I was digging up old layers of the Internet and found out about old (well, late 90s, early 2000s) texts by Bruce Sterling who mentioned his Viridian notes where he describes something very close to a solarpunk movement (sustainability focused tech and social changes). It is fun to read because some have very strong cyberpunkish vibes but with the twist that cyberpunk describes the world we are in right now and viridian is the world we want.
It led me to learn that there is a label that more or less matches solarpunk in political theory: Bright Green Environmentalism
This is a huge corpus of text and I obviously disagree with some things, and the 1999 vibes of promoting at the same time intense air travel (for multi-culturalism) and sustainability sounds a bit tone-deaf, but I find it interesting to dive in with a tolerant curiosity.
(Dig that 1999 GIF btw!)
The impression I’ve gotten of Solarpunk through lurking on this instance is of some sort of hybrid between bright and dark green environmentalism. These mix like oil and water. The bright green component, that solar panels and EVs are going whisk us away to a utopian future, is a turn off from participating.
I think this fundamentally comes from Solarpunk being an aesthetic movement where it is just so easy to draw a bunch of solar panels and batteries in some digital artwork. How are the quartz and those battery materials being mined? How are those raw ores being reduced both on a chemical and energetic standpoint? Is it even possible to have artisan/localized ways of producing these technologies vs the current status quo dependent on highly energy-intensive six continent supply chain and cheap hydrocarbon flows. Brushing aside these kinds of difficult questions with techno-optimism leads to bright green environmentalism.
The manifesto states that this movement is optimistic, but there is room for aesthetic optimism constrained by the laws of physics in the collapse of the current system. Having to re-localize and work together to survive after supply chains fail leading to re-establishment of community. Ingenious ways of salvaging unusable modern technology, like building a wind turbine from harvested car alternator. Maybe this isn’t ‘solarpunk’ but I would like to know what movement it is.
Why wouldn’t that be Solarpunk? Because there is an electric vehicles community on this instance? You are jumping to conclusions honestly.
It led me to learn that there is a label that more or less matches solarpunk in political theory: Bright Green Environmentalism
Not really, as this concept doesn’t say much about power-structures and is rather a description of Singapur like futuristic eco-authoritarianism.
Solarpunk without the punk (and anarchism) isn’t Solarpunk.
bright greens emerged as a group of environmentalists who believe that radical changes are needed in the economic and political operation of society in order to make it sustainable, but that better designs, new technologies and more widely distributed social innovations are the means to make those changes
…
[B]right green environmentalism is less about the problems and limitations we need to overcome than the “tools, models, and ideas” that already exist for overcoming them. It forgoes the bleakness of protest and dissent for the energizing confidence of constructive solutions.
Emphasis mine.
I still don’t see where the punk is in that. “Radical” is a politically neutral term that can just as well be applied to a top-down radical reorganisation of society.
If you think this is a top-down movement, then who is at the top?
Any political leader that decides to adopt it.
What I mean is that contrary to Solarpunk there are no built in protections against cooptation by an authoritarian but eco-concious government.
Nothing in the article about solarpunk describes such protections nor in the manifesto pinned here, mere declarations of intention. Don’t get me wrong, it is obvious to me that a solarpunk future is deeply anti-authoritarian but it is not only that.
This label describes the solarpunk position on the environmentalist cluster: neither light green (let’s just make ecology a consumerist trend) or dark green (We can’t change anything unless we abolish capitalism first, we are likely doomed anyway).
You are right that it does not state its position on the authoritarian axis but I find it fairly obvious that “radical social changes towards sustainability” and “more widely distributed social innovations” do not include the promotion of “innovations” like authoritarian states.
I think you need to read the manifesto again more carefully if you don’t see how it was quite intentionally designed to be anti-authoritarian. You simply can’t have a “Solarpunk” authoritarian state, it would be a direct contradiction of the terms. The same is not true about “bright green environmentalism” despite the overall progressive terms that are used to describe the idea.
Like I said it describes intentions, not protection mechanisms.
