfolding pandemic, has brought enormous changes to the games industry, the ways we play videogames (and physical games) alone and together, and the meaning and content of games old and new.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Books Archive - Center for Science and the Imagination

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The global cataclysm of COVID-19, and the quarantines and social distancing that have accompanied the still-unfolding pandemic, has brought enormous changes to the games industry, the ways we play videogames (and physical games) alone and together, and the meaning and content of games old and new.

# data[].attributes.body
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015, provides a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future. At its heart are the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are an urgent call for action by all countries - developed and developing - in a global partnership. They recognize that ending poverty and other deprivations must go hand-in-hand with strategies that improve health and education, reduce inequality, and spur economic growth – all while tackling climate change and working to preserve our oceans and forests.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Design thinking is a methodology which provides a solution-based approach to solving problems. It's extremely useful when used to tackle complex problems that are ill-defined or unknown-because it serves to understand the human needs involved, reframe the problem in human-centric ways, create numerous ideas in brainstorming sessions and adopt a hands-on approach to prototyping and testing. Learning about the five stages of design thinking will empower you and allow you to apply the methodology to your work and solve complex problems that occur in our companies, our countries, and across the world.
Design thinking is a non-linear, iterative process that can have anywhere from three to seven phases, depending on whom you talk to. We focus on the five-stage design thinking model proposed by the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford (the d.school) because they are world-renowned for the way they teach and apply design thinking.

What are the 5 Stages of the Design Thinking Process

The five stages of design thinking, according to the d.school, are:

Let's dive into each stage of the design thinking process.

Stage 1: Empathize-Research Your Users' Needs

Empathize: the first phase of design thinking, where you gain real insight into users and their needs.

The first stage of the design thinking process focuses on user-centric research. You want to gain an empathic understanding of the problem you are trying to solve. Consult experts to find out more about the area of concern and conduct observations to engage and empathize with your users. You may also want to immerse yourself in your users' physical environment to gain a deeper, personal understanding of the issues involved-as well as their experiences and motivations. Empathy is crucial to problem solving and a human-centered design process as it allows design thinkers to set aside their own assumptions about the world and gain real insight into users and their needs.

Depending on time constraints, you will gather a substantial amount of information to use during the next stage. The main aim of the Empathize stage is to develop the best possible understanding of your users, their needs and the problems that underlie the development of the product or service you want to create.

Stage 2: Define-State Your Users' Needs and Problems

Define: the second phase of design thinking, where you define the problem statement in a human-centered manner.

In the Define stage, you will organize the information you have gathered during the Empathize stage. You'll analyze your observations to define the core problems you and your team have identified up to this point. Defining the problem and problem statement must be done in a human-centered manner.

For example, you should not define the problem as your own wish or need of the company: "We need to increase our food-product market share among young teenage girls by 5%."

You should pitch the problem statement from your perception of the users' needs: "Teenage girls need to eat nutritious food in order to thrive, be healthy and grow."

The Define stage will help the design team collect great ideas to establish features, functions and other elements to solve the problem at hand-or, at the very least, allow real users to resolve issues themselves with minimal difficulty. In this stage, you will start to progress to the third stage, the ideation phase, where you ask questions to help you look for solutions: " How might we encourage teenage girls to perform an action that benefits them and also involves your company's food-related product or service?" for instance.

Stage 3: Ideate-Challenge Assumptions and Create Ideas

Ideate: the third phase of design thinking, where you identify innovative solutions to the problem statement you've created.

During the third stage of the design thinking process, designers are ready to generate ideas. You've grown to understand your users and their needs in the Empathize stage, and you've analyzed your observations in the Define stage to create a user centric problem statement. With this solid background, you and your team members can start to look at the problem from different perspectives and ideate innovative solutions to your problem statement.

There are hundreds of ideation techniques you can use-such as Brainstorm, Brainwrite, Worst Possible Idea and SCAMPER. Brainstorm and Worst Possible Idea techniques are typically used at the start of the ideation stage to stimulate free thinking and expand the problem space. This allows you to generate as many ideas as possible at the start of ideation. You should pick other ideation techniques towards the end of this stage to help you investigate and test your ideas, and choose the best ones to move forward with-either because they seem to solve the problem or provide the elements required to circumvent it.

Stage 4: Prototype-Start to Create Solutions

Prototype: the fourth phase of design thinking, where you identify the best possible solution.

The design team will now produce a number of inexpensive, scaled down versions of the product (or specific features found within the product) to investigate the key solutions generated in the ideation phase. These prototypes can be shared and tested within the team itself, in other departments or on a small group of people outside the design team.

This is an experimental phase, and the aim is to identify the best possible solution for each of the problems identified during the first three stages. The solutions are implemented within the prototypes and, one by one, they are investigated and then accepted, improved or rejected based on the users' experiences.

By the end of the Prototype stage, the design team will have a better idea of the product's limitations and the problems it faces. They'll also have a clearer view of how real users would behave, think and feel when they interact with the end product.

Stage 5: Test-Try Your Solutions Out

Test: the fifth and final phase of the design thinking process, where you test solutions to derive a deep understanding of the product and its users.

Designers or evaluators rigorously test the complete product using the best solutions identified in the Prototype stage. This is the final stage of the five-stage model; however, in an iterative process such as design thinking, the results generated are often used to redefine one or more further problems. This increased level of understanding may help you investigate the conditions of use and how people think, behave and feel towards the product, and even lead you to loop back to a previous stage in the design thinking process. You can then proceed with further iterations and make alterations and refinements to rule out alternative solutions. The ultimate goal is to get as deep an understanding of the product and its users as possible.

Did You Know Design Thinking is a Non-Linear Process?

We've outlined a direct and linear design thinking process here, in which one stage seemingly leads to the next with a logical conclusion at user testing. However, in practice, the process is carried out in a more flexible and non-linear fashion. For example, different groups within the design team may conduct more than one stage concurrently, or designers may collect information and prototype throughout each stage of the project to bring their ideas to life and visualize the problem solutions as they go. What's more, results from the Test stage may reveal new insights about users which lead to another brainstorming session (Ideate) or the development of new prototypes (Prototype).

It is important to note the five stages of design thinking are not always sequential. They do not have to follow a specific order, and they can often occur in parallel or be repeated iteratively. The stages should be understood as different modes which contribute to the entire design project, rather than sequential steps.

The design thinking process should not be seen as a concrete and inflexible approach to design; the component stages identified should serve as a guide to the activities you carry out. The stages might be switched, conducted concurrently or repeated several times to gain the most informative insights about your users, expand the solution space and hone in on innovative solutions.

This is one of the main benefits of the five-stage model. Knowledge acquired in the latter stages of the process can inform repeats of earlier stages. Information is continually used to inform the understanding of the problem and solution spaces, and to redefine the problem itself. This creates a perpetual loop, in which the designers continue to gain new insights, develop new ways to view the product (or service) and its possible uses and develop a far more profound understanding of their real users and the problems they face.

The Take Away

Design thinking is an iterative, non-linear process which focuses on a collaboration between designers and users. It brings innovative solutions to life based on how real users think, feel and behave.

This human-centered design process consists of five core stages Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test.

It's important to note that these stages are a guide. The iterative, non-linear nature of design thinking means you and your design team can carry these stages out simultaneously, repeat them and even circle back to previous stages at any point in the design thinking process.

References & Where to Learn More

Herbert Simon, The Sciences of the Artificial (3rd Edition), 1996.

d.school, An Introduction to Design Thinking PROCESS GUIDE, 2010.

Gerd Waloszek, Introduction to Design Thinking, 2012.

Images

Hero Image: © Daniel Skrok and the Interaction Design Foundation, CC BY-NC-SA 3.0.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The 5 Stages in the Design Thinking Process

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Design Thinking process is a human-centered, iterative methodology that designers use to solve problems. It has 5 steps-Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test.

# data[].attributes.headline
Order a Design Thinking Book and method cards for free

# data[].attributes.subject
Order a Design Thinking Book and method cards for free

# data[].attributes.body
Hopp Foundation

# data[].attributes.headline
Design Thinking-Methoden & Templates zum Download

# data[].attributes.subject
Design Thinking-Methoden & Templates zum Download

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Design Thinkit – Methoden & Templates kostenlos

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Die größte online Design Thinking-Methodensammlung: Alle Templates im Überblick _ KOSTENLOS DOWNLOADEN!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Animal Rebellion is a mass movement that uses nonviolent direct action and civil disobedience to campaign for animal and climate justice.

# data[].attributes.body
A global environmental movement with the stated aim of using nonviolent civil disobedience to compel government action to avoid tipping points in the climate system, biodiversity loss, and the risk of social and ecological collapse.

# data[].attributes.body
Gscheid praktisch mit Uri

# data[].attributes.headline
Overview of the stories in the Klett reader: ISBN: 978-3125793880 (Klett Verlag), June 2021

# data[].attributes.subject
Overview of the stories in the Klett reader: ISBN: 978-3125793880 (Klett Verlag), June 2021

# data[].attributes.body
Dear colleagues, the suggested tasks are a pure plan, we need to see if all the copyrights for additional materials can be purchased and how much space we will have for each story.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.embed_code
Tweets by punk_solar

# data[].attributes.body
A film company is looking for a good SF story with a positive atmosphere. Which of the stories would you film?

1. Collect criteria for a successful movie.

2. Present one of the stories and prove its suitability for a movie.

3. Ask each other questions and even state what could be the reasons why the story the others have presented is not really suitable to become a movie.

4. Vote. Explain why most people in class could have chosen one particular story.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Bokashi is a process that converts food waste and similar organic matter into a soil amendment which adds nutrients and improves soil texture. It differs from traditional composting methods in several respects. The most important are:

The input matter is fermented by specialist bacteria, not decomposed.

The fermented matter is fed directly to field or garden soil, without requiring further time to mature.

As a result, virtually all input carbon, energy and nutrients enter the soil food web, having been neither emitted in greenhouse gases and heat nor leached out.

Other names attributed to this process include bokashi composting, bokashi fermentation and fermented composting.

The name bokashi is transliterated from spoken Japanese (). However, Japanese-English dictionaries give the word an older artistic meaning: "shading or gradation" of images - especially applied to woodblock prints. This later extended to mean pixellation or fogging in censored photographs. Therefore, its application to fermented organic matter is of uncertain origin; if both uses are related, unifying concepts may be "alteration" or "fading away".

Bokashi as a food waste process is borrowed in many other languages. As a noun, it has various meanings depending on context, in particular the process itself, the inoculant and the fermented output. This variety can lead to confusion. As an adjective, it qualifies any related noun, such as bokashi bin (a household fermentation vessel), bokashi soil (after adding the preserve), and even bokashi composting - a contradiction in terms.

The basic stages of the process are:[citation needed ]

1. Organic matter is inoculated with Lactobacilli. These will convert a fraction of the carbohydrates in the input to lactic acid by homolactic fermentation.

2. Fermented anaerobically (more precisely, microaerobically) for a few weeks at typical room temperatures in an airtight vessel, the organic matter is preserved by the acid, in a process closely related to the making of some fermented foods and silage. The preserve is normally applied to soil when ready, or can be stored unopened for later use.

3. The preserve is mixed into soil that has naturally occurring micro-organisms.

4. When water is present (as in the preserve itself or in the soil) the lactic acid progressively dissociates by losing protons to become lactate - the acid's conjugate base or ion salt. Lactate is a fundamental energy carrier in biological processes. It can pass through cell membranes and almost all living organisms have the enzyme lactate dehydrogenase to convert it to pyruvate for energy production.

5. Suffused with lactate, the preserve is readily consumed by the indigenous soil life, primarily the bacteria, 'disappearing' within a very few weeks at normal temperatures. Earthworm action is typically prominent as bacteria are themselves consumed, such that the amended soil acquires a texture associated with vermicompost.

The process is typically applied to food waste from households, workplaces and catering establishments, because such waste normally holds a good proportion of carbohydrates. It is applied to other organic waste by supplementing carbohydrates and hence lactic acid production. Recipes for large scale bokashi in horticulture often include rice, and molasses or sugar. Any carbohydrate-poor waste stream would benefit from this.

Homolactic fermentation can process significantly more kinds of food waste than home composting. Even items such as cooked leftovers, meat and skin, fat, cheese and citrus waste are, in effect, pre-digested to enable soil life to consume them. Large pieces may take longer to ferment and concave surfaces may trap air, in which cases cutting down is advised in support literature.

Pieces of input are discarded if they are already badly rotten, or show green or black mould. These harbour putrefying organisms which may overwhelm the fermentation.

Carbon, gases and energy

Homolactic fermentation emits no gas; its overall equation is (carbohydrate to lactic acid). It is a mildly endothermic reaction, emitting no energy; the fermentation vessel remains at ambient temperature.

These are in marked contrast to decomposition, which emits the majority of its input carbon and energy within greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide and methane, in proportions determined by the method of decomposition) and as heat (in aerobic decomposition). Decomposition also loses the key plant nutrient nitrogen (in the potent greenhouse gas nitrous oxide and in ammonia).

When fermentation begins, physical structures start to break down and release some of the input's water content as a liquid runoff. Over time this constitutes more than 10% of the input by weight. The quantity varies with the input: for example cucumber and melon flesh lead to a noticeable increase.

The liquid leaches out a valuable fraction of proteins, nutrients and lactic acid. To recover them, and to avoid drowning the fermentation, runoff is captured from the fermentation vessel, either through a tap, into a base of absorbent material such as biochar or waste cardboard, or into a lower chamber. The runoff is sometimes called "bokashi tea".

The uses of bokashi tea are not the same as those of " compost tea". It is used most effectively when diluted and sprinkled over a targeted area of soil to feed the soil ecosystem. Dilution makes it less acidic and thus less dangerous to plants. Dilution also causes more acid to convert into lactate which is an attractive food for soil microbes. Other uses are either potentially damaging (e.g. feeding plants with acidic water) or wasteful (e.g. cleaning drains with plant nutrients, feeding plants with nutrients in a form they cannot take up).

Household containers ("bokashi bins") typically give a batch size of 5-10 kilograms (11-22 lb). This is accumulated over a few weeks of regular additions. Each regular addition is best accumulated in a caddy, because it is recommended that one opens the bokashi bin no more frequently than once per day to let anaerobic conditions predominate.

In horticultural settings batches can be orders of magnitude greater. Silage technology may be usable if it is adapted to capture runoff. An industrial-scale technique mimics the windrows of large-scale composting, except that bokashi windrows are compacted, covered tightly and left undisturbed, all to promote anaerobic conditions. One study suggests that such windrows lose only minor amounts of carbon, energy and nitrogen.

Bokashi is inherently hygienic in the following senses:

Lactic acid is a strong natural bactericide, with well-known antimicrobial properties. It is an active ingredient of some toilet cleaners. As more is produced, it eventually suppresses even its own makers, the acid-resistant lactobacilli, such that bokashi fermentation eventually slows and stops itself. There is also evidence that mesophilic (ambient temperature) fermentation kills eggs of the worm - a parasite of humans - in 14 days.

The fermentation bin does not release smells when it is closed. A household bin is only opened for a minute or so to add and inoculate input via the lid or to drain runoff via the tap. At these times the user encounters the sour odour of lacto-fermentation (often described as a "pickle") which is much less offensive than the odour of decomposition.

When closed, an airtight fermentation bin cannot attract insects.

Bokashi literature claims that scavengers dislike the fermented matter and avoid it in gardens.

Fermented bokashi is added to a suitable area of soil. The approach usually recommended by suppliers of household bokashi is along the lines of "dig a trench in the soil in your garden, add the waste and cover over."

In practice, regularly finding suitable sites for trenches that will later underlie plants is difficult in an established plot. To address this, an alternative is a 'soil factory'. This is a bounded area of soil into which several loads of bokashi preserve are mixed over time. Amended soil can be taken from it for use elsewhere. It may be of any size. It may be permanently sited or in rotation. It may be enclosed, wire-netted or covered to keep out surface animals. Spent soil or compost, and organic amendments such as biochar may be added, as may non-fermented material, in which case the boundary between bokashi and composting becomes blurred.

A proposed alternative is to homogenise (and potentially dilute) the preserve into a slurry, which is spread on the soil surface. This approach requires energy for homogenisation but, logically from the characteristics set out above, should confer several advantages: thoroughly oxidising the preserve; disturbing no deeper layers, except by increased worm action; being of little use to scavenging animals; applicable to large areas; and, if done repeatedly, able to sustain a more extensive soil ecosystem.

The practice of bokashi is believed to have its earliest roots in ancient Korea.[citation needed ] This traditional form ferments waste directly in soil, relying on native bacteria and on careful burial for an anaerobic environment. A modernised horticultural method called Korean Natural Farming includes fermentation by indigenous micro-organisms (IM or IMO) harvested locally, but has numerous other elements too. A commercial Japanese bokashi method was developed by Teruo Higa in 1982 under the 'EM' trademark (short for Effective Microorganisms). EM became the best known form of bokashi worldwide, mainly in household use, claiming to have reached over 120 countries.

While none have disputed that EM starts homolactic fermentation and hence produces a soil amendment, other claims have been contested robustly. Controversy relates partly to other uses, such as direct inoculation of soil with EM and direct feeding of EM to animals, and partly to whether the soil amendment's effects are due simply to the energy and nutrient values of the fermented material rather than to particular microorganisms. Arguably, EM's heavy focus on microorganisms has diverted scientific attention away from both the bokashi process as a whole and the particular roles in it of lactic acid, lactate, and soil life above the bacterial level.

Some organisms in EM, specifically photosynthetic bacteria and yeast, appear to be logically superfluous, as they will first be suppressed by the dark and anaerobic environment of homolactic fermentation, then killed by its lactic acid. Consequently, practitioners have sought to reduce costs and to widen the scale of operations. Success has been reported with:

Self-harvested micro-organisms, tested for lacto-fermentation;

Lactobacilli alone, i.e. without other EM micro-organisms; one such source is acid whey from yogurt;

Alternative substrates for inoculant, such as newsprint;

Home-made airtight fermentation vessels;

Larger scale than a household, for example a group of small farmers.

No intentional addition of microbes at all, similar to the original Korean method. The resulting mixture will smell worse as acetic acid, propanoic acid, and butyric acid can form instead of lactic acid, but works equally well as soil amendment.

The main use of bokashi that is described above is to recover value from organic waste by converting it into a soil amendment.

In Europe, food and drink material that is sent to animal feed does not legally constitute waste because it is regarded as 'redistribution.' This may apply to bokashi made from food, because it enters the soil food web, and furthermore is inherently pathogen-free.

A side effect of diverting organic waste to the soil food web is to divert it away from local waste management streams and their associated costs of collection and disposal. To encourage this, for example most UK local authorities subsidise household bokashi starter kits through a National Home Composting Framework.

Another side effect is to increase the organic carbon content of the amended soil. Some of this is a relatively long-term carbon sink - insofar as the soil ecosystem creates humus - and some is temporary for as long as the richer ecosystem is sustained by measures such as permanent planting, no-till cultivation and organic mulch. An example of these measures is seen at the Ferme du Bec Hellouin in France. Bokashi would therefore have potential uses in enabling communities to speed up the conversion of land from chemical to organic horticulture and agriculture, to regenerate degraded soil, and to develop urban and peri-urban horticulture close to the sources of input.

The anti-pathogenic nature of bokashi is applied to sanitation, in particular to the treatment of faeces. Equipment and supplies to treat pet faeces are sold commercially but do not always give prominence to the hygiene risks. Treatment of human faeces for soil amendment has been extensively studied, notably with the use of biochar (a soil improver in its own right) to remove odours and retain nutrients. Social acceptability is a major obstacle, but niche markets such as emergency aid sanitation, outdoor events and temporary workplaces may develop the technology into a disruptive innovation.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Bokashi is a process that converts food waste and similar organic matter into a soil amendment which adds nutrients and improves soil texture. It differs from traditional composting methods in several respects. The most important are: The input matter is fermented by specialist bacteria, not decomposed.

# data[].attributes.body
For media literacy educators, solarpunk is an example of alternative media texts that challenge ego-centric narratives with more sustainable counter- hegemonic paths for eco-centric possibilities.

# data[].attributes.body
Im Rahmen von offenen Gartenarbeitstagen können sich Kinder, Jugendliche und Erwachsene, Nachbarn und interessierte Laien an der Gestaltung der Gartenflächen beteiligen und Erfahrungen im lokalen, ökologischen Anbau von Nutzpflanzen sammeln. Hauptziel unserer Arbeit sind dabei Bildungs- und Beteiligungsmöglichkeiten.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. © 2022 Prinzessinnengarten | powered by Plakativa.

# data[].attributes.body
Make Ecosia your new search engine and plant trees with your searches - for free!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Ecosia - the search engine that plants trees

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Ecosia uses the ad revenue from your searches to plant trees where they are needed the most. By searching with Ecosia, you're not only reforesting our planet, but you're also empowering the communities around our planting projects to build a better future for themselves. Give it a try!

# data[].attributes.body
What is hydroponics? How does it work? How does hydroponic farming compare to traditional farming?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Skip to content

Inside view of a AmplifiedAg shipping container farm growing Vertical Roots green butter

What is hydroponics? How does it work? How does hydroponic farming compare to traditional farming?

When we tell people that we grow our produce using hydroponics, we usually get something close to this response:

"Sounds cool...sounds like it has something to do with health food maybe? What even is it?"

For all the hydro-curious folks out there, we've put together a primer on the basics of hydroponic farming.

We suggest you start here to learn the essentials of hydroponics, and if you're inspired to try growing some hydroponic plants of your own, c lick over to this page to see what kind of system would work best for you!

So What is Hydroponics?

Put simply: Hydroponics is a way to skip the soil, sub in a different material to support the roots of the plant, and grow crops directly in nutrient-rich water.

There are multiple approaches to designing hydroponic systems, but the core elements are essentially the same.

What you need:

Fresh water. Were talking primo, filtered stuff with a balanced pH. Most plants like water with a pH level around 6-6.5 . You can adjust the acidity of your water with over-the-counter solutions found at your local hardware, garden, or hydroponic store.

Oxygen. Don't drown your plants! In traditional farming, roots can get the oxygen needed for respiration from pockets of air in the soil. Depending on your hydroponic setup, you will either need to leave space between the base of your plant and the water reservoir, or you'll need oxygenate your container (think of bubbles in a fish tank), which you can accomplish by buying an air stone or installing an air pump.

Root Support. Even though you don't need soil, your plant's roots still need a little something to hold on to. Typical materials include vermiculite, perlite, peat moss, coconut fiber, and rockwool. Stay away from materials that might compact (like sand) or that don't retain any moisture (like gravel).

Nutrients. Your plant is going to need plenty of magnesium, phosphorus, calcium, and other nutrients to stay healthy and productive -- just like plants growing in the ground need healthy soil and fertilizer. When you're growing plants without soil, this "plant food" must be included in the water that's feeding your plants. While you can technically make your own nutrient solution, it's easy to buy mixtures online and in stores.

Light. If you're growing your plants indoors, you might have to invest in some special lighting. Each kind of plant will have a different requirement for the amount of light it needs and for the placement of lights (typically referred to as Daily Light Integral or DLI).

While there are other elements to consider as you increase the sophistication of your hydroponic farm (for instance, things like CO2 supplementation), the five listed above are the most foundational elements of any hydroponic system.

By monitoring and adjusting these key variables, you can begin to discover precisely what your plants need to thrive, and replicate those conditions for every grow in the future.

Why Grow Without Soil?

This seemingly subtle shift in how we make food (skipping the soil, that is) is actually revolutionary -- it allows growers to produce food anywhere in the world, at any time of the year, and to net higher yields with fewer resources.

Grow Anywhere

Yep. Take that, climate change. Growing seasons and regions are in major flux right now as temperatures change and growing conditions change along with them. Even in "normal" conditions, there are plenty of places where the ground just isn't conducive for farming (like deserts, concrete jungles...you get the gist).

Right now, most of the vegetables you come across in a store have been shipped in from afar, and have lost nutritional value along the way.

Using hydroponics, we can create hyper-local food systems - and we are! Our container farms are set up right in the communities and regions that we serve. It's even possible to put a farm directly behind restaurants that want ultra-fresh produce! And when you're growing hydroponically, you don't have to hit pause for a season or risk crop loss from inclement weather.

Higher Yields

Plants grown in well-managed hydroponic systems are living the good life. Since roots are bathed in all the nutrients they need, plants spend more time growing upward and less time and energy growing extensive root systems to search for food.

Growth rates vary based on the type of system and quality of care, but hydro plants can mature up to 25 percent more quickly than the same plants grown in soil, with increased crop yield, to boot.

Fewer Resources

We bet you didn't see this coming: hydroponic systems actually use less water than traditional soil-based systems. This is because closed systems aren't subject to the same rates of evaporation. Plus, the water used in hydroponic systems can be filtered, re-populated with nutrients, and fed back to plants again so that water is constantly being recycled instead of wasted!

At Vertical Roots, our systems use up to 98 percent less water than traditional soil-based systems.

Other "resources" indoor hydroponic plants don't need? Pesticides and other potentially harmful chemicals, since the hydro crops are protected from many of the pests and plant diseases found outdoors in soil-based farms.

Easy Troubleshooting

How many times have you walked out to your garden and seen one of your plants thriving while its next-door-neighbor is drooping? In that situation, it's almost impossible to know which variable is negatively affecting your poor plant. Is it a pest problem? Are the nutrients in the soil different in that spot? Has this plant become your dog's urinal?

With a hydroponic system, you know exactly what conditions your plants are being grown in. As such, you can easily isolate variables and experiment! Once you find the perfect formula of light, pH balance, and nutrients, you can replicate success without always getting hit with curveballs.

Think you're ready to try it out?

Click here to see what setup makes the most sense for your space and lifestyle.

And send us a snap of your new garden! You can hit us up on Instagram @verticalroots .

We can't wait to see how it goes for you.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The What and Why of Hydroponic Farming - Vertical Roots

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Skip to content Inside view of a AmplifiedAg shipping container farm growing Vertical Roots green butter When we tell people that we grow our produce using hydroponics, we usually get something close to this response: "Sounds cool...sounds like it has something to do with health food maybe? What even is it?"

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Use nature's digesters to help eliminate food waste and produce nutrient-rich compost for your garden or house plants.

The lowly worm gets almost no respect and is synonymous with an insult. This humble creature toils tirelessly eating the garbage of life and bulldozes its way through the dirt almost blindly, with no eyes or ears to guide it.

But, as you might guess, worms have an important place in every ecosystem. These legions of tiny diggers include over 5,000 species and, according to Charles Darwin, humans wouldn't exist without them: "It may be doubted whether there are many other animals which have played so important a part in the history of the world, as have these lowly organized creatures," he once wrote.

Why compost with worms?

The good news is that you can harness this incredibly efficient composting power for yourself and change the way your family disposes of waste, with very little investment of time and money. A homemade worm composter costs about $30 and a luxurious store-bought worm hotel usually won't cost more than $150. If you consider the cost of purchased organic fertilizer for your garden, even the most expensive composter could pay for itself in one growing season.

Worm composting, also known as vermicomposting or vermiculture, produces natural, odor-free compost that takes about 30 minutes per week to maintain. The biggest time investment is harvesting your worm castings (the precious poop/garden fertilizer), and that happens about every 3-6 months.

Can worms truly be the panacea of stink-free composting that many people claim? Yes, if you do things the right way. The proof is in how many municipalities promote vermicomposting as a way of diverting food waste away from landfills. Worm composting is now also used widely by large commercial dairy farms as one of the most efficient ways of processing manure.

Setting up your worm composting bin

A worm composter is, at its simplest, a bin with holes for ventilation and moisture. It's almost always made with plastic and raised off the ground to allow water to drain out the bottom.

For indoor worm bins, this is done with a plastic storage bin or tote with a lid. Simply drill a series of holes in the sides and bottom a few inches apart, not including the lid. Worms don't need light, and even though there shouldn't be much moisture coming out the bottom, the holes are there in case it needs to drain. The side wall holes are for better air flow.

If you decide you want your worm bin outside, many people have been successful using a simple wood box with gaps between the planks (like a pallet). This is lined with a heavy-duty plastic, such as greenhouse plastic, which is punctured with holes for drainage and airflow.
Related: How to Speed Up Worm Composting
Both types of bins need to be raised up. A plastic bin can be set inside a slightly larger second bin, and many people recommend a large tote that will completely envelope the first bin. In fact, this design often leaves out the lid on the first, inner bin and uses the large lid of the second bin for protection. In my experience, however, I have found that this closed-up environment completely counteracts the ventilation holes and makes the bin retain too much moisture.

Instead, the Environmental Protection Agency has recommended a great bin design with a short bin acting as a tray to catch any drippings from the larger bin. The one thing this design doesn't include is elevation, which can be achieved by gluing a few small plastic food containers (such as for cream cheese or sour cream) upside down on the bottom.

The pallet bin should simply have one pallet on the bottom as the floor. With any worm bin design, the goal is good ventilation, darkness, and drainage.

What type of bedding is best?

The next step is bedding for your worms. You can use:

leaves

straw

shredded paper

shredded cardboard

egg cartons

I recommend leaving out the leaves and straw if it's an indoor bin, because these materials can introduce insects and other outdoor creatures that you might not want reproducing inside your house.

Once you've prepared a nice bed, add a big scoop of garden soil. You can use a big juice pitcher filled with dirt, and then use the same pitcher to pour in some water. You want the moisture level to be the same as a wet sponge - not too wet, not too dry.

If you make the bedding too wet by accident, add more dry material and/or let it drip off. Don't get anxious and add the worms before the bedding is right. I made that mistake once, and it was very difficult to bring the moisture level down later because adding food waste raises the moisture level dramatically in the bin.

Where should you put your worm bin?

We've talked about both inside and outside worm bins above, but they both have their pros and cons in any climate. When your bin is outside, there are two big benefits: capacity and a lot less attention to detail. You can put your worms out there and not have to worry so much about getting it just right, because it won't matter if it smells a little more. But if you live anywhere other than very warm climates, your worms will either die in the winter or you'll have to bring them inside anyway.

With an inside bin you can keep worms even in an apartment, but your capacity will always be limited - you will only be able to have a certain amount of worms, which will eat only a certain amount of food, or it will get stinky and go wrong.

If you're interested in building a larger capacity outdoor system that works well for a larger home garden or urban farm, check out this design by Nature's Always Right, an urban farm located in Lemon Grove, California.

Buying your worms: getting what you pay for

The type of worm most commonly used for vermicomposting is the red wiggler. That's why this method of vermicomposting is also called red worm composting. The red wiggler species ( Eisenia fetida) loves living in rotting organic material and manure and is extremely efficient at breaking it down. Unlike your typical garden earthworm, they don't mind living in a small bin and won't try to burrow down deeper.

Red wigglers used to only be available at bait shops for fishing, but today they have become so popular, there are many companies that will ship them to you by the bag. A pound of worms will eat their half their body weight in waste every day, so if you collect your food waste and weigh it, you can see exactly how many worms you'll need.

A pound of worms includes about 1000 worms and should be more than two large handfuls. Here's a video of what one pound of worms should look like.

It's important to know how many worms you should be getting, because your worm bin could fail without this information. Twice my own worm bins had a fly infestation that compromised the bin. I couldn't figure out why. It turned out that two different companies severely shorted me on the quantity of worms, because I had no idea what a pound of worms should look like. The result was that I put in far too much food for the worms, and the waste rotted and bred flies.

What should you feed your worms?

Worms can eat almost any fruit or vegetable food waste. Don't give them anything that comes from an animal- no fats, bones, dairy, or meat. They also have a difficult time with some stems and the outer layers of onions, and they can't handle too much citrus. If you have a bunch of orange peels or other citrus, make sure it doesn't make up more than 1/5 of the total waste you are adding. Never give them dog or cat feces, or any carnivore feces. But you can add coffee grounds, filters, napkins, shredded paper towels, and non-plastic teabags.

To add food to your bin, dig a hole and bury it beneath the top layer of bedding. It helps if you break up the larger pieces. You should also add a handful of shredded paper and check if there's something left over that the worms are avoiding from previous feeds. Remove anything they won't eat.

As mentioned before, worms will eat half their body weight every day. However, when you first get them they will be a little slow to start. Begin with small amounts of food and check to see how long it takes them to eat it. Increase the amount until you are adding the equivalent to half their weight daily.

If they seem to be leaving a lot of waste, chop up the food you're adding into smaller pieces. You can realistically expect one pound of worms to eat at least three pounds a week and twelve pounds of waste per month.

Troubleshooting worm composting issues

Being a stickler about how much food you add to your bin will help prevent a lot of problems. Here's how to deal with common worm bin issues:

Your worm bin has fruit flies: If you've already saved compost on your kitchen counter, you know how easy it is to get a fruit fly infestation. Prevention is key. Make sure to cover the food waste well under the bedding, cut it up into little pieces, and don't let anything sit and rot in the bin.

Your composter stinks: If your compost starts to smell, dig through the bedding and remove any food waste that appears to be rotting. The worms should really be eating anything before it can get moldy, but they may let something sit to soften up. For example, they probably won't eat a whole fresh banana peel until it starts to break down and softens up. Cutting up larger pieces will help them process food faster. A bad smell can also signal a moisture problem. Too much rotting waste can create a lot of humidity, which will soak the bin and make it a little too damp for the worms. Add some dry cardboard and paper bedding to help balance things out and get the bedding back to a spongy moisture level.

Worms are crawling out of the bin: It's normal for a few worms to come out of the bin, but if you have a lot of escapees, you probably have an environmental problem. This will include moisture, temperature, and possibly even infestations. If the bin is too dry, add some water. If it's too wet, add more bedding. Check for insect larvae or other issues under the top layer of bedding.

There's an infestation: Sometimes other creates will love the moist, dark environment of the bin- even just to lay their eggs. If you notice insects, eggs, or even furry creatures, take the bin outside and harvest the castings. This is a good time to clean out the bin and remove any rotting food or old bedding. Start off fresh and put the worms back in their home. If you had a rodent invader, hold the lid down with bungee cords or rocks.

Helping your worm compost thrive: amendments

If troubleshooting fails to correct your problem, consider adjusting your worm bedding with one of the following amendments:

Material

Purpose

Coconut coir
Balances out nitrogen-rich materials like kitchen scraps and grass clippings, controls moisture, and improves quality of worm castings.

Glacial rock dust

Enhances the microbial population, increases nutrients, and improves water retention.

Pumice

Increases air circulation, prevents matting, and controls moisture.

Harvesting your finished compost: lure vs. dump methods

There are two main ways to harvest your worm compost: by dumping it out completely or by luring the worms away from the completed compost. In my experience, the dump method is easiest if you have a small homemade bin. The lure method works well if you invest in a stackable system like the Worm Factory 360 Composter.

Lure Method
Composters like the Worm Factory 360 allow you to harvest compost from your bin easily, without dumping out the worms. They also remove some of the risk of stink by having a better drainage system than a bin with holes in the bottom.

As the bins fill with compost, you add another stackable tray on top. The worms migrate upstairs to the new layer of organic waste, lured by the presence of fresh food. The finished compost is left behind in the lower trays: it's that simple.

The Worm Factory 360 also offers a refill kit that includes coconut coir, gravel rock dust and other materials that will help keep pH levels in balance and promote stink-free, aerobic composting.

Dump Method
To harvest compost from your homemade bin, the easiest method is to dump the contents upside down on a tarp in the sunshine or under a bright light. The worms will travel down to the bottom of the pile, which was your top layer of bedding (and the non-composted material). You are then free to scoop off the compost from the top of the pile and from around the worms.

This is a good time to clean out any unwanted bits using a worm composting sifter and add new, fresh bedding.

Where can I use worm compost?

Worm compost can be used like any high-nutrient fertilizer: sprinkle on the surface of the soil or mix in around plants, but be careful not to add too much because it can burn tender stems.

The liquid that drains from the bottom of the bin is a highly concentrated worm compost tea (or worm leachate). This tea should be diluted at a ratio of 1 part leachate to 10 parts water to prevent any burning.

If you really want to understand how vermicompost helps suppress plant diseases and provides nutrients to plants, check out this vermicomposting research from Cornell University.

Caring for your worms

If conditions are right in your composter, your red worms will breed when they are over two months old. That means your first batch should double their population within a few months. Don't worry about overpopulation, however. If there's not enough food, some will die and compost into the soil, keeping the bin in balance.

Worms can live four or five years, but they probably won't last that long inside your bin. That's why reproduction is an essential part of keeping your bin going. You may start to see baby worms right away. A Worm Factory 360 can hold over 10,000 worms, so it will probably take a while for you to get to the point that you'll need a second bin. This is another huge benefit of the Worm Factory: it can hold 10x as many worms in an 18" space.

Check out these other resources to get started on your worm composting adventure:

Composting With Worms from the Oregon State University Extension
Winter Worm Composting guide with an interesting bin design from Michigan State University Extension

Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.

About the Author

Nicole Faires
Nicole Faires is an urban farmer and best-selling author of books on sustainable agriculture and food policy. Originally from Montana, she now lives with her family on the West Coast.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Use nature's digesters to help eliminate food waste and produce nutrient-rich compost for your garden or house plants. The lowly worm gets almost no respect and is synonymous with an insult. This humble creature toils tirelessly eating the garbage of life and bulldozes its way through the dirt almost blindly, with no eyes or ears to guide it.