The Nonbinary Nature of Solarpunk/Lunarpunk

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by BrightFlame

How many genres does it take to change a light bulb . . . from incandescent to LED? That is, from authoritarian, individualistic, power-over, capitalist tropes to regenerative, interconnected, just, collaborative ones. (Pardon the cliché.)

My thoughts about solarpunk and lunarpunk continue to evolve, just like the amorphous container of each vibe/genre/aesthetic/movement (abbreviated as vibe in this essay). Here are my musings of the moment (February 2023).

The permeable amorphous shape of solarpunk

In my January 2022 article Towards Solarpunk Futures, I wrote:

Jay Springett, a consultant strategist and writer, gave a very interesting presentation about solarpunk. Key takeaways for me: solarpunk is a growing container where gravity pulls some core, mutually understood concepts towards the center, and ideas around the edges are more blurred and in flux—this, by design. It’s an aesthetic of many voices; as such, solarpunks can speak only for themselves, not the movement as a whole.

Jay says in the presentation, “solarpunk asks: What if we together, collectively, create a container that can be used by anyone to place their ideas about the future inside. And what sort of stories would that container with the things it contains, create?”

I love the image Jay creates of the solarpunk container, which he deems a memetic engine that re-futures participants’ imaginations—an engine for producing ideas about the future. In other words, the container holding various inputs becomes an idea-generator, which inspires more inputs to the container and continually reshapes it. Here is my doodle of such a container.

a small yellow circle in center with yellow rays overlay concentric arches in blue, green, and mauve. Words near center: work in the commons, collaborate, decolonize. Words arrayed around: Nature, renewables, green tech, regenerate, fungi, Web of Life, connect, create, solar, mutual, algaue, wind, spirit, dream.

Though the container is more a shapeshifting amoeba than round, and its edges are permeable so ideas flow in and out. Note that the ideas in my graphic are examples to show the form, not an attempt to capture the state of solarpunk or the ideas drifting around the container at the moment.

A hand-drawn free-form shape with four asymmetrical lobes is outlined in dashed orange line. Within it, all asymmetrical and random: wavy green blotches, wavy blue lines, small mauve peanut shapes, a magenta free-form shape with yellow circles within.

In his essay “Solarpunk: A Container for More Fertile Futures,” Jay says “solarpunk is defined by the ideas it produces, not by the container itself.” Yet to me, it’s both the mechanics of the container—a shapeshifting, dynamic engine—plus the generated ideas, which become fuel for more ideas.

How does lunarpunk fit?

In early 2022, I wrote that lunarpunk is the way in which we understand the Earth as sacred—how this turns into a lifestyle and a spiritual form. And that lunarpunk expresses its magical and spiritual side more readily than solarpunk.

I also created this graphic early last year:

Word map showing a description of lunarpunk in an artful way. Text: illumaties the silvery shadows of solarpunk; adds nonlinear, intuitive ways of thiking and feeling; is magical; speaks truth in non-Western science ways of knowing; crates paths to a just, regenerative wolrd and bright futures; cneters environmental justice, lifts all forms of fustice and their intersectionality; decenters humans in the web of life and illumaties relationships, communication, web-weaving among all beings; holds the reality of different realms & communication across realms.

As I write this essay nearly a year later, the above no longer adequately captures lunarpunk.

How they combine in me

I jumped into solarpunk several years back because the vibe describes my path and my life’s work. I write, teach, create, and act for justice and a regenerative world. Thus, solarpunk.

Yet, I also make magic for justice and a regenerative world. As a Witch, I sense and shape energy. I talk with nonhumans like trees and mycorrhizae. I explore the Web of Life. Much of my teaching and writing helps humans feel their connection with the Earth and develop de-centered relationships with Earth kin. I lift different ways of knowing. So, lunarpunk.

Perhaps solarpunk is my activist side and lunarpunk is my magical side and my connection with the Web of Life.

But I don’t like binaries.

The alchemy of solarpunk and lunarpunk

Solarpunk and lunarpunk, to me, are not a binary and not opposites. Besides, binary thinking is a characteristic of authoritarianism, white supremacy, and religious dogma: it doesn’t fit with a solarpunk or lunarpunk vibe. We stay clear of binaries in my spiritual tradition (the Reclaiming Tradition of Witchcraft), recognizing that there are at least three options or paths in any situation.

two of the hand-drawn amoeba at right angles and overlapped about 30 percent

In any event, I would argue solarpunk and lunarpunk are not separable. Yet I hesitate writing inseparable, which brings to mind an image of two atoms linked in a static way to form a molecule (like CO, carbon monoxide). Since lunarpunk and solarpunk are amorphous, their connection is varied and changeable, not fixed like a molecular bond.

Furthermore, solarpunk and lunarpunk don’t just touch one another, they overlap. But to what extent? Does it depend on the context, the particular example?

Or is lunarpunk totally within solarpunk like a starfish in a tidal pool? Perhaps like mitochondria within a cell, lunarpunk energizes solarpunk. Or is it the reverse, and solarpunk is subsumed in lunarpunk like humans are part of Nature.

Does the vibe change more to lunarpunk or more to solarpunk depending on what is highlighted in the amorphous shape?

the hand-drawn amoeba with yellow highlighting a circular area towards its top
the hand-drawn amoeba with yellow highlighting a circluar area towards its bottom.

Perhaps lunarpunk and solarpunk totally overlap, neither a subset of the other.

Then what about as an art aesthetic, you might ask. Some say that solarpunk displays vivid and bright colors like in daylight, and lunarpunk displays shadow and bioluminescence like nighttime and underwater. To me, these highlight different areas of the form like my spotlit amoeba doodles, above. The aesthetics are connected—we can’t have shadow without light or brightness without dimness.

As a genre, lunarpunk might be an apt term for stories that tend towards fantasy. Yet is any literary work lunarpunk without being solarpunk? What of a story with no technology, yet all about creating just and regenerative culture? To me, that is still solarpunk highlighting a particular part of the amoebic container.

When I include communication between humans and non-human Earth kin, I’m not writing the fantastical, I’m writing of different ways of knowing. When I write of sensing and shaping energy—universal life force that flows through all creatures of Earth—it’s not fantasy. (See my stories “Myco Macro” and “Maybe We Are All Witches” as examples.) My manuscript about a coven thwarting those who harm the Web of Life contains the kind of magic and workings we Reclaiming Witches practice, including working in the astral realm. All of these works might be called lunarpunk. And they are also solarpunk.

What to call the combined vibes

I feel that solarpunk and lunarpunk are not two different vibes—they are one. For example, non-Western/non-dominant ways of knowing are as integral to solarpunk as lunarpunk. Solarpunk is enlivened by the sacred, by spirituality, not separate from it. Lunarpunk is as much about creating a just, regenerative, bright future as solarpunk. As much about cooperative, mutual, fossil-free societies as solarpunk. Interdependence and communication among the Web of Life are central to both.

I admit: I cringe when folx call solarpunk and lunarpunk opposites. I think this is because I want a vibrant, dynamic container. One that is the most pluralistic and feeds the “uncommons,” as Navarre described in his introduction to this blog series.

Just as mycorrhizae and trees combine as a regenerative forest, lunarpunk and solarpunk form a whole. Take either away and you destroy the forest.

If we erect borders in the forest to define lunarpunk versus solarpunk, the forest is less interconnected and dynamic, less able to thrive. Yet, at any given moment we interact with a different part of the forest, thus changing how we express the vibe.

If we separate lunarpunk from the amorphous, pluralistic solarpunk memetic engine, the container becomes less rich, the engine has less fuel.

What would I call lunarpunk and solarpunk combined? Perhaps just solarpunk.

How many genres does it take to change that lightbulb?

One amorphous, evolving genre or vibe.

photo of BrightFlame

BrightFlame (she/they) writes, teaches, and makes magic in service to a just, regenerating world. Her short- and long-form speculative fiction tend towards solarpunk/lunarpunk, including in Solarpunk Magazine Issue 6, in Bioluminescent (Android Press, January 2023), and in a forthcoming solarpunk anthology. She’s known for her teaching in the worldwide pagan community and is affiliated with a sustainability education center at Columbia University that features her workshops and nonfiction. She lives on Lenape territory (Turtle Island) with a human, a forest, a labyrinth, hawks, bees, ponds, turtles, monarda, fox, fungi, rocks, and many other nonhumans. Find her writing and doodles at http://brightflame.com, @BrtFlame on Twitter (if it’s still there), and @BrightFlame@wandering.shop.

Seeds For the Swarm – A Review

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A young woman with freckled skin and red hair wearing black goggles looking up at three green cicadas with red eyes circling the book title, "Seeds for the Swarm." Glowing yellow/white particles waft upward from the bottom of the background which looks like a watercolor of red/orange evocative of fire.

Listen to this review on the If This Goes On (Don’t Panic) podcast

Seeds for the Swarm by Sim Kern takes us on a journey of the near future where warming has continued and much of the United States is now barely habitable. People from the “Dust States” try to emigrate through a tightly-controlled border to the “Lush States” or muddle through with that rugged individualism we take so much pride in here in the United States.

This feels like a very likely future with continued exploitation of oil and corporate/government collusion leading to huge sacrifice zones where people work hard in polluting industries that are choking their communities so they can put food on the table for their families. Rylla, our protagonist, wants desperately to go to college, but doesn’t have much hope of getting out of the Dust States even though she’s in the top of her nationwide virtual high school.

When she finds out the oil company in her hometown plans to destroy the watershed that provides what meager water is available to her region and is the last thing to give her hope, she gets a ride to speak to the state legislature committee in charge. Despite an impassioned speech, her entreaties fall on distracted ears beholden to corporate overlords and gadget addictions. One viral, embarrassing remix of her speech later, she gets recruited as a scholarship student at a university in the Lush States.

Starting with her interaction with the elected representatives, Rylla does a lot of growing up in the course of this book. It felt like Kern took everything I learned during the course of my twenties and made Rylla face these hard truths all in the course of a single year. During her many misadventures, I identified with Rylla’s tendency to get swept up in the ideology of the groups she would spend time with before becoming disillusioned when she found they didn’t have the answers she needed.

This future has glimmers of hope, but the carcass of our current world is still the dominant society. While there are a variety of themes explored, I think the most important is how the protagonists push against eco-fascism being the only solution to solving the climate crisis regardless of who is promoting it. I think it really fits into what Andrew Dana Hudson said when he was interviewed by Solarpunk Magazine:

a solarpunk future is one in which the climate crisis is escalating, institutions are failing, late capitalism is getting even more precarious and putrid, and while technologies of sustainability might be becoming ubiquitous, we haven’t yet managed to fully phase out the toxic old for the green new. It’s a future (slash present!!) in which we need a movement of solarpunks to shove us onto a better path

Our Shared Storm: An Interview with Andrew Dana Hudson

As someone who is an engineer, I really love the interactions between Rylla, a humanities major, and all of her engineering/scientist friends. They’re preoccupied with how to get their projects to work the way they want them to without necessarily thinking about what secondary or tertiary effects the technology might have on the world. They are often dismissive of Rylla’s legitimate concerns and only later realize that she was right in being worried. The Ian Malcolm quote from Jurassic Park comes to mind of “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”

An image of Jeff Goldblum in black glasses and a leather coat with the text "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."

Rylla’s other main companions are her fellow humanities majors including her previous public school rival from another Dust State and her nonbinary roommate who literally smashes the patriarchy. As one might expect, it’s up to Rylla to join the forces of science and the humanities to defeat the eco-fascist Big Bad at the end of the book. I do feel like this book is a little better about explaining why the kids have to be so instrumental in saving the day compared to most other YA novels where it seems the adults just really needed to go on vacation that week.

There are plenty of mishaps, victories, death, and embarrassments to go around in this story, making it a solid entry into the YA genre. I could’ve done without the love triangle, but I know that’s a hard trope to kill. Rylla and the other characters feel like real, messy humans who are doing their best to make it in an imperfectly hopeful world.

Thanks to Stelliform Press for providing an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

If you’d like to support the blog, please use the affiliate link to the book above, or consider supporting us on Comradery, a cooperatively-owned patronage platform.

Solarpunk Spirituality – An Introduction

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green aurora lights on the right hand side of the image are opposite a full moon on the left. The foreground is a sandy beach with some scrubby brush and what looks to be a town glows orange at the base of a mountain across the water.
Photo by stein egil liland on Pexels.com

We’ve talked about solarpunk, lunarpunk, and tidalpunk a great deal here, and one question I hear repeated is whether we need three different subgenres or if there are sharp distinctions between them at all. For me, solarpunk, lunarpunk, and tidalpunk each embody the same values of ecology and equity while expressing them in their own way. They are parts of an ecosystem and reliant on each other.

When I found solarpunk, I loved how the movement embraced both the scientific and the spiritual. Neither one was superior. They both informed the other to come to a greater understanding of the world around us and how to make it a better place. Science without spirituality* becomes the fuel for cold, capitalistic domination of nature, and spirituality without science can lead to superstition and bigotry. When we combine both, we get something that’s better than the sum of its parts.

Lunarpunk foregrounds spirituality and the inner work we do to build a better world. Solarpunk focuses on the application of societal arrangements and appropriate technology to approach the climate crisis. Tidalpunk reminds us that while we might inhabit every corner of the land, three quarters of the Earth’s surface is simultaneously alien and the home we left behind.

Because one person’s utopia is another’s dystopia, solarpunk is sometimes described as optopia: “the best possible place we can create given the circumstances.” One way we do this is by working together to cover for each other’s weaknesses and to enhance each other’s strengths. Pluralism, or everyone having their own perspective respected even when in contradiction, is something I feel is critical for solarpunks. Marisol de la Cadena goes further with the concept of uncommons, wherein “participant entities may become into commonality without becoming the same.”

In the spirit of uncommons, this year we’ll have several contributors presenting their own experiences with solarpunk/lunarpunk and the spiritual. As we present this series, keep in mind that we will not be encompassing all possible ways of how spirituality interacts with solarpunk, lunarpunk, and tidalpunk, but rather our own small facets of a greater whole. 

* I’m defining spirituality here as all the squishy and difficult to define things that make us human. This includes the paths followed by atheists, pagans, Abrahamists, Buddhists, Zoroastrians, and everybody else.

A Failure of Imagination

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A GIF of SpongeBob waving his hands to create a rainbow and saying "Imagination."

Critics of climate action or environmental justice often resort to calling those of us wanting a solarpunk future unrealistic or dreamers. They do this while saying that a liveable climate or dignity for everyone living here can only be achieved if we find away to make it square with the current dominant economic model. I think imagination is critical if we’re to come out of the other side of the climate crisis, but I don’t think we should be letting imaginary constructs stand in the way of saving real things like the biosphere.

Despite the spurious claims of social Darwinists, human society has been devised by humans, and as Ursula K. Le Guin said, “Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.” It isn’t set in stone. Adrienne Maree Brown has talked about how the status quo started in the imagination of someone. The economy and even money itself are fictions made manifest by collective belief. As Baratunde Thurston said, there is no inherent value to a piece of cloth with $1 inscribed upon it.

I really started thinking about this during the recent roller coaster regarding the Build Back Better bill and Inflation Reduction Act. I couldn’t grok how anyone could stand in the way of meaningful climate legislation over imaginary things like inflation and the economy. I wouldn’t say I was surprised, I just get so frustrated when people are telling me to be realistic when they’re trying to prop up a corrupt system built of smoke and mirrors as if “There Is No Alternative.” I’m not a big proponent of having a federal government, but if you do have one, then they should be addressing existential threats. This sort of nonsense would’ve annoyed me before, but, now that I have a kid, this kindled a rage for people who would purposefully endanger my child’s chances of having a liveable planet that I didn’t know was possible.

From XKCD: https://xkcd.com/386/

When faced with such entrenched opponents clinging to the last vestiges of a harmful system, we could try to face them head on and tell them the error of their ways. This is my first impulse, as someone who is quick to rush in when “someone is wrong on the internet.” However, I think solarpunk gives us a better way forward.

We could keep railing against the status quo and expend our energy there, or we can work to collectively imagine a better future and do the work to make our way there. That doesn’t mean there won’t be struggles, or that we shouldn’t ever confront oppression when we see it. It does mean that burnout (and failure) will come quickly if we only ever fight against things instead of for something. We need a future we can believe in if we’re going to end the harm of our present.

I’m planning to both imagine and build a better future. I hope you’ll join me.

If you’d like to support the blog, please consider supporting us on Comradery, a cooperatively-owned patronage platform.

Arboreality – A Review

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The book cover of Arboreality. The title is written in gold font on a hunter green background. This looks like an old leather book cover with a burnt bottom right half revealing botanical drawings and "by Rebecca Campbell" on the "first page" underneath the cover.

I wasn’t sure what to expect going into Arboreality, but Campbell really pulled off multiple perspectives in a short book, which is no small feat. I was anxious about how well head hopping across time would work without something the length of a Sandersonesque tome, but by keeping the geographic scope limited and the characters within a few degrees of separation of each other, the narrative stays tight enough to stay invested in the outcome.

This book also does a good job of walking the line between climate apocalypse and everything was fine because of some hand wavy solution. Things are pretty rough throughout the book, but it does feel like things are slowly getting better. Wildfires, future pandemics, and sea level rise are just some of the issues facing our protagonists.

What I really appreciated is that there is no one hero to save us from climate change. The characters can’t save the world on their own. What they can do is plant seeds, both literal and figurative, for the next generation. That’s what spoke to me in this book. It really brought the concept of being a good ancestor to life, something my own ancestors might have thought of as “cathedral thinking.”

At this point, a certain amount of warming is baked into the climate system and I’m not going to see things return to “normal.” If you and I each do our own part to make the world a little better than we left it though, maybe my kid will see a stable climate or the next generation after them. It really puts all the struggles we’ve faced in the climate movement into perspective and makes them feel worth fighting even though they often don’t feel like enough.

If you even have the slightest care for future generations, do yourself a favor and read this book!

Thanks to Stelliform Press for providing an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

If you’d like to support the blog, please use the affiliate link to the book above, or consider supporting us on Comradery, a cooperatively-owned patronage platform.

Hundred Rabbits – Real Life Tidalpunks

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Two humans wearing rabbit masks complete with large ears stand on a rocky outcrop with barren trees and a vast sky in the background. There are mountains in the background as well with cumulus clouds above.
The Rabbits

You may have noticed that I’m somewhat obsessed with tidalpunk around here, but since I hadn’t even seen the ocean until I was in my 20s, I’m probably not the best person for advice about how to actually be a tidalpunk. This is where you would be better served by the artist collective, Hundred Rabbits.

Hundred Rabbits is an ocean-faring duo writing energy efficient software and finding ways to better mesh life on a sailboat with tech work. They’ve documented much of what they’ve learned on subjects like living off grid, why they’ve developed their own software tools, and how you can shop for your very own sailboat to live the tidalpunk life.

We talk a lot about keeping gadgets going longer and designing them for repairability here, and Hundred Rabbits are living that out in a much more extreme environment than we have here in central Virginia. According to their stated philosophy, “We target 20 years old hardware as to encourage recyclism and discourage the consumption of fashionable electronics.” They’re really hitting the Reduce and Reuse parts of Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. The fact they also use a 2010 MacBook Pro as one of their main machines makes me even more excited to have been introduced to their work.

Are there any other tidalpunks out there that you’ve run across? Are you going to buy a boat and join them yourself? Let us know in the comments!

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The Deep – A Review

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A mermaid with a shark-like tail floats upright in the water. A whale, sailfish, and several other aquatic animals are in the background. The title of the book, "The Deep" is at the top, and the bottom has the authors listed, "Rivers Solomon with Daveed Diggs, William Hutson, Johnathan Snipes."

The Deep covers a number of different themes in such a rich way that it seems impossible it could be as short as it is. I personally really resonated with how the main character, imbued with the memory of their people, runs away from this duty because it is killing her. Much like Atlas bolted when Hercules gave him the chance, Yetu can’t take it anymore. When coupled with the environmental and human (mermaid?) rights themes of this book, I couldn’t help but think of how many people have burned out of activism while fighting to make the world a better place.

Yetu’s struggle with balancing her own well-being and that of her people is really the conflict here, with the fate of the world dependent on one person. The story didn’t pull any emotional punches and hit me a lot harder than any typical farmboy with a sword narrative might.

I also really love that the story didn’t end in the traditional, singular sacrifice of our hero, but in a more collaborative solution that was far better for Yetu and her people. It felt optimistic, but realistic, and was a welcome change to the one person saves the world on their own narrative even if Yetu’s own actions are a critical piece of that solution.

Despite the short length, the characters beyond Yetu held their own and felt like real people, not just cardboard cutouts there to advance the plot, which I’ve sometimes found to be the case in novellas.

I can’t recommend this book enough. It deals with some heavy stuff, but makes you feel like anything is possible if you don’t try to do it all on your own. It’s definitely going on my list of tidalpunk recommendations.

If you’d like to support the blog, please use the affiliate link to the book above, or consider supporting us on Comradery, a cooperatively-owned patronage platform.

Weird Fishes – A Review

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Weird Fishes by Rae Mariz was a wonderful journey that reminded me of how I felt the first time I read 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea as a kid. This book is definitely going on my recommendations list for tidalpunk literature, as it very deftly addresses climate change and its effects on the ocean without feeling preachy.

The story is an interesting take on the buddy genre, pairing a sheltered octopod scientist with an emotionally-vibrant and well-traveled mermaid. Amusing and profound interactions between the two characters help them grow as individuals while they investigate the cause and solution to slowing ocean currents.

Mariz’s prose is beautiful and evokes a true feeling of wonder and connectedness to the ocean. Clever twists on common turns of phrase remind you that the main characters aren’t human, and the interplay of the many different species of the ocean gives hints at the biodiversity teeming below the surface. There’s even a cameo by 52 Blue, the “world’s loneliest whale.”

This book helps you remember that we came from the sea and that it still exerts an emotional pull on us like the tide. One of my favorite lines from the book is “People carry the ocean inside them. On an upright fishbone spine sits the soul of an octopus.” Not every line in the book is that poetic, but I feel that encapsulates my feelings when I read this book.

While I wholeheartedly enjoyed this book, it isn’t for everyone. The book doesn’t shy away from the real world consequences of microplastics, commercial fishing, and warming oceans. Many creatures die, often in graphic, but not prolonged, ways. This book also has a content warning for sexual assault.

If you’re looking for a tidalpunk read that rekindles your love for the ocean, I can’t recommend Weird Fishes enough. If you’ve read any good tidalpunk books lately, let us know down below! I just started The Deep by Rivers Solomon and hope to report back on it soon!

Thanks to Stelliform Press for providing an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

If you’d like to support the blog, please use the affiliate link to the book above, or consider supporting us on Comradery, a cooperatively-owned patronage platform.

Revisiting Offshore Wind

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A large wind farm consisting of many large, three-bladed wind turbines sits in the ocean. The waves are a choppy dark blue and black while the sky is a light blue.
Windmills in the Ocean

Offshore wind is going to be a big part of our clean energy future, and if you like podcasts, you’ll really want to listen to Windfall, a mini series from Outside/In. Windfall follows the development of the US offshore wind energy from the ill-fated Cape Wind project up through the approval of Vineyard Wind. This is a great explainer for why the US is so far behind Europe and China in the offshore wind space.

One thing I really appreciated about the podcast was its nuanced take on some of the drawbacks of offshore wind while still showing it as an important climate solution. The ocean is a big place, but siting an offshore wind project in a way that promotes a just transition is no easy feat. Some areas contain indigenous cultural heritage (Cape Wind) while others impact fisherfolk who’ve been plying their trade for centuries (Vineyard Wind). Now that oil companies are fronting as clean energy pioneers, are we going to let them repeat the same injustices with a shiny green wrapper? The podcast stops short of offering answers.

I’ve mentioned before that offshore wind has the potential to be a great resource in a tidalpunk future, but that I wasn’t sure how to fit the billion dollar megaprojects into a *punk framework. Just after listening to Windfall, I found out that Denmark, one of the leaders in the offshore wind space, actually requires 20% of any new wind project to be community owned, and the Middelgrunden installation is actually 50% cooperatively owned. Scotland is another place where community ownership of renewables, including offshore wind, is revitalizing communities that had been in decline for decades.

Offshore wind will generate cheap, renewable energy a lot more consistently than land-based turbines, but we need to hold those building these facilities accountable so we don’t see a repeat of the injustices baked into our current energy system.

Do you know of other solutions to deploy renewables while avoiding handouts to the same old energy companies we love to hate? Share with us in the comments below!

RadRunner Plus Long Term Review

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A step-through ebike sits on a shared path. Trees and grass line the edges as it curves off to the right in the distance.
My Radrunner Plus on the John Warner Parkway Trail in Charlottesville

After having my RadRunner Plus for nearly two years, I thought it was time for a long term review. Getting an ebike isn’t a small financial decision, and I was both excited and a little nervous spending what I did to pre-order a brand new model of ebike. Some of you out there might be on the fence about whether to get an ebike yourself, so I hope this helps in some way.

From hauling groceries, taking things to the recycling center, selling crafts at the farmers market, or going to the park with my kid, the RadRunner Plus has made biking around town an option for me. The electric assist makes me feel much safer when having to contend with traffic since the speed differential is much lower than when I was still riding my traditional bike.

Riding the bike is still a little less convenient than driving a car around Charlottesville, but it is a lot more fun. I need to plan my routes more carefully than if I were driving, and parking the bike can be a hassle since most places have plenty of car storage but no place to stick a bike securely.

Bike theft isn’t a huge problem in Charlottesville, but an acquaintance and his wife had their RadRunner Plus and RadWagon stolen not too long ago, so I’ve been a little more anxious with respect to parking the bike lately. If you’re worried about bike theft, I’d recommend this episode of the Bike Here podcast.

I kept my bike in front of our townhouse under a motorcycle cover for about a year with no issues, but have since moved it inside. During that time I didn’t really ride the bike since we had the new baby, but everything booted right up when I plugged in the battery despite being out in all weather conditions. I’m not sure if that’s a point in favor of RadPower Bikes or the Pro Bike Tools cover, but good job either way.

There are still certain aspects of riding a bike in America that make it more difficult to just hop on and go versus driving. Helmets aren’t a huge inconvenience, but it’s an added bit of friction compared to taking the car. When I was just riding by myself, I didn’t always wear one, but now that I’ve got a tiny human on board, it’s helmets all around. Despite the inconveniences, I did have two errands last week that I think demonstrate how ebikes can be a great car replacement.

The cat bus from "My Neighbor Totoro." The cat bus is a large orange tabby cat with ten legs that's back looks like the passenger compartment of a bus with open air windows and covered with fur. Two mice with purple glowing eyes make up the marking lights on the top of the cab.
Charlottesville Area Transit’s acronym is CAT

First up was an unexpected run to the pharmacy. I was thinking of taking the bus, but since the bus only comes once an hour it made more sense to grab the bike. While it took a little longer in travel time than driving, I suspect our time door-to-door was similar since there is bike parking next to the pharmacy while the parking garage would’ve taken more time to navigate. The only worry I had was I hadn’t charged the bike and three trips into town stretched the battery to its limits. That’s a range of >25 miles in 80-92ºF (27-33ºC) weather hauling 250 lbs (113 kg) of humans around. I didn’t run the battery down all the way, so I don’t know how much further we might have been able to go. The battery did go empty on my way back from a grocery run before, and I do not recommend it unless you’re really looking for a new fitness regimen.

The second trip was to pickup our CSA from the farmers market. My child and I normally take the car after my wife gets home, but she wasn’t going to be back in time for us to make the farmers market before it closed this time. Ebike to the rescue again. All the vegetables fit in the front delivery bag along with a couple other items I picked up while we were there. Even in the 80s with 76% humidity, the ride was comfortable since on the bike you’ve got a breeze when you’re moving. I think I needed more cooldown time at the end than if I’d driven, but, since the car would have to cool down before it was comfortable, I wasn’t any sweatier if we’d driven.

Image shows the underside of a brown bike seat. The seat is mounted via a solid metal plate instead of the more traditional adjustable seat mount found on most bikes.
This Seat Features Zero Adjustability

The only complaints I have about the RadRunner Plus are the uncomfortable stock seat, the poor options for mounting the headlight if you have a front rack, and the flimsy kickstand. Definitely DO NOT step away from the bike with a kid onboard! I’m looking for a better kickstand solution, but my first pick, the Ursus Jumbo, doesn’t work on 20″ bikes. I decided to give it a go despite the manufacturer recommendations, and I can confirm it doesn’t fit the RadRunner Plus.

If you’re on the fence about getting an ebike, I think you’ll really be impressed what they can do. They are definitely going to be part of our solarpunk future. I really like the RadRunner Plus, but everyone’s needs are a little different. You can’t haul more than one other person on this bike, so that might sway you one way or the other for a RadRunner vs a RadWagon if you’re looking at entry-level cargo bikes. If you’ve got a bigger budget, I’ve heard great things about the Tern and Urban Arrow bikes some people have here in town. I was incredulous when people said having an ebike is a game changer for getting around in a city, but they were totally right.

Do you have an ebike or cargo bike you love? Let us know down below!

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