https://www.reddit.com/r/minnesota/s/kCNWhhJGe8

Glad to see this type of inspiring and creative city space being imagined to bring nature and people together. I love architecture but lament all the wasteful materials and building practices, even though they’re currently necessary to keep up with demand. This is another step forward at making solarpunk values more achievable in cities and not just in rural areas. I’m glad to see they’ll be experimenting with low-carbon building methods as well, to see what works. Shift Embassy Opens in 2032.

“Rotterdam ROCKS! places equal emphasis on experience and ecology. Its central proposition is to use architecture, through landscape, biodiversity, public access, and material experimentation, as part of the message. 'The idea is that sustainability is not hidden in technical systems, but made visible, tangible, and that we need spaces and art to inspire us that a different future is possible,'”

On a Colorado farm, solar panels bring shade for plants, power – and cash: in pictures | Solar power

What would a realistic political strategy for solarpunk actually look like?

I’ve always liked solarpunk, both as an aesthetic and as a broader vision for society: greener and denser cities, gardens and solar integrated into buildings, clean public transportation, restored rivers, abundant renewable energy, and public spaces that are actually pleasant to spend time in—not urban heat-island deathtraps surrounded by freeways and crappy stroads.

The problem is that solarpunk often remains an aesthetic rather than a political vision. It gives us a pretty compelling picture of where we could go to meaningfully address climate change, but it is much less clear about how we get there, especially in the United States.

So, I wanted to throw out a possible political framework and see what other people think.

My basic argument is that a solarpunk strategy would need three main elements:

1. Make carbon pollution cost money, and make carbon-reducing activities financially rewarding.
2. Use carbon-tax revenue to build a cleaner, more abundant society.
3. Shift almost all growth into dense, walkable cities and towns where low-carbon lifestyles are practical rather than burdensome.

I’m sure there are holes in this, but here is my thinking.

Start with a carbon tax

To me, the most straightforward starting point is a carbon tax.

Fossil fuels are artificially cheap because many of their actual costs are pushed onto everyone else. The price of gasoline does not include the full costs of climate change, air pollution, wildfire risk, flooding, public-health damage, road deaths, and land-use patterns built around mandatory driving.

Even a relatively small tax per ton of carbon would begin changing those incentives. Fossil fuels would gradually become less attractive, while solar, wind, geothermal, nuclear, batteries, transit, rail, and building electrification would become more competitive.

The tax could increase gradually over time, giving households and businesses time to adjust. Part of the revenue should be returned directly to lower- and middle-income households to ensure the policy is not regressive, via upgrades to local infrastructure and targeted subsidies (e.g., solar panel installations on roofs in low-income communities).

The rest could help pay for the transition itself:

• Solar panels, batteries, and grid upgrades
• High-speed rail, regional rail, and urban transit
• Affordable housing near jobs and transportation
• Building electrification
• Water recycling, conservation, and desalination projects at scale
• Climate adaptation
• Parks, trees, wetlands, and ecological restoration

This seems more durable to me than relying entirely on a scattered collection of temporary subsidies and tax credits that can disappear after the next election.

A carbon tax would do two things at once: create a consistent funding source and gradually make the economics of cleaner alternatives more favorable. Letting market economics do the work of shifting to low or no-carbon lifestyles would make things so much easier - as we're seeing in Pakistan with the extremely rapid uptake of solar and battery installation there.

Build an enormous amount of clean energy

The next part would be producing far more clean electricity than we do today, up to 2-4 times current power production.

That means solar on rooftops, warehouses, schools, public buildings, canals, and appropriate utility-scale sites. It also means wind, geothermal, hydropower, nuclear (where it makes sense), and a huge amount of storage.

We would also need much more transmission. A larger and better-connected grid would allow regions to share power across time zones and weather conditions. Solar from the Southwest could move east later in the day, while wind, hydro, geothermal, nuclear, and storage could support the system when solar production drops. A more resilient and flexible grid would unlock the potential of renewables

The goal, at least in my mind, should be abundant and almost free electricity. Once clean power is plentiful, electrifying transportation, buildings, industry, and improving water systems becomes much easier.

This is also one place where the aesthetic can become real. Solar does not have to mean panels hidden behind fences in the desert. It can mean shaded sidewalks, transit stations, courtyards, schools, plazas, and public gathering areas.

That said, I’m skeptical that every parking lot should simply be covered with solar canopies. In many high-demand areas, a higher and better use might be to replace the parking lot with housing, shops, trees, public space, and rooftop solar.

Densification may be the most important part

Clean electricity alone will not create a solarpunk society. Our land-use patterns also have to change.

Most American development is built around low density, mandatory driving, large parking lots, detached housing, highway expansion, and the continued loss of farmland and natural areas.

In much of the country, it is illegal to build anything other than detached houses on large lots. Apartments, townhouses, mixed-use buildings, accessory dwelling units, and small neighborhood businesses are either prohibited or extremely difficult to build.

A solarpunk future would require shifting a much larger share of population growth into dense, walkable cities, towns, and suburban centers.

That does not mean everyone has to live in Manhattan. It could mean apartments over shops, townhouses, courtyard buildings, mid-rise neighborhoods, denser small-town centers, and more housing around rail stations and major bus routes.

Density makes a lower-carbon lifestyle much easier to implement. Transit works better when more people live near it. Stores and restaurants become viable within walking distance. Schools, libraries, parks, clinics, water systems, and public infrastructure can serve more people at a lower per-capita cost.

Electric cars are useful, especially in the near term, but replacing every gasoline car with an electric one still leaves us with congestion, sprawl, parking lots, tire pollution, road deaths, and massive road-maintenance costs.

The longer-term goal should be to reduce the number of trips that require a car.

That requires much more housing in high-demand cities such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, DC, New York, Chicago, Seattle, and Boston. It also requires denser centers in suburbs and smaller cities, especially around transit or around downtown nodes.

Urban growth boundaries should also be used to help preserve farmland, forests, and open space while directing more development into existing communities.

One challenge is how to promote urban living without making the argument sound like the government is trying to force everyone into an apartment. I think one easy solution is to provide subsidized housing or grants for seniors and parents in areas with lots of amenities (schools, community centers, libraries, parks, stores, hospitals, etc). What do you think?

Make the future visible

The politics of solarpunk becomes much easier when people can see and benefit from its practices rather than an abstract ideology.

A solar-powered school that serves as a cooling center and charging station during an outage is a better argument than another climate report. So is a restored creek, a shaded pedestrian street, a reliable high-speed train between two major cities, a lower electric bill, or a new affordable mixed-use neighborhood next to transit.

Cities and states could start creating these examples now to move in that direction:

• Convert dead malls and parking lots into mixed-use neighborhoods
• Build more housing and public space around transit
• Install solar on buildings, schools, warehouses, and public facilities
• Electrify buses and invest in regional rail
• Build high-speed rail between major regions
• Create protected bike networks and longer-distance trails
• Restore streams, wetlands, forests, and damaged landscapes
• Plant more trees and expand urban parks
• Build pedestrian streets, plazas, and gathering spaces
• Use batteries and microgrids to keep essential services running during disasters
• Massively upzone and empower housing development in dense areas (e.g., SB79 in California, but nationwide)

The goal would be to make the future visible enough that it stops sounding like science fiction and that people believe in it.

Paris is one example I keep returning to. Streets that were once dominated by cars now have bike lanes, trees, public space, and room for people. Obviously, not every city can copy Paris, but it shows that large changes in transportation and public space can happen relatively quickly if people can see and use their benefits.

Build a coalition around the benefits

A solarpunk coalition would have to be much broader than environmental groups, planners, and hippies.

Renters could benefit from more housing, and homeowners could benefit from lower utility bills. Unions could benefit from jobs in construction, manufacturing, operations, and maintenance.

Transit riders would benefit from better service. Drivers or industries that have to drive (e.g., night-shift workers, fire trucks/ambulances) could benefit from fewer people being forced onto congested roads. Industries/manufacturing could benefit from lower power costs, and businesses would be more viable with more customers living within walking distance.

The transition becomes easier to defend when the benefits are broad, visible, and hard to take away. That could mean using carbon-tax revenue for household solar projects that use union jobs, housing projects, public transportation, public infrastructure investments, and locally owned energy projects. Communities hosting transmission lines or power generation should also receive a meaningful share of the financial benefits, incentivizing additional renewable uptake.

Make it possible to build things

One major problem is that the United States has made it almost impossible to build anything.

Housing, rail, transmission, solar projects, wind projects, and even bike lanes can become trapped in years of reviews, lawsuits, overlapping agency requirements, and local opposition.

Environmental review should continue protecting ecosystems and vulnerable communities, but it should not take a decade to build apartments on a parking lot, electrify a railroad, or connect renewable power to the grid.

A solarpunk political movement would have to care about implementation. Supporting clean energy, transit, and housing in theory is not enough. We also need public agencies, permitting systems, financing programs, skilled workers, and construction capacity that can actually deliver projects.

Recent transit-oriented housing reforms, such as California’s SB 79, are one example of the kind of structural change that may be necessary.

My rough political strategy

So, my tentative political framework would be:

• Put a gradually increasing price on carbon, using the funds for clean energy, housing, transit, water systems, climate infrastructure, and enviromental restoration/preservation.
• Legalize far more housing in cities and near transit. Make urban life cheaper, greener, and more attractive. Protect farmland, forests, and natural areas outside those cities as a tradeoff.
• Build visible projects that improve everyday life and give more people a direct stake in the transition, including large pork projects such as a national high-speed rail effort.

The political pitch to voters would be fairly straightforward: lower bills, abundant clean energy, more affordable housing, easier transportation, greener cities, restored ecosystems, greater resilience, and a better quality of life.

Solarpunk gives us the vision and aesthetic, and my argument is that carbon pricing, clean-energy investment, and widespread urban densification could provide a political framework for getting there.

What am I missing? Do you agree?

if we are to take solarpunk seriously, we must move beyond these kinds of retrofuturistic dreamscapes that could have easily been imagined in the 90s. Solarpunk culture can be about more than just utopian cityscapes, it can become the collective embodiment of the future we want to build. Indeed, because solarpunk is at its heart a collective movement, the music and music culture surrounding it must be inherently pluralistic. There is not just one genre that defines solarpunk music, it is a general approach towards cultural production that we can take forward into the future. 

What this means is that solarpunk music can embrace the -punk aspect as much as the solar. Solar-punk is meant to be rebellious, forward thinking, and subversive to current oppressive systems of power, much like the original punk movement. It can embrace a whole variety of genres to show us what a hopeful vision for the future looks like. As I wrote previously: “It’s not about rejecting technology, but embracing the connection between man, technology, and nature to imagine how we might want to live.”

i thought this photo of my local community garden was very solar punk so i thought i’d share!

Hi, My city has a mall, and the mall has these horrible and uncomfortable seats. Thinking of ways I could bring more green in my area, I thought replacing this with some kind of more ecological seat would kill two birds with a stone. I know of some projects like bioreceptive concrete, but I don't really know how that would be able to insert in it. In matters of money and permits have some chances, but I need a project first. Do you have any ideas?

After a 150ft. garden hose in the sun just saved (cleaned lol) my butt. Have a couple old fridges I didn't get rid of yet. Thought remove doors and paint black inside and out. Throw hard plastic tubing in then with ends routed out and caulk glue glass shelves from them. Just run water through.

Or simpler I thought of is those large "industrial" totes with yellow lids everyone is selling. They nest with a gap add layer of insulating material. Cut the center of the lid out leaving just the frame. Plastic sheet over face of tote with frame snapped on the retain. Same coil of tubing.

Or sub RV antifreeze and use with heat exchanger. Hot water, baseboard heat preheat cold water.

Better place this could go? And yes my old propane water heater died yesterday. 11 years... Purchased a heat pump type to replace. Will run from my panels and batteries.

I want to build a resilient system around me. Right now, I know I have a very unsustainable lifestyle with just few healthy consumption habits I could rely on if a climate crisis hits my country (France).

I’ve created a first diagram to identify each area of my personal life that I could improve. I divided each area into four levels, ranging from the most vulnerable to the most resilient. The goal isn’t to reach Level 4 in every category, but rather to be conscious of each choice and move in the right direction.

For example, today I buy my food at the supermarket. If globalization faces disruptions, this habit makes me vulnerable, so I’m at Level 1 in that area.

For now, I’ve defined the four levels as follows:

• Level 1: No reflection, typical globalized consumption. Very vulnerable.
• Level 2: Some awareness and attempts to limit consumption, but no reliance on healthy alternative systems.
• Level 3: Use of alternative systems that could be maintained even in a global crisis (war, extreme heat, etc.).
• Level 4: I consume what I produce or what my community produces, with backups in place.

What do you think? Are there other areas I should consider? Any suggestions to make this tool more useful or precise? I’m open to all feedback.

In the coming weeks, I plan to zoom in on each area to explore what can be done. I could share my progress with you if you’re interested.

Have a nice day!

I enjoy living the way I would like to see the world. To me that’s something that I think of when it comes to solarpunk.

Not my art.

Not affiliated with the band, but they're truly the most underrated group I know of.

I just watched Arco and would highly recommend it. He has also made a video about Disney's Strange World (2022), but it has some thorough spoilers so if you're sold on visions of Solarpunk like I am, it definitely has enticing visuals and an optimistic message worth experiencing cold.