[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)