[HN Gopher] A Solarpunk Manifesto
___________________________________________________________________
A Solarpunk Manifesto
Author : omnibrain
Score : 44 points
Date : 2021-07-17 21:13 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.re-des.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.re-des.org)
| Animats wrote:
| _1800s age-of-sail /frontier living (but with more bicycles)_
|
| About 2/3 of the world population has to go for that.
|
| We're in good shape on energy and in good shape on food. Both can
| come from a wide variety of sources and locations. The long term
| sustainability problems are further out, running out of copper,
| cobalt, etc. Recycling will get some of it, but not all of it,
| back.
| omnibrain wrote:
| That's about the aesthetics for the art/visions. Not a goal how
| the world has to look.
| Animats wrote:
| Right. Like the Chobani commercial.[1]
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/MS-sJQkr0H4
| omnibrain wrote:
| Looks like corporate greenwashing.
|
| It actually has some nice aspects. The windmill zeppelins
| are unlikely to work, but the drones and harvest machine
| hint to some (advanced) mechanization in producing crops,
| so no unrealistic "we do everything by hand, even when we
| can only support like 10% of the population this way".
| omnibrain wrote:
| The production company posted an extended cut on twitter: h
| ttps://twitter.com/thelinestudio/status/1413543900862627842
| newbie789 wrote:
| This is interesting. I've personally only ever seen the word
| "solarpunk" here on HN and on sites linked to on here. I'm kind
| of curious as to how big this community is.
|
| For example, I learned about steampunk when I asked about why
| somebody had copper gears on their hat and somebody explained it
| to me. I learned about cyberpunk from, well, growing up in the
| 90s. They both immediately evoke specific aesthetics unique to
| them, and it's not hard to think of seminal
| movies/models/novels/music for each one.
|
| I do not have this association with solarpunk.
|
| I wasn't unable to picture the solarpunk aesthetics based off the
| list of bullet points aside from Miyazaki with a lot of bikes,
| which I doubt is the whole thing.
|
| What are some examples of solarpunk art? Who are some solarpunk
| evangelists? Does this actually exist outside of a phrase used by
| posters on Hacker News?
| sxp wrote:
| Reddit's https://www.reddit.com/r/solarpunk/ is a good place
| start if you want an optimistic view of the future that embraces
| technology rather than blames it for all of society's ills.
|
| And my favorite poem of all time is
| https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/09/weeke...
|
| There is a strong solarpunk vs cyberpunk split in art and sci-fi
| which provides some beautiful contrasts:
| https://mobile.twitter.com/ScootFoundation/status/1330271990...
| omnibrain wrote:
| I used to enjoy my cyberpunk and other dystopias like the next
| guy. But to be honest, nowadays the world is bleak enough and
| even classic utopias like Star Trek grow stale or turn into
| dystopias. I like the fresh and friendly new vision of a livable
| future Solarpunk provides.
| the-dude wrote:
| Let me tell you about the 70ies and 80ies.
| sha256kira wrote:
| yes... go on?
| the-dude wrote:
| First we were all gonna die a horrible death in a nuclear
| armageddon. When that didn't happen, all forests would die
| due to acid rain and we would all suffocate. When that
| didn't happen the hole in the ozon layer was discovered and
| we would all die of skin cancer.
|
| I must have forgotten some.
| sha256kira wrote:
| Thats such an excellent succinct counterpoint to all the
| doomer nihilism we tend to slip into on HN. I feel like
| this should be on some kind of open source tshirt or
| commemorative plate.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Those... are all problems that would have happened if we
| didn't change our behavior. And luckily we did. Well,
| except the forests are still being destroyed.
| robbedpeter wrote:
| What's happening in the Amazon is an obscene travesty,
| but overall global forest cover has been increasing for
| about a century. The 80s and 90s saw the ozone hole and
| acid rain problems addressed and ultimately put on the
| way to being righted.
|
| Fire frequency and intensity in the US are a function of
| warming and really stupid forest management, with
| density, deadwood, water table policies, and other
| localized aspects being used wantonly as political
| tokens.
|
| We need to do so much better. We also need to be much
| more competent at scale. It's possible. It's necessary.
| There are too many big real problems for the current
| state of disarray to last, one way or another.
| guscost wrote:
| I don't believe that claim at all.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| I mean, obviously nuclear war was averted because we
| ended the cold war (we changed our behavior). I suppose I
| could be misinformed but I believe the hole in the ozone
| layer was fixed by banning CFCs (we changed our
| behavior)? I know less about acid rain. We are continuing
| to destroy forests.
| duskwuff wrote:
| Acid rain was the result of air pollution containing
| nitrogen and sulfur oxides, primarily from industrial
| sources, but also from vehicles. Strict emissions
| controls have largely solved this problem in developed
| countries.
| guscost wrote:
| > I mean, obviously nuclear war was averted because we
| ended the cold war (we changed our behavior).
|
| I had a very spirited argument the other day about
| whether a unipolar world is actually more stable than a
| multipolar world, or not. The threat of nuclear war is
| ever-present, even if it is less serious now than it was
| in the 60s. I'm not sure where you get "obviously" in
| this claim.
|
| > I believe the hole in the ozone layer was fixed by
| banning CFCs
|
| The alternative explanation (which I'm sure you will be
| able to find a "debunking" of somewhere) is that ozone is
| regenerated very quickly, and the "hole" (it really was
| never more than a "thin spot") in the Antarctic has
| improved because the South Pole is exposed to just a
| little more solar energy now. CFCs probably do make some
| difference, but they are very heavy molecules and would
| not accumulate much in the upper atmosphere:
|
| https://news.mit.edu/2021/cfc-atmosphere-ozone-0518
| the-dude wrote:
| The famous picture of a dying forest to drive that
| narrative down everybody's throat was a picture of ... a
| forest dying of something else.
| coldtea wrote:
| We still have more nukes than ever, plenty to destroy all
| major metropolitan centers, and exterminate 1-2 billion
| people. We still have corrupt and war hungry people in
| power (and a sense that they can meddle everywhere
| without repurcursions), and so on.
|
| So, we didn't exactly change anything on that front.
|
| We still have worse than ever pollution, increased
| industrial production, several times increased fossil
| fuel burning, etc. So much for doing something for acid
| rain then. What happened was just that industry moved to
| China and elsewhere, so we exported the problem from
| where 12% of the global population lives (US and Europe)
| to where 40% lives.
|
| And so on...
| roughly wrote:
| You understand that a huge amount of work and effort went
| into handling those problems, right? Like, they weren't
| not problems, we just actually did something about
| them...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_the_Non-
| Proliferatio...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_Helsinki_Protocol_on_t
| he_...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol
| coldtea wrote:
| We were also all going to freeze in the "New Ice Age".
| sha256kira wrote:
| Literally teared up while reading. We can do this. Also, Liu
| Cixin?
| twoknee wrote:
| Hugged to death
|
| https://archive.is/tTLWR
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| The site is throwing a 503 error, but there is a good archive
| link here:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20210717211859/http://www.re-des...
|
| Looks like a great manifesto. I'd also like to share my real
| world solarpunk project to those interested:
| https://community.twistedfields.com/t/a-closer-look-at-acorn...
| sha256kira wrote:
| omg I love that farming bot project! perfect concrete example
| after reading that manifesto :^) super inspired
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Thank you so much! I wrote my own manifesto some years ago.
|
| http://tlalexander.com/machine/
| sha256kira wrote:
| Any other projects (especially software or web related) you
| can recommend in this same spirit? Or maybe hackathons /
| conventions / irc / discord communities etc. for software
| engineers interested in getting involved?
| okareaman wrote:
| I grew up in the 60's and read a lot of Science Fiction in the
| 70's as a teen. I found a lot of optimistic takes on the future,
| which are largely being born out: incredible advances in medical
| technology, home computers and now computers that fit in a
| pocket, affordable ability to communicate, video conference or
| travel anywhere in the world, the failure of totalitarian
| communism, amazing space telescopes, civilian space travel,
| phasing out fossil fuels for solar and other renewable energy and
| so on. I'm optimistic we will invent technology to deal with
| climate change and food/water shortages.
|
| Yet after the Vietnam war, race riots, Charles Manson, the oil
| embargo and 12% inflation, the media just loves to promote doom
| and gloom about the future. I think anxious people shop more to
| distract themselves. Sometimes I feel like a lone optimist.
| sebmellen wrote:
| That feeling of being a lone optimist is ever-present for me as
| well. Sometimes I think it's just a lack of real transcendent
| and great art. If science fiction's heyday is over, which
| artists are seeing and imagining the future today?
|
| My personal biases incline me to think psychedelics have an
| important role to play.
| prvc wrote:
| What was the last successful artistic genre where theory preceded
| practice?
| tomcooks wrote:
| > has room for spirituality and science to coexist
|
| No thanks
|
| It's also not clear to me how one would combine tech with
| ecology, especially solar
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-07-17 23:00 UTC)