solarpunks
SOLARPUNKS
At once a vision of the future, a thoughtful provocation, and an achievable lifestyle. In progress... Since 2012
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This warehouse is a FUCKING NIGHTMARE!
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Polyglot Guru
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spool of black, spool of green
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¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I am once again thinking about digging holes
It's so fucked up that digging a bunch of holes works so well at reversing desertification
I hate that so much discourse into fighting climate change is talking about bioenginerring a special kind of seaweed that removes microplastics or whatever other venture-capital-viable startup idea when we have known for forever about shit like digging crescent shaped holes to catch rainwater and turning barren land hospitable
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Agnes Denes, Wheatfield – A Confrontation. Two acres of wheat planted and harvested by the artist on the Battery Park landfill, Manhattan, summer 1982.
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India’s electric rickshaws are leaving EVs in the dust
Each month, this upskilled team produces bodies and chassis for nearly 5,000 three-wheeler EVs, locally known as e-rickshaws, for the New Delhi-based YC Electric, India’s second-largest manufacturer in the segment. In 2023, YC Electric alone sold over 40,600 e-rickshaws, while 82,500 electric cars were sold in the country.
Even as India awaits its first Tesla, these humble e-rickshaws made by workers like Baran are powering an EV revolution in the country.
Each month, this upskilled team produces bodies and chassis for nearly 5,000 three-wheeler EVs, locally known as e-rickshaws, for the New Delhi-based YC Electric, India’s second-largest manufacturer in the segment. In 2023, YC Electric alone sold over 40,600 e-rickshaws, while 82,500 electric cars were sold in the country.
Even as India awaits its first Tesla, these humble e-rickshaws made by workers like Baran are powering an EV revolution in the country.
The Sonipat plant where YC builds its e-rickshaws is a joint venture with the company’s former Chinese import partners Jiang Li and Xue Jian Nan, who hold a 49% stake in the facility. “The link [with the Chinese suppliers] became so good that they also believed in us, invested money with us, and shared technology with us,” Kakkar said. Chinese engineers stayed “for days” to train welders like Baran when the factory first opened, he said.
His company’s ethos, according to Kakkar, is “Make in India, but technology from China.”
CHECK OUT THESE METALLIC CHROME BAD BOYS
youtube
(Via Rest of World)
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Oh hello there. Online course on solarpunk coming up at the Brooklyn Institute starting in April.
This course will focus on the philosophical and imaginary turn towards radical optimism in the face of climate change. We will delve into the art, theory, and fiction associated with solarpunk, in order to think about problems of technology, nature, and productive human society—and how nature and material life can be integrated beyond systems of exploitation and oppression. We’ll consider the uses of utopia, the attractions of science fiction for non-capitalist thinking, the meaning of sustainability, debates over growth and degrowth, and the philosophical and cultural significance of affects of optimism and pessimism. Is contemporary pessimism a form of realism, or a lack of imagination? Readings will include works and excerpts from Ursula K. Le Guin, Kyle Powys Whyte, Andreas Malm, Rebecca Solnit, Becky Chambers’s Monk and Robot duology, and emerging literature within the solarpunk movement—both theoretical and literary.
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Designed by Rotterdam-based practice MVRDV, Seoullo 7017 is a 16-meter-tall steel-and-concrete former overpass that is now a plant village and public park. It is literally translated as “Towards Seoul,” and the park runs above Seoul Station, connecting Namdaemun Market with the neighborhoods of Malli-dong, Jungnim-dong, and Cheongpa-dong. Newly constructed bridges and stairs connect the highway with hotels, shops, and gardens.
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In the future, the park will act as a nursery and produce plants for the surrounding districts.
(Via Old highway becomes public park with 24,000 plants in Seoul)
The Seoullo 7017 project is an actual realised project by the Srchitectural Practice MVRDV and super cool.
MVRDV are also the Studio behind the P15 Ravel plot proposal in Zuidas Business District Amsterdam which I am sure some solarpunks are all familiar with this proposal visualisation:
You can check MVRDV out at https://www.mvrdv.nl/en/home
Its cool to see The Seoullo 7017 project realised and think about what an impact it must have had on the residents of the city.
However I think Solarpunk as a broader scene is sometimes guilty of swallowing a "bright green" concrete neoliberal eco-modren architecture vibe - especially showcasing images of super clean render cities and buildings with no people living in them!
The ‘retrofitted future’ vibe has always had far more of an appeal (to me) than a clean rendered future which has an implicit ideology buried within it.
Perhaps between us Solarpunks, we need to develop a keener sense of visual literacy?
Heres a picture of urban ag in Cuba
Or the Queens Rooftop Farm
This looks like Solarpunk to me. Not Shining white skyscrapers with trees on them. Think of the poor abseiling arborists with chainsaws and stuff! Nightmare.
#Design The recently completed “Seoullo 7017” Skygarden, an abandoned overpass turned elevated park modeled after the High Line in NYC, Jung District, Seoul, South Korea [2000×1334]
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Awful's Gas and Snack (Swing Shift Collective, 2019)
Awful’s Gas & Snack is a life-size fake gas station from the year 2119, designed to help people imagine a positive future after the climate crisis. Offering "AUTHENTIC 20th and 21st century artifacts from the Golden Age of Gasoline," it's both a love poem to roadside America, and an obituary for a way of life whose time has come and gone.
Mounted at Burning Man 2019 with 100% renewable energy and repurposed building materials.
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A radical analysis of problems and barriers to change may lead to overwhelming pessimism about any radical program; the hardness of a radical analysis can produce political quietism, with radical programs left to the politically naive. To be radical in both senses requires a theory of how this world, for all its problems, contains and is fostering the beginning of another, very different world. Williams labored mightily to hold together these two kinds of radicalism, to keep alive the idea that the many damaged lives he remembered and wrote about would find secular redemption in a transformed world, and that seeking partial solutions and temporary mitigations is not the best that people can do.
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We're a 10-acre urban farm in Phoenix, Arizona on a mission to turn "garbage" into food.
We use the power of Red Wiggler Worms, Black Soldier Flies, and hot compost piles to turn Valley waste into natural gardening products, vegetable starts, and produce.
What I appreciate about this video is that the whole process is delivered by someone who has obviously hosted this tour many times. His delivery is so clear and informative.
Despite the repetition, his enthusiasm for worm shines though the whole time!
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Indonesia’s e-bike shops are building their own batteries
Dharmawan Kusna Handoyo spends his workday in a 2-by-3-meter cubicle, soldering batteries. He has been building DIY battery packs since 2009, when he installed one in his own electric bike — but in the past few years, it has become his main source of income. He sells the packs for hundreds of dollars apiece, luring back customers with the promise of a longer-range battery capacity.
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Hearing reports from the Figma guy that SOLARPUNK IS IN.
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How the UN is Holding Back the Sahara Desert
Permaculture instructor Andrew Millison journeys with the UN World Food Programme to the Northern border of Senegal to see an innovative land recovery project within the Great Green Wall of Africa that is harvesting rainwater, increasing food security, and rehabilitating the ecosystem.
#solarpunk#senegal#niger#permaculture#great green wall#africa#landscape#rehabilitation#Great Green Wall of Africa#rainwater harvesting#Youtube
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New art!!!! I’ve been getting back into graphic design recently! 2024 is going to be my draw whatever I want without stressing era (I will probably stress)
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The world’s largest beaver dam is not like human dams. It does not stopper a river, or even a stream or rivulet. Its low half-mile barrier collects small trickles that come off a plateau called the Birch Mountains. Along the margin of this comparatively higher ground, it accommodates itself to a slope of less than two percent. The gathered-up trickles have amounted to a lake, and after the beavers eat the plants that grow in it, they may relocate to another dam and another pond, graze that area, then move on again, in a sort of crop rotation. Other dams in this beaver belt are up to three-quarters the length of the longest dam. These long, low dams may help the beavers adapt to drought.
As far as is known, only one person has ever been to the world’s largest beaver dam. In July 2014, Rob Mark, of Maplewood, New Jersey, 44 years old at the time, reached the dam after a challenging journey. Holding the flag of the Explorers Club, the international organization with headquarters in New York City, he took a photo of himself standing on the dam. The top of the structure was the only solid ground he had encountered for miles. After he got back, a newspaper in Edmonton did a story about him, and he appeared in other newspapers and a travel magazine. His achievement is like the dam in that so far no one has said it isn’t unique.
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WaterLight is a portable lantern that can be charged with salt water or urine
Colombian renewable energy start-up E-Dina has developed a cordless light that converts salt water into electricity as a more reliable alternative to solar lamps in off-grid communities.
The portable device, called WaterLight, needs to be filled with 500 millilitres of seawater – or urine in emergency situations – to emit up to 45 days of light.
Acting as a mini power generator, the device can also be used to charge a mobile phone or another small device via its integrated USB port.
WaterLight works 24 hours a day through ionisation, which sees electrolytes in the saline liquid react with magnesium and copper plates on the interior of the lamp to produce electricity.
Although this is a long-established process, E-Dina has developed a way to sustain the chemical reaction over a prolonged period of time so that it can be used to power a light source.
After the salt particles have evaporated, the lamp can be emptied and refilled while the used water can be repurposed for washing or cleaning.
Read more about the WaterLight and the Wayúu people who have been testing the lamp over on Dezeen.
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<3
Characters co-owned w @_magic.stardust_ on IG 😌✨ (a couple more comics abt this on my account already)
I'm not a very positive person, i have a LOT of doomer tendencies. I feel everything like it's cranked up to the max, and as you can imagine it doesn't feel great. Every day throws more atrocious things in my face, and i can't ignore it 🥲
I see other people feeling the same way. We dissociate and numb ourselves by watching, playing, buying stuff. Hateful movements are gaining traction and climate change has its foot in the door
And it's all happening either way, to some degree. I feel like shit, and i'm sick of that. I might as well have a little bit of hope, otherwise i'll go bonkers 😭 Do we continue doomering our way through life or ignoring things altogether, or do we choose to hope a little?
That's why i'm looking into Solarpunk and am thinking of taking any readers (and myself) on a little journey through a better world, and how it might work, through a series of mini-comics I'm posting here. I don't have all the answers (no one person ever does), and i don't hold any pretenses that this kind of world is going to be our future. But i often hear "You love critiquing the status quo, but what do you propose instead?" I'd like to find out too. Here's to something we can hope for, no matter how slim the chances are! Because as I said, i might just lose my mind otherwise ☠️
P.S for new peeps: this is an AU with me and my friend's OCs, so all characters are genderless and go by they/them. It's not identical to our world in that regard, but other than this fact we try to keep it more or less realistic 🤙
I spent a thousand krillion hours on this and the other Solarpunk comics, consider throwing 2$ at me on Buy Me A Coffee to raise my spirits :] I'm not doing well mentally these days, but people's appreciation helps a lot. Thank you very much!
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From Solarpunk is going mainstream. This couple's $1M Kickstarter proves it
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