What is Solarpunk
"Solarpunk: A genre that envisions how the future might look if humanity succeeded in solving major contemporary challenges with an emphasis on sustainability problems such as climate change and pollution. Although solarpunk is highly concerned with technology, it also embraces low-tech ways of living sustainably such as gardening, positive psychology, and DIY culture."
Solarpunk - as it was defined by Wikipedia in 2022
To me 'Solarpunk' is a genre of fiction that explores the simple question: "What if this all works out?" While apocalyptic fiction preoccupies itself with all the ways our society can be destroyed and what comes after, Solarpunk acknowledges that all of those terrible things may come to pass and we can get through it. It is by its nature, in my opinion, an optimistic genre that should focus on primarily optimistic stories. Mostly because that is the type of story we desperately need at this moment in time.
'Solarpunk' as an ethos can be divided into three main parts.
Love
Love, in the deepest broadest sense, is a major driving force of this movement. Love of our planet and love of each other, making decisions based on compassion as the guiding star.
Sustainable Flourishing
The term "Sustainable Flourishing" originates with the book Sustainability by Design by John Ehrenfeld. The underlying idea is that it's not good enough to make technology that is less harmful. "Clean" tech and even "Net Zero" are not enough. We need to treat our biosphere as the complex system that it is, and reinforce biological systems so we AND the biosphere are both continuously flourishing. It's moving away from the concept of extraction, and since reading this book I've learned that it's much closer to Indigenous models of biosphere management.