Solarpunk discussion

A collection of science fiction stories, art, and essays exploring how the transition to solar energy will transform cities; catalyze revolutions in politics, governance, and culture; and create diverse futures for human communities. Cities of Light emphasizes that the design of solar energy matters in shaping the future of urban communities and considers how each city’s geographic and social features, along with the arc of its particular local history, create unique challenges and opportunities as we work collectively to design more equitable energy futures.

Totally Free! https://csi.asu.edu/books/cities-of-l...

Woo! I've been looking for an excuse to jump into this one :)

This works out perfectly. I just finished The Weight of Light last month. I'm looking forward to this one.

I, too, will be joining for this one. :)

I'm jotting down my notes as I read--starting with:

~ First 'wow' fact (from "Introduction: Imagined Cities"):

Already, at still relatively low levels of integration into the electricity grid, solar power in California generates so much electricity during the middle of the day, between 10:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m., that prices in California electricity markets are negative—meaning they are paying people to use daytime electricity.

~ Paolo Bacigalupi's "Efficiency" offers a glimpse of better urban transportation:

The commute home was easy, paid for by Great Lakes Amalgamated and the traffic department, a combination of congestion and rush-hour and snow-clearing credits coming into play. The more people used HoodElectric zipbuses after the storm, the easier it was for the city to clear the highways and side streets, concentrating only on actual commute routes, instead of having to clear all that pavement for private vehicles to get in and out. Simple one-way lanes, this way and that, for the automated buses to follow. Saving energy, grid demand, plowing time. Paying people to get on a bus made more sense than pushing them out to Lyfts and private vehicles, with all the infrastructure that the city had to maintain as a result.

James was just old enough that he could remember when streets had been for cars. Now, more than half his neighborhood street was dominated by solar panels and home gardens, with only a thin lane for the HoodZips to navigate through. In summer, the reclaimed street was full of vegetables and flowers and buzzing bees and people sitting on benches beneath the shade of high-mount solar panels. Now that snow was covering everything, it was snow sculptures, a quiet garden made by the neighborhood families. 

As the little self-driving HoodZips had saturated South Side, and as other similar services started in other parts of the city, people had mostly stopped using cars. The HoodZips responded quickly to demand, taking automated counts of people waiting at the stops, pulling out to meet demand and then retiring themselves when demand stopped. Even in winter there was never more than a two-minute wait for a local bus. They just unplugged themselves and showed up as soon as people started to gather at a location, AI-optimized, a simpler version of Lucy. In some cases, the system could see people leaving their homes and send a bus to wait for them, beating them to their stop. Why own a car when it was that simple? Even now, in the middle of winter when power was scarcer and HoodZips couldn’t store as much surplus power, there were enough to serve people plenty well.

As a whole, the story effectively presents different (but complementary) approaches to electricity generation by linking them to intergenerational conflict (and its resolution). The only part that rang contrived to me was the all-too-human AI; then again, we tend to underestimate the complexities of achieving a working, evolving intelligence.

~ The language of Andrew Dana Hudson's "Solarshades" is so hip it makes me oscillate between exhilarated and confused. Here's a funnier sample (and a nod to all of us here ;):

“Fuck do you keep goin’ up there for?” Jeffers asked when Kismet hauled himself back over the wall one sweaty dusk. “Don’t tell me you been suckered by some Multnomah side piece. I don’t care how hot they are, I won’t have my brother woozy over some stuck-up solarpunk-ass bitch!”

Kismet shrugged it off. “Nah. Just class stuff. School system got some avant-garde ideas about group projects, in-person learning shit. Torko and I figure if we do this project together, we can blow off the whole rest of the term.”

The story itself is hopeful in just the right way: without simplification and easy solutions.

~ Patricia Romero-Lankao's "Quiet Mobilization, Inclusion, and the Energy Futures of Cities" introduced me to the concept of quiet mobilization:

(...) quiet mobilization [is] a term used by sociologists to denote a form of political engagement by an apparently silent majority of people. (...) Quiet mobilization, either for or against solar, transit, sprawl repair, energy and sustainability policies, or social and cultural practices, entails daily chats with neighbors and colleagues, the formation of local interest groups, civic meetings, discussions at churches and recreational centers, conversations with colleagues, and other forms of daily engagement in civil society.

(...) Social scientists such as Colin Jerolmack and Edward T. Walker suggest that quiet mobilization is an especially attractive option for collective action in rural, white, conservative communities, where open forms of mobilization against fracking or for disinvestment in coal and the fossil-fuel industry are viewed with disdain and mistrust, as something that only Democrats, urbanites, or liberals do. I would argue that this is the preferred option for the majority of populations who, like Kismet, embrace their inner orbits (families, clans, or neighbors) as outlets for their political interactions, rather than engage directly with the wider political structure of their society.

~ S.B. Divya's "Things That Bend, But Don't Break" is a feel-good story about problem-solvers, in attitude and in action. We need more of those.

I got it on my Kindle and will start tonight :)
I'm very motivated for this one after reading Kalin's comments.

Yay! I'm not sure how much time I'll have in the near future, but I definitely want to read this one.

I enjoyed Bacigalupi's "Efficiency" - it was also a pleasant surprise to see his name in this collection. It was a good story and he captured a lot of ideas in the interpersonal tensions and relationships. But I really couldn't stomach the supporting essays for this first story. The "Remarks by the President" was just a saccharine fantasy and the rest... well... It seems like they're shoehorning a lot of ideology into this collection compared to the Weight of Light, and I started to get this feeling in the introduction. The energy-mobility framework is interesting but the Bacigalupi's story did a better job with the idea than the rest. So far, the fiction is standing heads and shoulders above the other writing. Hopefully they'll turn it around.

I just got a copy. It sounds like an interesting book, and I'm looking forwards to reading it.

I've also completed the Chicago section, and I agree Khalil - Paolo Bacigalupi's Efficiency was definitely the standout for me as well.
Remarks by the President hit a bit too sweet for me as well, though I did think linking back to current initiatives was a good idea.
I preferred Madeline Gilleran's non-fiction approach with her essay.
Up next - Portland, Oregon.

Fiona wrote: "I've also completed the Chicago section, and I agree Khalil - Paolo Bacigalupi's Efficiency was definitely the standout for me as well.
Remarks by the President hit a bit too sweet for me as well, ..."

Cheers, Fiona. :)

In case you're interested, a real-life case study is happening in my backyard:

"Huge solar project in southeast Calcasieu draws opposition from residents"
https://www.kplctv.com/2021/08/12/hug...

I’ve just finished reading Efficiency, and I have to agree. That is a great story. I didn’t see the ending coming, and the relationships between character are quite interesting. Well, on to the next one.

I'm still on the first batch of essays and I'm finding them a drab series of criticisms and complaints. The imagery of the four solar panel pictures -
"The political and economic differences across these four photographs are vast: a libertarian dream, a neoliberal nightmare, a variant on state-sponsored capitalism, a collectivist utopia."
- all sounded fine to me. Use them all, just get it done. The world is on fire.

Khalil wrote: "In case you're interested, a real-life case study is happening in my backyard:

"Huge solar project in southeast Calcasieu draws opposition from residents"
https://www.kplctv.com/2021/08/12/hug......"

Very interesting! I have no idea about the weather-resistance of solar panels; if anyone else knows how they do in hurricanes/tornadoes I'd be super keen to hear!

The issue with power being sold out of state, though, I have less sympathy for - in the long run, I'm a big believer in a setup like Europe's, with one power grid able to draw/generate as needed.

And Lena, gotta agree - when the ocean is literally on fire and the billionaires are getting together to mine the so-far unspoiled resources, we're working to a deadline here!

Fiona wrote: The issue with power being sold out of state, though, I have less sympathy for - in the long run, I'm a big believer in a setup like Europe's, with one power grid able to draw/generate as needed.

Yeah, their objections seem to be a type of NIMBY-ism possibly underpinned with right-wing anti-climate change ideology. They're paper-thin.

But this series from the Center for Science and the Imagination has made me sensitive to the need to communicate and collaborate with local communities that make systems work for and benefit them.

I finished the introduction.

It's the first time I read a book produced in a narrative hackathon, and it has been interesting to know how they worked in teams, the questions they were asked, the factors they took into account...

Althought at some points it is repetitive, it raises very interesting issues on how our energy system conditions our instrastructure and lives, how it is not merely a question of technology, and the importance of our choices.

The transition will involve messiness, discomfort, and in some cases, dislocation and displacement. Yet it is also a chance to strengthen neighborhoods, foster greater equity and civic engagement, and repair the natural environments and ecosystems that both surround and wind through our cities.

I agree, Lena. We have to act now with what we got. We can't afford to wait for it to be perfect.

Neus wrote: "Althought at some points it is repetitive, it raises very interesting issues on how our energy system conditions our instrastructure and lives, how it is not merely a question of technology, and the importance of our choices."

I completely agree with you about that.

I'm some 160 pages into this, and I have to say I'm enjoying the shorts stories more than the essays. Most of the essays are quite interesting, but I still feel I'm getting more out of the stories.

Finished the Chicago part.

Efficiency has been my favourite too.

I wonder if Remarks by the President seems too sweet to us because we're used to dominating and brash speeches from presidents.

I liked how A Mobility Revolution is Coming ridicules the automobile ("the insatiably hungry monster that was the personal-vehicle phenomenon") and evokes a scenario where the streets are reclaimed by its citizens.
In Barcelona, at least, personal automobile use is unnecessary. The city is small enough to move around by bicycle and has an optimal public transport network. Yet, the city is overcrowded with cars causing traffic jams--and people grumpy--, accidents and pollution.

I think the most important message of Grid Innovation is that it is not enough to spread the message for real change to happen, people also have to feel empowered.

Decolonizing Technology offers an interesting insight into "the system" and uses the characters of Efficiency to explain it.

Efficiency is a problem of standardization, of colonizing people to become elements of the system, to do what the system needs them to do.
These systems are so fully optimized that all it took was a few extra people buying a few extra toilet paper rolls and storing them in their closets to rapidly disrupt operations.
Generativity is a problem of creativity and individuality, of shaping life along lines that matter to those living them, of creating systems that serve diversity.

I'm maybe halfway through Solarshades, and I just want to make this one observation before I forget...

I like how Hudson portrays the intersection of social conflicts and technology in the story. It reminds me of the Arab Spring when newscasters were saying things like, "Facebook caused the revolution," which was just ridiculous. Social media was no doubt an important tool, but it was only the m.o. It didn't cause the revolution in the way it was being discussed in the news. Social resentment and acts of resentment had been building up and popping up since at least the 90s. Even without Facebook, something would have happened. To quote Dr. Ian Malcolm, "Life, uh, finds a way."

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Hudson is doing a way better job presenting a more nuanced interplay of technology, information, data, social divisions, and social conflict.

Finished the Portland section - I am absolutely loving all the perspectives shared here, it's really given me a much wider lens for this collection.

The story itself was my favourite piece, but the essays this time were much less speculative and I thought did better as a result.

I mostly agree on the role of social media and uprisings - I believe entirely in a free internet, but it's hard not to also look at things like America's capitol invasion, and the spread of misinformation through those platforms, and worry that the freedom is going to individuals much too well versed in exploiting the more credulous.

On the other hand, life does indeed find a way - look at all the cults of the 60s, 70s, 80s - they were more than able to come together to deadly effect.

I may have segued a bit! I think in the end there really isn't an answer that solves everything.

Fiona wrote: "I mostly agree on the role of social media and uprisings - I believe entirely in a free internet, but it's hard not to also look at things like America's capitol invasion, and the spread of misinformation through those platforms, and worry that the freedom is going to individuals much too well versed in exploiting the more credulous"

That's a great point. It reminds of how the story demonstrated the different ways social forces use technology. The power company quantified people's lives in terms of input, output, and profit, but the platform Nova installed in the solarshades analyzed people very differently.

I just started Portland. The Presidential speech in Chicago sounded like an alternate Bernie Sanders-on-Weed Universe. Efficiency was readable, enjoyable, and thought-provoking: a relief as The Windup Girl was only one of those things.

Finished Portland and agree with Fiona's and Khalil's remarks.

The importance of societal pressure:
"Funny, they claimed they were planning it all along, soon as they finished their informal energy survey, that census worker whose shades you stole. But they wouldn’t have gotten moving if we hadn’t pushed.”

I just finished the book, and I thought it was interesting how the last essay tied the ideas from the four short stories together. I think this was the first solarpunk anthology that I’ve read so I’m not knowledgeable about the genre, but I think it is an interesting genre.

I’ve read some cli fi, some realistic, and others completely dystopian of the kind where Earth is more or less dead, and to be honest, the dystopians are just depressing to read. What I like about the stories here is that there is still hope. The transition from carbon to electric isn’t portrayed as easy, but it’s working.

I’m going to keep read more solarpunk.

Neus wrote: "The importance of societal pressure:
"Funny, they claimed they were planning it all along, soon as they finished their informal energy survey, that census worker whose shades you stole. But they wouldn’t have gotten moving if we hadn’t pushed.”

Even when we're able to win some change, we still feel powerless at the end of it all. It's like pushing a builder up a hill. It's very realistic and a lot of the stories in this series do a good job of capturing this feeling.

“I’m going to keep read more solarpunk.”
Woohoo, a new convert!

Lena wrote: "“I’m going to keep read more solarpunk.”
Woohoo, a new convert!"

🙂

I finished the first Puerto Rican story. It did well to illustrate the difference between being sustainable and being isolated.

I have a soft spot for islands so I really enjoyed Things That Bend, But Don’t Break. I think reaching self-sufficiency in islands is even more urgent than in mainland due to their isolated condition.

I liked the integration of ecosystem restoration into the story.

During her childhood, the harbor waters had been dark and oily instead of clear and turquoise. Now, jewel-colored parrotfish and wrasses swam in the waters below.

And I was surprised that they ate ham at La Granja, I guess I was imagining a community like this as vegetarian, and even if they do eat meat from time to time, I find it hard to believe that they kill the animals themselves--given that their idea is to be self-sufficient.

New Solar Paint May Change Life as We Know It emphasizes the benefits of ecosystem restoration:

With the nation’s economy shifted from capitalism to terrametrism, new wealth is now created in the economy when ecoregions, habitats, and the atmosphere are restored, and is lost when they are damaged.

Neus wrote: "And I was surprised that they ate ham..."

That's an excellent point, which I overlooked when I read that story. I can understand people who eat the animals they've raised themselves (such as my grandparents), but when you buy meat, it gets tricky.

The story of San Antonio has seemed very realistic to me, perhaps because I can perfectly imagine it happening in our immediate future, even before the temporal setting of the story in 2050.
Seeing cities that adapt but don't really change, like Houston, and others that have adapted and seized the opportunity to create something new, like La Estrella.

Here is a short article about those jackfruit batteries and the complicated process of going from fruit to battery (glossed over in story as it would require serious infrastructure).
https://www.google.com/amp/s/bigthink...
Also you would need hazard pay to be working with Durian fruit:
https://youtu.be/I-l4fNkqWfU

Lena, thanks for the link to the article. I find it quite interesting that the jackfruit batteries aren’t just fiction, but it clearly won’t be a simple matter to start to use them as such.

A tiny brag... The college library I work at hosts a speaking series every year, and Joey Eschrich and Clark Miller just confirmed to speak. :D

Who Hoo! Tell them about us!

Finished! https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Thanks for the article, Lena!

No way, Khalil :) So cool you get to meet the editors.

That's so cool Khalil! Should be a really interesting series :D

Things that bend, but don't break - thanks for that article, Lena; I find it so cool that this is an actual, feasible thing! The issues of land hoarding aren't unique to islands either; it's mindblowing that we can have both homeless people and people-less buildings. Really enjoyed this short story.

Of the essays, the last was my favourite - the focus on inclusion and modifying from focusing on new/cool technology to quality of life was right up my alley.

One section to go, and it's back to the US with Texas!

I read the first San Antonio story and was ecstatic about the idea of geofencing. I know it would have awful military/political uses but I would pay extra to live in Estrellas for that reason alone.

We have Dark Sky communities in Texas, the nearest one to San Antonio being Dripping Springs. https://www.darksky.org/dripping-spri...

Yes, south Texas is bat crazy! We love our mosquito eating machines!
https://youtu.be/AK3Dq3pm4Do
https://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_...
Due to the frightful winter we had many bats died, particularly the male colony living under the I-35 overpass. Some say that, and the double dose of May rain, is why the mosquitoes have been particularly bad this year.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.tpr....

Speaking of bats, one of my best friends is the founder of Bat World Bulgaria, our local branch of the international NGO that takes care of bats injured or threatened by human activities. I'm just about to ask all my other friends to send donations to Bat World in lieu of giving me birthday presents. ;)

Woohoo finished! https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Thank you catch up month!