Before I get into the big (for me) news, I thought I’d offer a bit of clarification. I often use we and I interchangeably here on the blog, and it’s not an attempt to set myself up as royalty. I’ve always intended Solarpunk Station to grow beyond just one rando’s ramblings on the internet, so I’ve used we aspirationally in the hopes that someday there would be more contributors beyond myself. I am currently planning a project for the fall that will include some guest contributors that I hope will move the blog and channel in that direction.
If you haven’t heard, Solarpunk Station is now a member of Comradery Coop! Comradery is a place where people can support their favorite creators via monthly donations or memberships. The big difference between Comradery and Patreon is that Comradery is a platform coop and creators are not subject to the whims of a centralized corporate entity. If you’d like to support the work I’m doing here on the blog and on the YouTube channel, check out the page here.
Lunarpunks are the night dwellers of our solarpunk futures. Biomimmicry of bioluminescent creatures, moth-themed cloaks, and gossamer fabrics fluttering in the night breeze are some of the aesthetic influences here. Winter would be the lunarpunks’s time to be more active, hosting events in the crisp nights from art exhibits to street festivals.
Creatures of the Night
Lunarpunk focuses more on the night than solarpunk’s sunny disposition. Because of this, lunarpunk aesthetics are heavy in purples and blacks as opposed to the greens and yellows of solarpunk. Bioluminescent creatures provide inspiration for clothes that glow either under black-light or as a result of smart textiles. Lunarpunks love their fellow creatures of the night – moths, mushrooms, and bats.
Where the punk really comes in is that in a lunarpunk society, people feel safe going out at night. Social safety nets mean that people don’t have to resort to crime to get by, rape culture has been excised from the cultural consciousness, and sex work is demarginalized, voluntary, and safe. Police, prisons, and punitive justice have given way to restorative justice and a world where anyone, regardless of sex, gender, or sexual orientation, can feel safe walking down the street at night.
Moth Wings Cape by CostureoReal on Etsy
Biotech
Biotechnology will have a big role to play in our solarpunk future, but I especially associate lunarpunk with biotechnology. I think this might be because of the aesthetic associations with mushrooms and bioluminescence. Bioluminescent trees or algae lamps could provide electricity-free path lighting in the cities of the future, and amazing different materials are being created from mushrooms like leather, wood, paper, or even structural building materials. Hempcrete and coral-inspired biomimetic concrete are being investigated to replace the carbon-intensive traditional concrete we use for so much infrastructure today.
Magic
Maybe it’s all the purple hues or the influence of the Moon, but lunarpunk feels more magical than solarpunk to me. As solarpunk is a movement that accepts both the spiritual and the scientific, this distinction is probably due more to my own cultural biases of magic being dark and mysterious than it is to any preference for solarpunks or lunarpunks to practice magic or not. The Solarpunk Druid and Justine Norton-Kertson have said something similar though, so it seems I’m not alone. While not a large percentage of the population yet, the growing number of pagans in the world will find a home in a lunarpunk future.
Space has also become tied to lunarpunk expressions of a hopeful future. One series that I’ll talk more about in a future article that embodies this is the Earthseed duology by Octavia Butler. While the events of the books are terrestrial in nature, the main character is driven to help humanity reach the stars while not neglecting the planet we call home. Lunarpunk offers an alternative to the current thrust of private, corporate space exploration making space travel only for the rich and powerful to escape the planet they’ve ruined by ignoring the toll their activities exact from the natural world.
A proposed lunarpunk flag
Upcoming lunarpunk projects
If you want more lunarpunk, there are two upcoming projects worth checking out. Submissions are open until March 14 for the lunarpunk-themed issue of Solarpunk Magazine, and until March 31 for Bioluminescent: A Lunarpunk Anthology. The Solarpunk Magazine submission window may tentatively reopen in May if they are still looking for submissions.
I’m really interested to see if there will be any stories that are both tidalpunk and lunarpunk, since the Moon’s influence on the tides makes me feel that there is a strong connection between the two subgenres.
Do you know of any other cool projects in the lunarpunk sphere right now? Let us know in the comments below, and have a great night!
I’ve talked about how fiction can point the way to better futures, and one thing that really underlies fiction is imagination. As Einstein said, “We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.” If we want to overcome the climate crisis we need to imagine a better future than our current cyberpunk dystopia. This is why I was so excited to find the From What If to What Nextpodcast by Rob Hopkins.
Hopkins and his guests take the listener on a journey to an imagined 2030 that has seen radical change for the better. Each episode focuses on a specific topic, like Universal Basic Income, and the show starts with the guests describing what a day-in-the-life in 2030 might be like.
It’s been said that people find it easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism, and that’s because imagination outside of how to make more money has been relegated to the realm of children. Having an active imagination is seen as a weakness for adults who shouldn’t have their “head in the clouds.”
Spongebob exercising his imagination
We need to reinvigorate our collective imagination to move forward as a society. The challenges facing us are serious, but that’s all the more reason to stop taking ourselves so seriously. Imagination and play are pivotal to our survival as a species, and that’s something we often forget, particularly those of us with backgrounds in STEM. Artists are way ahead of us in this respect.
When I was in grad school, I remember a friend from Thailand telling us how the protests there were like big parties with music and dancing. I just didn’t get it. My understanding of a protest was a bunch of angry people waving signs and calling out demands on a megaphone.
Now though, I think protests parties seem more effective. Prefiguring a better world at a small scale, like Occupy Wall Street did, is like a kind of sympathetic magic to create a future worth running toward. From What If to What Next is a great way to start thinking about the possibilities in our solarpunk futures. As we’re still evaluating how things will be when we establish a “new normal” after the pandemic, I’m cautiously optimistic about how we might see a brighter tomorrow.
Do you have any favorite ways to let your imagination run wild? I’d love to hear what you do in the comments! I love going on walks to jump start my own imagination.
I think at this point just about everyone knows someone who thinks climate change is a problem, but that it will be too expensive to fix, or that the solutions just aren’t viable. I think Saul Griffith’s new book, Electrify, is the perfect book for this audience.
You can’t judge a book by its cover, but the blue foil shimmering on the white background of this cover certainly conjures images of the future. While tech bros promise techno-utopian carbon capture machines more efficient than trees, this book excels in rampant pragmatism. Griffith lays out a pathway to decarbonizing the United States transportation and power sectors with only currently existing technologies.
I don’t think I’m the target audience for this book, but I do think the plan to #ElectrifyEverything is a necessary, but not sufficient part of a solarpunk future. The catchphrase usually comes with some caveats, like probably not all industrial processes, and I do feel that solar thermal needs more love since a large percentage of energy use in the home is used for heating, but it’s a decent simplification for the bulk of our current fossil fuel applications.
Electrify can be criticized for not addressing climate justice beside a passing mention. We can’t afford to reinforce the racist and otherwise imbalanced power structures that originally lead to climate change during the energy transition. That said, this book isn’t designed to message an entire Green New Deal in one fell swoop. As someone who grew up listening to talk radio as a red state Republican (more on that later this year), I think Griffith does an excellent job of doing what we engineers do best – sticking to the facts.
He lays out a clear, but concise, explanation of how daunting climate change is, but then paints a solution by the numbers to how we can overcome it and be more prosperous by doing so. I’m not usually a big fan of all the militaristic language used to describe climate work, but the comparisons in this book to World War II mobilization are useful to put the scope of the issue into perspective. In short, reducing most of our emissions will cost a little less than it cost the US to fight WWII in terms of national GDP.
I think part of the reason climate inaction has been such an easy sell is because it feels too big for any one person to have any agency in the fight. Griffith points the way for how families, especially when bolstered with government-backed loans, can replace the pieces of equipment that generate the bulk of their carbon emissions – their car(s) and their appliances. This gets people in the door for the climate conversation.
I know centrism is a dirty word in solarpunk circles, but I don’t think we’re going to succeed in overcoming climate change or climate injustice if we decide that we can’t work with people who are coming from a different political background. Red states already generate the majority of the renewable power in the country, so that’s a starting point. The Republicans I know believe in fairness and justice, but the party and conservative talk show hosts have had decades to distort what those words mean in a political context. We aren’t going to overcome that conditioning overnight, but this book is a step in the right direction, even if it does just seem like neoliberal techno-utopianism at first blush. I feel there’s more going on here than that, but maybe I’m naive.
I am sending this book and my copy of Repair Revolution to my dad. He’s retired and does solar installs on the side since he has his certification as well as experience from wiring up his old and new houses for solar. He’s also a Trump supporter which led to some… strain in our relationship over the last few years. I’m hoping that this book will at least show how we have viable path forward to overcoming the worst effects of climate change without some massive government takeover of every industry, which is what many Republicans fear. Is it going to make him gung-ho about climate equity? No, but at least maybe he’ll be interested in talking about climate solutions instead of automatically shutting down the conversation. It’s not going to be an easy process to get to a solarpunk future, but we’ll get there, step by excruciating step. Electrify shows how the energy transition can at least be a relatively painless part of the process.
Is saving money and increasing our resiliency a way to bridge the political gap, or is storytelling the answer? I think it’s probably a mix, but let me know what you think below!
Disclaimer: If you order the book using the Indie Bound affiliate link above, I may receive a small commission.
When I first started tuning into the solarpunk scene, climate podcasts were few and far between, or at least hard to find. Just in the last few years this has really changed, so here’s a roundup of some of my favorites.
How to Save a Planet – Hosted by Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Alex Blumberg, How to Save a Planet investigates solutions to the climate crisis and ends every episode with a call to action you can take right now to help mitigate climate change.
Hot Take – A NSFW podcast hosted by Mary Annaïse Heglar and Amy Westervelt that takes a look at journalism and storytelling surrounding the climate crisis. If you don’t like swearing this is definitely NOT the podcast for you.
Frontiers of Commoning – David Bollier helps us explore the re-emergence of the commons, which is a critically important part of building an environmentally just future.
A Matter of Degrees – Geared toward those concerned, but not yet in the weeds of climate work, Dr. Leah Stokes and Dr. Katharine Wilkinson investigate solutions to climate change and what impacts these technologies and policies could produce.
No Place Like Home – Mary Anne Hitt & Anna Jane Joyner find the personal stories of people experiencing climate change first-hand to put a face to the climate crisis.
Warm Regards – Podcasts helmed by fellow scientists warm my heart, and Warm Regards is one of the best. Investigating the intersection of humanity and hard data, Warm Regards bridges the gap between the sciences and humanities.
Climate One – Climate One talks with scientists, politicians, and change makers impacting technology and climate policy. This show is typically more of a panel format with Greg Dalton as MC compared to the talk show nature of most of these other shows.
RepublicEN– Republicans who want to fight climate change DO exist, and this podcast covers climate policy from a “conservative” lens. I suspect that I’m not the only solarpunk with Republican relatives, so this is a good recommendation for your wider network, even if you aren’t one yourself.
I tried to only recommend podcasts I’ve listened to, but there’s an even bigger list here curated by Hot Take. Do you have a favorite climate podcast? Let us know in the comments below, especially if they’re in a language other than English! I know we have at least a few readers from around the world, and as an American, I only speak 1.5 languages.
At its most altruistic, advertising helps people find products or services that can improve their lives. In reality, advertising generates dissatisfaction in people so they will try to fill an imagined void with the thing the advertiser is selling.
Researchers have found that the amount of money spent in a country on advertising is inversely proportional to the happiness citizens report in that same country. While dividing by zero is inappropriate, it seems that eliminating advertising is a simple way to increase the happiness of many people. I think the characters in Walkaway by Cory Doctorow said it best:
“Is there really abundance? If the whole world went walkaway tomorrow would there be enough?” “By definition,” she said. “Because enough is whatever you make it. Maybe you want to have 30 kids. ‘Enough’ for you is more than ‘enough’ for me… Depending on how you look at it, there’ll never be enough, or there’ll always be plenty.”
Walkaway by Cory Doctorow
The first step to banning ads seems to be the billboard ban. A few states in the US have such bans, and São Paolo, Brazil drew a lot of press when they instituted their “Clean City Law in 2006. Despite predictions of economic collapse brought on by the lack of outdoor advertising, citizens overwhelmingly supported the move and the change brought many previously hidden civic issues to light. Given the rollout of “smart billboards” that bring the pervasive tracking you know and love from the internet to the real world, getting rid of billboards everywhere else can’t happen soon enough.
Current advertising practices promote carbon-intensive lifestyle goods like SUVs that increase global carbon emissions. We should significantly limit, if not totally eliminate, all advertising if we want to hit the Paris Accord targets. We’ve built an economy based on growth for growth’s sake, and capitalism treats natural resources as infinite when it’s clear they aren’t. Banning advertisement is the first step in reducing consumption. Remember, it’s Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. The recycle is last for a reason.
One group that’s been working to curb advertising is Fairplay, a nonprofit that runs the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. While their efforts are focused on a specific demographic, it seems that they have been working in the space the longest. As a new parent, I’m especially interested in their work. Growing our next generation of citizens outside of the consumer mindset would be an excellent place to start banning ads.
As a small business owner, I’d love to see an end to ads. While I have run ads to drive traffic to my Etsy shops, I feel that it isn’t something I like spending time on or feel adds a lot of value to the end product. Maybe selling on Etsy isn’t the best idea since I abhor sales, but I really like making things and don’t have enough room to keep all of my projects around. While I need people to find the things I make, I don’t like hunting customers around the internet like a predatory car salesperson.
Finally, if you haven’t already done so, I encourage you to install an ad-blocker and/or tracker blocker software. I use uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, Canvas Blocker, and Decentraleyes on my own Firefox installation, but everyone has their own favorites. This software lets you regain a little bit of privacy as well as block a fair amount of the ad traffic directed toward your eyeballs. It’s not foolproof, but it can help you regain a small modicum of sanity in this ad-saturated world.
Do you love ads and think this is a terrible plan? Have you seen any clever ideas to circumvent ads? Let us know below.
Solarpunk creators, listen up! There are several projects that warrant your attention coming up: Solarpunk Magazine, Solarpunk Sunscapes, a Solarpunk Art Contest, and the XR Wordsmiths Solarpunk Story Contest.
First, if you want something to read right now, Grist’s Fix just announced the winners of their Imagine 2200 contest. If you want to read the stories, you can do so on the Grist website for free.
Solarpunk Magazine is launching their Kickstarter campaign October 2, 2021 to launch a speculative fiction magazine based on solarpunk. Once they’re going they’ll be accepting “short stories, flash fiction, and poetry that imagines a better and more harmonious world through.” For the Kickstarter, they have announced some pretty neat rewards from authors including Starhawk, Kim Stanley Robinson, and Alaya Dawn Johnson. Solarpunk Magazine will be launching in January 2022, and their podcast has already released its first two episodes.
Solarpunk Sunscapes is accepting submissions between 500 and 7,500 words until November 1, 2021. Editor Justine Norton-Kertson says they’re “always looking for stories with great character development, and stories with compelling conflict and tension even amidst a better and more utopian world.” If you think you have something that would be a great fit, check out the submission guidelines on their page.
Also accepting submissions until November 1, 2021 is the Solarpunk Art Contest by Yishan Wong. From Wong: “To bring about this [solarpunk] future we require not only science and technology and better politics, but a new aesthetic. We need art and music and film and even advertising that paints the picture for us of what our future can be, if only we are willing to work together and build it. That’s what this contest is about. If you believe as I do, I invite you to join me.”
Extinction Rebellion’s Wordsmiths (XR Wordsmiths) are running a Solarpunk Storytelling Showcase competition with entries closing October 11, 2021. There will be three different age categories for the contest (11 and under, 12-18, and 19+), so this could be a great opportunity for younger authors. For submissions: “With your vision for the planetary future in mind, please write a short story of up to 2,500 words and send it as an email (or email attachment) to XR Wordsmiths (xr-writers@protonmail.com) with the subject line ‘XR Solarpunk Storytelling Showcase Submission’.”
Are you an author, poet, or artist? What other opportunities are out there for solarpunk creators right now?
Our modern methods of timekeeping have changed our relationship with the world around us, giving us more precise measurements for science, but also abstracting us further from the natural world. I think it’s time we looked at how a solarpunk future can incorporate a saner method of chronometry.
Our neolithic ancestors lived and moved according to the cycle of seasons and the rising and setting of the sun. Before the widespread adoption of the clock, we slept in segments, instead of all the way through the night. With the rise of the train, time zones kept people on track to their destinations. Now, some people have suggested returning to local time based on solar noon and setting any meeting times based on Universal Coordinated Time (UTC). After a year of online meetings that were held in various time zones around the world, I really see the appeal of UTC so I wouldn’t have had to run calculations to figure out when the meetings were in my own time zone. Don’t even get me started on my feelings toward Daylight Savings Time.
On the calendar front, there have been several attempts at calendar reform to oust the Gregorian Calendar, including the French Revolutionary Calendar, the World Season Calendar, and the International Fixed Calendar (IFC). The IFC has 13 months of 28 days resulting in a weekly layout that is the same each month. This leaves one or two extra days depending on if it’s a leap year that go into Year Day and Leap Day. I really like the IFC, and one of the oft-cited drawbacks, constant Friday the 13ths, is easily remedied by changing the first day of the month to Monday according to ISO standards. Kodak even used the IFC for more than 60 years since George Eastman thought it was so elegant.
My version of the International Fixed Calendar (all months are the same)
What do you think? Would changing the calendar and time zones be more trouble than it’s worth? Let us know below!
There were some comments back and forth regarding Rad Power Bikes customer service in my last video, so I wanted to address my own personal experience with them. This is just one perspective, so your mileage may vary.
I was sitting in my living room on a windy day and heard a crash outside the window. I had my RadRunner Plus locked to itself out front since I was going to ride it later, and saw it had fallen over. I complained in my first impressions video about how the kickstand was wimpy, and have had the bike fall over several times because of this.
I figured this was the same deal, but when I got outside I found the kickstand was on the sidewalk and the bike was on the ground! The thing had sheared through. After locking the bike to a pole, I sent RadPower an email about the problem and included a photo.
RadPower got back to me and said they’d send a replacement. I asked, just for grins, if the original RadRunner kickstand would fit the Plus, but they told me it wouldn’t.
Once the new kickstand got here, it was a simple matter of pulling the two screws out and putting them back in. I did the replacement back several months ago and haven’t had any new issues. I still don’t think the kickstand design is very sturdy, but RadPower did get me a replacement in a reasonable amount of time. That said, I’m looking at alternatives as I’m hoping to get riding soon with my son, and I don’t want to trust that flimsy kickstand with my child’s life. If you know of some solid replacement options, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, let me know.
At the end of the day, Rad’s service seems inconsistent in quality. It may depend on the customer service person you get. My understanding is that the Covid bike boom did really stress the bike industry as a whole, so I guess we’ll see how it goes as things return to “normal.” Feel free to sound off with your own experiences in the comments.
Plastic pollution is one of the biggest threats to ocean life. While images of chairs and tires on the seafloor can get a visceral reaction, it’s the small stuff that will cause the biggest problems. Plastics don’t truly degrade, but break into smaller and smaller pieces until they become microplastics or microfibers. The chemical additives in these plastics negatively impact ocean life and human health as they’re eaten and move through the food chain. A tidalpunk future will have to deal with this legacy of waste.
Microfibers are fibers smaller than human hair shed when cloth wears down. While all microfibers can have potential hazards, plastic microfibers like polyester have the added threats of never breaking down and leaching chemicals like endocrine disruptors. At the Mid-Atlantic Marine Debris Summit in July scientists presented work on microplastics and and other sources of human trash in the ocean. I was surprised to learn that dryers, and not just washing machines can be a source of microfibers. There are now some microfiber filters available like the Cora Ball, Guppyfriend bag, or Lint LUV-R for catching microfibers from the wash.
Microplastics come from many sources, but single-use plastic packaging is especially prolific. Some scientists have called for a global ban on virgin plastic since plastic is an inexpensive byproduct of fossil fuel extraction and there is no incentive for the material to return to the technical nutrient cycle. Moving forward, we need to drastically reduce the use of plastic to prevent further proliferation of microplastics. Holly Grounds’s dissolving ramen packet is a great example of rethinking packaging design. Another promising development is plastics that can actually biodegrade outside of a high temperature composting operation.
Plastic wasn’t always a throwaway material, and Precious Plastic designs open source machines for processing and reforming waste plastics into durable goods. Communities in the developing world are finding ways to repurpose the waste dumped on their countries by the rest of the world. You can check out organizations like Surfrider or Plastic Oceans for other ways to help.
YES! did their entire summer issue on the plastic crisis, so I’d encourage you to check out their coverage. If you want to learn more about the current lifecycle and impacts of plastic, I’d suggest The Story of Plastic as an introduction and the longer and NSFW This Week Tonight piece on plastics as a good follow up.
While you can reduce your own use of plastic to some extent, unless you are dedicated to going zero waste, plastic is almost unavoidable in everyday western life. This is a big issue, and I feel that it’s something we’ll be dealing with for generations, even if we stopped using all plastics now.
How can we build a plastic-free future? Share your ideas below!
