I think the simplest has got to be: get a bicycle.
To hell with it, I would even say N+1 bicycles. Ride the shit out of every bike according to the various needs you and others have. Share. Built. Assemble for group rights. Have fun.
grow something. Doesn’t have to be via digging in the dirt (though that helps), even a houseplant or hydroponics setup or a jar of herbs on a windowsill can remind you that you’re a part of the planet, not just a guest. And I think that mindset shift that comes with caring for greenery is of utmost importance.
This also scales: You can start out with a gardening kit or hydroponics kit, then you can maybe grow some herbs from seed on a windowsill, then one day you’re hoisting up a grow light over some tomatoes in your bedroom and all the sudden you’re growing food to feed yourself and your community. All very solarpunk in increasing intensity.
…the “growlight in the bedroom for tomato plants” might just have been a me thing though. (It didn’t work so well)
I’ll just leave this here
I can completely understand your growlight for tomato thing, I remember my balcony garden when I had to live in the city, with compost and all, also as a sort of test if neighbors would complain about the smell. They didn’t. Luckily I’m back to the soil and have a real garden to care for, but what you say can’t be understated. No matter if we are a human in a city or a rural area, we need other species around us, plants, animals and fungi. They can tell us things we will not hear from other humans.
Honestly the first thing is that a solarpunk life is as can be lived today can never be perfect. That is due to the very simple fact, that our society is not perfect and a good quality life in a material sense depends on it. The key is to make our current world better. So the first thing is to look at your life and look at where you make the world better and where you make it worse and then do more of the former rather then the latter.
In terms of personal impact the big ones are:
- transport, aka less car and planes and more public transport, cycling and walking
- vegan diet or at least less meat
- home heating using less energy with insulation and using a somewhat low carbon heating systems like heat pumps or a better cooling system, with a properly designed or adapted house. Also the smaller the better.
- voting if you can and that includes voting for less bad canidates. That is honestly a big impact with very little actual work
- smart investing, if possible
- Become active in good projects in your community, if only in a very limited way. There are always some social, enviromental and so forth projects going on
- change to a more usefull job, that is 40h of your week, so if you can it can have a massive impact
- reduce, reuse, recycle that is a really usefull thing. Less stuff means less work, reusing and recycling also means less capitalist exploitation, most importantly of you.
- Also really important to transform your life in a way to give you more options. The key is to become economically as independent as possible. The key parts for that are simple living, aka buy less (new) stuff, wealth and different income streams.
It is reall hard to say what is easy, as we just do not know your current lifestyle and resources. If you own your home for example chaning the heating system is relativly easy, but if you rent it might be impossible, but if you live in a flat in a big city, going car free is easy. It all depends and we can not decide for you, but you have to solve that one yourself. Living a good life is not easy, that is unfortuatly the truth.
There are some great ideas in there, but I don’t quite think that what you are describing is solarpunk. More like a eco-socialist The list needs more solar and more punk:
More solar ideas:
- Build your own house battery system
- Install solar panels, geothermal heating/cooling
- capture rainwater for plants/animals
- Plant trees. Lots of trees.
- Use small computers to automate plant watering/hydroponics systems *Indoor vertical farming
- run for local government to spread solarpunk ideas and help take action
- Learn to sew, make clothes from repurposed textiles/mend clothes instead of buying new ones
- start a blog/website spreading solarpunk ideas
- create music/art with solarpunk ideas
More punk ideas:
- Seed bombing
- Destroying/vandalizing infrastructure used for fossil fuels
- Destroy/vandalize heavy machinery used for biodiversity destruction (road construction, mining, single-family housing developments)
- join/create an intentional community or eco village
- blockade roads, drastically slowing economic activity
- Blockade private/executive airports
- Pirate software, research papers, textbooks, and help keep information open source
- create music/art spreading solarpunk ideas
There are some great ideas in there, but I don’t quite think that what you are describing is solarpunk. More like a eco-socialist
My thinking was more of a what are things, which have a good impact / easyness ratio. That means a lot of these solutions use our current system to a fairly large extend, as it makes them easier to do. Thats propably, why you get socialist vibes. Also I tried to stay away from “criminal” stuff, as that does carry a fairly high risk and is propably a bad place to start.
Again, if it’s bad depends on the personal perspective and context. Both of your ideas are great, the more mainstream ones as well as the more ‘criminal’ ones. People who currently have kids, for example, might want to opt for a more crime-free style, younger people might feel more angry and want to get active. Usually I am more for the constructive than the destructive, but that might just reflect my relatively comfortable position in life.
This is the kind of thing I was looking for. Practical things that make a difference. Thankyou.
I don’t think there is a simple answer to this question. First and foremost it depends on your current living situation and how much (economic) freedom you have to change something about it.
I think it is important to look for like-minded people, primarily off-line, but on-line exchange can also help. Maybe look for some place or activity that is likely to attract other people with similar ideas. Or if it doesn’t exist, try starting one (yes that’s going to be not easy).
Here are some that I don’t think others have mentioned but that are big ones in my own interpretation of solarpunk:
- Repair things. Clothes are mostly what I have the skills to repair myself, but repairing things that are still useful like a phone or laptop that still meets your needs
- support open source and free license software. I think this one is more a part of my own interpretation, but to me open source/FLOSS software is like the software equivalent of employee owned, or community owned and operated. And that’s super cool! It sidesteps a lot of the problems of profit motives ruining everything good, because some amount of the motive in the FLOSS world was an ideological idea of good to start with. With the whole fedora controversy about paywalling source code, that’s not even as shitty as the corporate world is by default and the open source community generally STILL wouldn’t stand for it.
- Support your local economy! Farmer’s markets are a great way to do this, but I always try to look around for local shops when I need something like stationery, or local restaurants if I’m eating out. Searching google maps for a category of business (like “stationery”) and then looking for the non chain options is a helpful way to find places, but its also just a nice reason to pay attention to your surroundings when you’re out and about!
Edit: massively agree with voting!
I randomly stumbled upon something called “Solidary agriculture” yesterday. People come together, pay a monthly price to keep a farm running. This makes the farm independent from draughts, bad harvests etc. In return for the money you get fresh produce throughout the year, no price fluctuations, you always get what was produced. Sometimes more sometimes less. If this isn’t Solarpunk I don’t know what is. It’s pretty easy as well, provided there is an initiative like that in your area.
I’ve seen this called community supported agriculture (CSA), which may help you find a local one.
Good to know! I translated from German, here it is called “Solidarische Landwirtschaft”
I’m genuinely curious. How does this model differ from community-supported agriculture? Or is it just a variation on that concept? I’m just curious what the key distinction might be.
I heard about both for the first time, but from what I have read now it’s probably the german equivalent to CSA.
I saw you answered it in another response, but it may have come in about the same time I asked. Thank you for responding anyway to a redundant question.
Rainwater Harvesting. This guy mobilized his neighborhood to become active through small changes: https://youtu.be/XGPxTqMYfNE
Also I found slrpnk.net and this is where I for the first time heard about Solarpunk. I was trying to figure out what it is about, but other than cool futuristic pictures I couldn’t really figure it out.
In Solarpunk we’ve pulled back just in time to stop the slow destruction of our planet. We’ve learned to use science wisely, for the betterment of our life conditions as part of our planet. We’re no longer overlords. We’re caretakers. We’re gardeners.
In a few words: it’s about imagining and working towards a future that is sustainable and with no inequalities, and it’s not even futuristic really, it’s about using what we already have rather than waiting for a billionaire with the miracle technology that will save us. It’s also rooted in activism and anarchism. You can also check out this video.
Thanks for the explanation!
I had only the vaguest ideas about what solarpunk really is about. But it had ‘punk’ in it and the list of communities cover much of what I’m interested about, so I joined. And it sorts out, that’s how I found out I’m solarpunk. Maybe a bit heavy on the meat, but it’s self-raised.
So I have two:
Land conservation is huge - especially the creation/preservation of greenways, corridors that animals follow because there are fewer human encroachments there (whether new neighborhoods replacing habitats, or roads which present a threat to any animal with a need to roam). Conservation is a huge task to take on solo – you’re looking at all the expense of purchasing land, without much or any plan to profit off it, so basically nobody in our society really understands it, (most people will look at you like you’re crazy, and banks aren’t likely to help without a plan to develop). I’ve tried and failed at solo conservation. But there are other options - land conservation nonprofits can make it possible - I’ve worked with, and volunteered with one and they’re amazing. So I guess my addition for ‘simple’ is find one you like and consider donating or volunteering. If you already own land, consider easements which could prevent further development or extraction of resources like mining - conservation nonprofits will cheerfully help you get this done, and will probably fundraise for it, including paying you the value ‘lost’ by adding restrictions to your property.
My other one is simpler - join a Buy Nothing group and change how you think about, acquire, and dispose of stuff. When I moved to my current town, I found and fell in love with the concept of “Buy Nothing”/ “Everything is Free” groups (I’ve written a longer post about them here https://slrpnk.net/post/354527). The short version is they’re online groups, usually covering a very small geography like a town, where people can either offer up things they don’t want anymore rather than throwing them away, and where people who need things can post a request or In Search Of (ISO) for specific things in case anyone has one they don’t need. They’re awesome because they’re a way to meet and help your neighbors, and keep stuff out of the landfill. They’re punk because they completely challenge the capitalist, individualist structure of our society in small, day-to-day ways. Our ‘ideal’ capitalist society has us all siloed, isolated from our neighbors and churning through products as fast as possible. Places are destroyed and resources are extracted so they can be turned into products, sold to consumers, used, and then thrown away. Maybe they’re broken at that point (could they be fixed?) but it’s just as likely that they’re just old, unfashionable, or the person throwing it out doesn’t have room or a need for it anymore. We’re not supposed to know or care if someone has the exact thing we need sitting dusty in a closet or if we’re throwing out something someone in our town is on their way to buy, because that would slow the whole cycle down and generate less money. Break that cycle, buy fewer new things, fix stuff, give it away for free.
Other people have posted longer lists with a broader range of examples, so I feel okay sticking to the two I’m pretty evangelical about. Good luck!!
