Episoder
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This week on Solarpunk Presents Podcast, Ariel chats with Selena Middleton, Publisher and Editor of Stelliform Press, all about publishing eco-fiction. What is eco-horror, and how does it relate to solarpunk fiction? What are the hallmarks of a good solarpunk story, according to Selena? How does history fit into visions of the future, and what does character have to do with it? Join us as we discuss all this and more.
Links:
Stelliform Press website
Depart! Depart! by Sim Kern
Another Life by Sarena Ulibarri
Green Fuse Burning by Tiffany Morris
The House of Drought by Dennis Mombauer
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Now streaming: some hot takes from your solarpunk aunties. Ariel and Christina consider why wallowing in negative feelings is just so delicious ... as opposed to wallowing in, you know, acts of kindness and feelings of compassion, which are just a bit more solarpunk. We live in an age of outrage, it seems: cancelling, social media mobbing, cyberbullying ... but also drawing attention to human rights violations, or dodgy political happenings, or just straight-up illegal goings-on! How can we tell whether our outrage is justified or not? How can we avoid emotional manipulation? Can we think of outrage as a solarpunk tool?
Links:
What is Affect Theory?Cultivating Emotional Literacy Get bonus content on PatreonHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Manglende episoder?
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On some very serious level, it’s just not solarpunk if it’s not about a community taking action to make the world a better place. Individualism: it’s just so wrong. It’s fair to say that, not just in solarpunk, but in our cultures, “community” is right up there with “children” as an idea of something inherently good, moral, and wonderful. Community is worshiped as an answer to our problems. But Christina gets a sinking feeling every time she reads a solarpunk story that idolizes community.
In this episode, Christina tries to figure out why she’s so suspicious of community and so afraid of being suffocated by the rules, regulations, and norms of community. Join us for our Season 5 closer in which she and Ariel peek at community’s darker sides, like infighting, conformity, the potential for ostracizing people who don’t conform, and the fact that the existence of a community automatically creates a them.
Links: https://www.newyorker.com/news/on-religion/losing-a-beloved-community
Important announcement: We will be going on a short break for August, but stay tuned for season six in September!
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Join us for the final interview of this season, as we talk with Michael DeLuca, publisher of Reckoning, a yearly journal of creative writing on environmental justice, and author of The Jaguar Mask. Michael, impressed by the creative uses of cast off technology in the Global South, would like us to also adopt old tech. He recommends that we follow their lead and adapt old tech to suit our needs, as well as find creative new uses for old tech. We should do better than just be passive consumers of the tech that is sold to us more to the needs and convenience of the companies that produce it than to ours.
You can follow Michael via his website (mossyskull.com), Mastodon (@[email protected]), and Bluesky and X (@michaeljdeluca).
Here are some links relevant to our discussion...
...about the hand-cranked laptop
...concerning the (reindeer) who ate all the food on the island
...regarding a degrowth strategy to reach net zero carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere
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In this episode, Christina talks with Star Ngei, a maker/hacker who helps raise awareness of Global South technology and innovation through the NGO Global Innovation Gathering (GIG), which hosts a network of makers and makerspaces throughout the Global South. Although it’s hard to generalize across a space as culturally, politically, economically, and geographically diverse as the Global South, Christina and Star discuss how the access of people in the Global South to tech is limited compared to that of people in the Global North and so they have a more creative, non-linear approach to technology. They’re far more open to modifying a piece (or pieces) of technology to fit their specific needs, rather than just using it as it comes out of the box and merely specifically for its intended use. Christina and Star also talk about climate change and what the Global North can learn from the Global South in terms of dealing with it. Lastly, they talk about building community and how, if you’re interested in working to decrease global inequality by helping people in the Global South, the best place to start is by striking up a relationship with a community there first. Unless you want your efforts to be a waste of your time, their time, and resources, don’t just give a group of people in the Global South what you think they need, find out what they think they would find useful.
To join, support, or learn more about Global Innovation Gathering, check out https://globalinnovationgathering.org/
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André Rosario (aka HydroponicTrash) joins us this week on the podcast to tell Ariel all about dual power - what it is, how it fits in with solarpunk, and how people can mobilize it in their daily lives. Their conversation ranges from the history of the term dual power, to examples from André’s own life, to the concept of mutual aid, the importance of imagining a better world, how to build relationships as an introvert, and even includes a discussion of human nature. Get bonus content on Patreon
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This episode’s guest is Dr Anne Pasek, Canada Research Chair in Media, Culture, and Environment, and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Cultural Studies and the School of the Environment at Trent University. Dr Pasek is co-founder of the Low Carbon Research Methods Group, and she talks to Ariel all about what Low Carbon Research is (and can look like!), the “carbon footprint” of academic research, new innovative ways for research to respond to the climate crisis, the importance of zines, and even hosting her own solar server in her backyard!
Links:
Dr Pasek’s personal website
Low Carbon Research Methods
EMM LAB
Solar Protocol
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In this episode, Christina talks with hacker and enthusiastic solarpunk Paweł Ngei about the power of solarpunk narratives to open our eyes to the ways in which we do things and invite us to critically examine them. Why is tech built this way? Who are we disenfranchising by not having more or different designs for things? Who are we handing over too much power over our lives to mindlessly letting them thrust their tech into our lives without us knowing how it works?
For more info about and thoughts from Paweł, can check out his blog (https://alxd.org/), be inspired by his podcast (https://podcast.tomasino.org/@SolarpunkPrompts), read his short story about a disabled inventor at https://glider.ink/, or read his review of Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future (https://alxd.org/ministry-for-the-future-review.html#ministry-for-the-future-review). Other links Paweł recommends are about the book A Half Built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys and to a great solarpunk engineering wiki.
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In 2023, the inaugural Solarpunk Conference was held in virtual space, bringing together over 150 attendees, 18 presenters, and creating a palpable sense of the solarpunk community. This episode, Ariel chats with conference organizers Charles Valsechi, Lindsay Jane, and Kees Schuller about the genesis of the conference, the inspiration for its theme, as well as a little preview of what they are hoping to see at the 2024 Solarpunk Conference: Rays of Resilience.
You can go to https://www.solarpunkconference.com/ to check out The Solarpunk Conference, access The Solarpunk Conference Journal, and buy tickets. You can also check out the channel on YouTube for recordings of last year’s presentations, and stop by Lindsay Jane's channel @TheSolarpunkScene for more solarpunky content!
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In Season 5 Episode 3 of Solarpunk Presents, Christina chats with transdisciplinary technologist Stephen Reid about relationship solarpunk and lunarpunk have to crypto and web3. If lunarpunk is what solarpunk gets up to in the shadows of a moonlit night, that suggests that lunarpunk is inherently more interested in privacy, security, and anonymity, especially from the watchful eye of the state. That would further mean that where solarpunk is interested in renewable energy, sustainability, appropriate technology, and social justice, lunarpunk is interested in the tools, like cryptography, cryptocurrencies, and web3, that safeguard our privacy and anonymity and potentially protect us from tyranny. Do we need lunarpunk’s fixation with using tech to protect our privacy to counterbalance solarpunk’s sunny optimism that everything will all be fine to break through to a better world?
To learn more about Stephen, his philosophies, and his work, check out https://stephenreid.net/
Disclaimer: Neither Christina, Ariel, nor the Solarpunk Presents podcast agree with nor support the use of cryptocurrencies or web3. For sound critiques of these technologies, check out the videos The Line Goes Up - The Problem With NFTs and Web3.0: A Libertarian Dystopia and the website https://www.web3isgoinggreat.com/.
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In this podcast, host Ariel has a chat with Aaron and Alicia, the team behind Solacene podcast in Montreal, Canada. They talk about the meaning of “Solacene”, their goals, the semester-structure of their show, zines, community, upcycled clothing, embodied reality, environmental positivity, and a sneak peek at what is next for Solacene in the future… just to name a few topics. Tune in on your favourite podcatcher or streaming service today!
Links:
Solacene YouTube: https://youtube.com/@solacene?si=iyP9ae71VypNQ-SZ
Website: https://solacene.bigcartel.com/
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If tech wasn’t such a central aspect of solarpunk, we’d all just be hippies redux. Yet not all tech, right? Because solarpunk is also about living the good life while building a just, inclusive, and sustainable society. So, what is solarpunk’s attitude toward and relationship with tech? How do solarpunks decide what’s worth it and what’s beyond the pale? And what’s all this about appropriate technology?
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Why is solarpunk called solarPUNK? What is so punk about it, and does it have anything to do with the original meaning of punk… or cyberpunk, or steampunk, or any -punk for that matter?
In this episode, Christina and Ariel dive into the thorny question of what exactly it is that they are talking about when they say “solarpunk” … because as it turns out, they both have very different points of reference. Neither Christina’s Gen-Xer ideas of the ‘80s punk-rocker or Ariel’s Millennial idea of the Hot Topic pop-punk fit in with solarpunk… or do they? Tune in to find out more!
Links:
A Solarpunk Manifesto
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Classic, post-apocalyptic, dystopian fiction is a type of fantasy where we’re dreaming of starting over in an empty landscape from a societal and cultural slate wiped clean by some devastating event that we don’t have to feel guilty about having happened—at least, it is according to our very own Ariel Kroon, who does, yes, have a PhD in it.* Yet, at the same time, these fantasies generally suffer from a strange lack of imagination, wherein the characters use the “fresh new start” to recreate the same old society, albeit with themselves at the top, with the same old systemic socioeconomic, environmental, and structural problems.
It’s almost as if it is easy to dream up apocalypse but next to impossible to envision a different way of living. Although a failure of imagination would most likely look different for solarpunk, can solarpunk creators and dreamers of a positive future avoid falling into the same sort of trap?
*Post-apocalyptic Canadian science-fiction 1948-1989, she wants to clarify. She’s even got the thesis to prove it.
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You’ve heard of NIMBYs and NIMBYism, and you probably are living with the consequences of neighbourhood planning or city policies influenced by landowners who say “Not in My Backyard” to new developments planned in their area. But what about YIMBYs? The name might be strange, but the homeowners who make up these groups say “Yes In My Backyard” to normalize the goals of affordable housing advocates, transit planning, tenants’ rights organizations and others who are working towards making the city a more liveable place to be for everyone.
Today on the podcast, Ariel talks to Melissa Bowman, cofounder of the group Waterloo Region Yes In My Backyard (WRYIMBY) about what a YIMBY group is, what some actions are that it might take, the issues that it might address, and how to start up a YIMBY group in your area, if there’s not one already!
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Taking action on their solarpunk dreams, Nick Schwanz and Spencer Scott bought a degraded agricultural plot and have been turning it into a food forest, an explosion of flowers, and a demonstration of regenerative farming that brings the local community together and creates a network of prosperity and opportunities for other farmers, creatives, and makers. Join us as we talk soils, how their project is going, and what they mean by their intention to queer the agricultural endeavor.
For all the fun and their latest news, follow Solarpunk Farms on their Instagram @solarpunkfarms.
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Today Ariel sits down with Navarre Bartz to talk about solarpunk spirituality. Solarpunk’s emphasis on respecting and valuing human and non-human life includes the totality of a being’s existence, and that includes the “squishy bits” of the experience that we can’t quite quantify. Navarre recently hosted a series of guest posts on his blog, Solarpunk Station, all about the spiritual angle of solarpunk, and what a solarpunk style of spirituality might look like.
Read more:
Solarpunk Station Episode 1.1 “Must Solarpunk Should?”artisans.coop Etsy alternative!Support Solarpunk Presents on Patreon or make a one-time donation via PayPal.
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In this episode, Prof. Jenni Barclay explains the importance of storytelling by scientists to themselves, other scientists, and the general public.
Has that got you thinking, hey, wait, WHAT?! Everyone knows that scientists should never tell stories! If we expect them to show up like Back off man, I’m a scientist! and guide us through difficulties, then they’d best stick strictly and dryly to the facts, because everyone knows that scientists should never tell stories, right? But scientists even need to tell stories to themselves and to each other to more effectively process the information contained in their data, observations, and experiences. Human beings are not computers: we need stories to grasp the meanings of things, and that also goes for scientific facts. This means scientists need to be storytellers, too, if they want people to understand not just what the facts are, but what they mean for society and the world at large. Then people would better be able to see what our options are for responding to environmental and technological developments and emergencies.
Learn more about Jenni and her research on volcanoes and scientists here https://research-portal.uea.ac.uk/en/persons/jenni-barclay or follow her on social media at @volcanojenni on xitter and bluesky.
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On today’s episode, we’re talking about board games! Ariel interviews Dr Sourayan Mookerjea, Professor of sociology at University of Alberta, about the game “Perfect Storm”, which he uses in his classes and beyond to teach players about the complexities of a sustainable energy transition in the province of Alberta, and Canada more widely. We talk about the different meanings of “energy”, green capitalism, degrowth, decommodifying housing, and more!
Links:
Dr Mookerjea’s profile at U of A“Perfect Storm” description via Just Powers Get bonus content on PatreonHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Have the inhumanity and environmental destructiveness of global supply chains got you down? What about the rapaciousness of multinational corporations who have twisted globalization into a nightmare for so many people on Earth? Here’s one thing you can do about it: you can support the growing movement known as distributed production. In Episode 3 of Season 4, researcher Sarah Hutton of the Internet of Production Alliance explains what distributed production is, why it’s all about people power, and exactly why it is a completely radical and powerfully democratizing activity that is also better for local jobs, local communities, and the environment.
Join the Internet of Production Alliance’s Community Forum at https://community.internetofproduction.org/
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