On the political dimensions of solarpunk

Dystopias seems to be a thing of our time, a reaction to the anxiety that comes with the exponential growth of human population, society complexity, technology capabilities and all of their shiny, but also their nefarious, consequences, such as overpopulation, corporate greed, climate change and peak inequality. It sometimes may seem too doom and dreadful for plans, manifestos or hope. On that context, on the tradition of other punks, like cyberpunk and steampunk, there is a bright cultural alternative: solarpunk.

It’s all about human integration with it’s environment and about communities solving whatever their problems are with local, non-megalomaniac actions. It’s about not sitting and hoping for some revolution or technological breakthrough, but acknowledging our very own doom at our very own SF-like exponential growth scale.

Here, the author argues that such a movement (I don’t really know what to call it) not only is intrinsically political, but is also a powerful political framework, one where initiatives such as the great Open Source Ecology can appear, being a possible backup for a possibly dark future. Good read!