Political dimensions of solarpunk ⊗ Conquering the imagination deficit ⊗ Machine readable

Political dimensions of solarpunk

Ten years later, ADH revisits his notable piece on the political dimensions of solarpunk. Together, that’s over 10k words and covers a lot of ground. So, along with the one below by Rob Hopkins, I’d encourage you to read all of them on vacation, or as a pre-vacation priming for hopeful imagining.

The original essay was arranged around five chapters. “Something stirs,” showing how Solarpunk emerged as a deeply political aesthetic imagining sustainable futures achievable with existing resources. “The rocks we build on,” with an overview of three important challenges; an aging population, urbanization, and the climate crisis.

In perhaps my favourite section, “Rubble, seed and fog,” Hudson explains that solarpunk doesn’t have to be a revolution overthrowing everything, it/we can “move quietly and plant things” in spaces neglected by failing institutions. In “If we fail” he proposes to “learn a bit about the dimensions of its political agenda by contrasting solarpunk with some of the fictions and realities that are distinctly not solarpunk.”

Finally, with “The ways forward” he argues that we should build long-term infrastructure; that solarpunk could be an organizing principle for refugee camps (of which there will be may) and “fertile grounds for radical, horizontal, intentional community arrangements;” and that solarpunk should function as an open-source movement guided by hope rather than mere optimism.

I’ve shared articles or talks explaining solarpunk before, but somehow I’d missed this one ten years ago. It’s well worth a read though, followed by his revisiting, because you can compare the societal diagnosis from back then, how it’s evolved (hint: worse and more cheetos), how solar has skyrocketed, and how the treatments ADH proposed are even more relevant today. Encouragingly, some of these ideas now exist in real projects (for once, I kept the links in one of the quotes below) and solarpunk is now on the brink of mainstream imagination, making it to the halls of power.

We can build our solarpunk society in the places and moments that the state neglects — particularly in response to the climate disasters and black swan shocks that will punctuate the coming century. If we do this right, Solarpunk could be the philosophy of those who fill in the gaps, the aesthetic of the assemblies that coalesce where government fails to show up. […]

Leaders, where they exist, are spokespeople and media liaisons, not hierarchs or dictators. The hacker collective Anonymous is perhaps the best example: their very name is designed to allow anyone to take up their mantle. Nearly all the most successful and influential popular movements of the twenty-first century are of this type, from Tahir Square to Occupy, from ISIS to #BlackLivesMatter. […]

[From the second piece:] In light of their power, overthrowing the mega-rich is a dicey project, and one perhaps left to a different kind of political aesthetic. Instead solarpunk can challenge the capitalist status quo by nurturing alternative economic arrangements at a community and network level. Encourage resiliency that insulates towns and neighborhoods from economic shocks. Forge mutual aid pacts that protect members from fiscal predation. If we can prove that we don’t need them or their money, the chokehold of the plutocracy will loosen. […]

One of the truly wild things about following this stuff for the last ten years is that the most intensely solarpunk examples all come from real life, not fiction. The solarpunks already exist; their stories just aren’t evenly distributed yet.

Conquering the imagination deficit

Rob Hopkins champions imagination as a vital tool for tackling the climate crisis, arguing that our collective ability to envision positive futures has been compromised by what Henry Giroux calls the “disimagination machine.” Through his work with Transition Towns, podcasting, writing, and speaking, Hopkins wants to create spaces where people can recover their capacity for creative thinking. His approach combines playfulness with pragmatism—appearing at Boomtown Festival in a makeshift space suit holding a sign reading “I’ve been to the future. We won,” while also documenting real-world examples of sustainable communities. These include cycling infrastructure in Rotterdam, urban forestry in Barcelona, community-owned housing projects, and local food systems like the Liège food belt in Belgium.

Hopkins believes we need to cultivate optimism* and create collective longing for sustainable futures, comparing climate action to the moon landing—which succeeded partly because writers, artists, and filmmakers had already taken us there countless times in our imagination. His current projects include “Field Recordings from the Future,” where he captures sounds from sustainable spaces and collaborates with musicians to create ambient compositions that evoke “nostalgia for the future,” and a forthcoming book titled How to Fall in Love with the Future. Rather than proposing grand technological solutions, Hopkins envisions our sustainable future as “a mosaic of things I’ve already seen”—existing innovations implemented at scale through community-led initiatives.

* Optimism or hope? In the Dimensions piece above, Hudson quotes Vaclav Havel, who explained that: “Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”

I started thinking, “What if climate change demands that we reimagine everything profoundly? But what if we’ve created conditions where our collective imagination isn’t up to the task? What if it has become enfeebled, desiccated, and marginalised at the very time when we need it most?” […]

Another idea I found compelling was that every company, in its annual report, should also list all the things that failed. It’s not just about showcasing brilliance but fostering a culture that is honest about failure. Similarly, every nation should issue a statement of failure, acknowledging where it has fallen short. […]

The role of national governments should be to ensure that regional governments have all the power, resources, and policies they need to tackle the climate emergency with imagination, creativity, and speed. Then, those local authorities must work closely with communities, empowering them to act swiftly and effectively.

Machine readable

Steven Johnson, well-known author who worked on the product, explores how NotebookLM enhances the research and writing process by acting as a collaborative tool that reads alongside the user rather than replacing deep engagement with primary and secondary sources. By curating unique materials and explaining his project to the AI, he uses it to generate new ideas, fact-check, and uncover connections, effectively creating a bespoke “jacket copy” that relates texts to his existing knowledge. Johnson also imagines a future where e-books come with integrated AI interfaces, offering interactive access to original sources, timelines, and mind maps alongside traditional chapters.

It’s a very good explanation of how you can augment your writing with AI instead of replacing your unique value with a pale copy. The balance between the two approaches and what you lose, or not, in the exchange is still being worked out, but the fact that people keep just grabbing answers from AIs and using them as is with no review or any tweaking keeps surprising me.

I find this kind of exercise amazingly valuable, assuming I have done two key things first: 1) explained to Notebook who I am and what kind of book I'm trying to write, and 2) curated a unique set of sources that allows the AI to explore a new configuration of ideas, and not just resort to its typical “average” response. […]

But it's not just about the pleasure of inventing structures; it’s actually one of the things that I think I do best as a writer. So it would be completely illogical for me to simply outsource that work to the AI. […]

NotebookLM is effectively functioning as a conduit between my knowledge/creativity and the knowledge stored in the source material: stress-testing speculative ideas I have, fact-checking, helping me see patterns in the material, reminding me of things that I read but have forgotten.

§ Doctored Doom. “Building human capacity in schools requires supporting more teachers and researchers and librarians, not fewer – people whose understanding of information access, knowledge sharing, and knowledge development exists far, far beyond the systems sold to schools, systems that actually serve to circumscribe what we do and how we think; people who care about people, who care about knowledge as a collective good, who care about education as a core pillar of democracy, as practice of freedom not as a market, not as a credential.”

Futures, Fictions & Fabulations

• Could Should Might Don’t. Nick Foster’s first solo book. “The first time this much sought-after designer is free to share his perspectives, explore how other people approach the future and suggest how we can all improve our thinking about what might lie ahead. But this isn’t a book filled with predictions and prophecies, and it makes no assertions about what the future will hold. It’s a book which unpacks how we think about the future.”
• Notes from our intergenerational fairness journey: what have we learnt so far?. “The overall aim of this future strategy is to build a fairer society by empowering all generations, both current and future, to create together their desired futures, while ensuring that the realisation of each generation's aspirations is achieved without compromising one another.”
• The Bay Area of 2070. “It will take all of us to realize a truly inclusive vision of the Bay Area. Whether you’re a policy maker or simply someone who cares deeply about this shared place we call home, we hope you will join us in envisioning a better future for the region.”

Algorithms, Automations & Augmentations

• AI data centers could need 30 times more power by 2035. “While there is plenty of focus on what tech giants are spending on AI data centers this year, companies also need to think much further ahead” This being Deloitte, they are worried about delays and supply chain bottlenecks, not about whether it’s even warranted to use such crazy amounts of power.
• Libraries open their stacks up as training data for artificial intelligence platforms. “Supported by ‘unrestricted gifts’ from Microsoft and ChatGPT maker OpenAI, the Harvard-based Institutional Data Initiative is working with libraries and museums around the world on how to make their historic collections AI-ready in a way that also benefits the communities they serve.” The names in the first part of the quote really contradicts the end of it.
• The OpenAI Files. “The OpenAI Files is the most comprehensive collection to date of documented concerns with governance practices, leadership integrity, and organizational culture at OpenAI.”

Built, Biosphere & Breakthroughs

• “Ancient cooling techniques” allow 3D-printed partitions to regulate temperature. “A team of researchers at US university Virginia Tech has developed a concept for a 3D-printed, evaporative cooling system made of hollow clay columns that can be filled with sand and water. The system, which can cool the surrounding air by up to 10 degrees Fahrenheit (5.56 degrees Celsius), has been formatted into a wall partition and is currently undergoing testing.”
• Could old coal mines help ease China’s solar-panel overcapacity? “The country leads the world in converting old coal mining sites into solar-power projects, according to Global Energy Monitor”
• Batteries are so cheap now, solar power doesn’t sleep. “A new report from global energy think tank Ember says batteries have officially hit the price point that lets solar power deliver affordable electricity almost every hour of the year in the sunniest parts of the world.”

Asides

• Death of a Fantastic Machine “(aka the camera) is a short documentary on ‘what happens when humanity’s infatuation with itself and an untethered free market meet 45 billion cameras’…and now AI. It’s about how — since nearly the invention of the camera — photos, films, and videos have been used to lie & mislead, a trend that AI is poised to turbo-charge. Not gonna sugar-coat it: this video made me want to throw my phone in the ocean, destroy my TV, and log off the internet never to return. Oof.”
• Scientists in Antarctica detect deep-Earth signals that defy known physics. “A balloon-borne experiment over Antarctica, designed to detect cosmic radio waves, has instead picked up bizarre signals that appear to be coming from deep within the ice. These signals challenge our current understanding of particle physics, scientists say. ”
• Green classrooms: Child-friendly new school building in Spain. Wow! “The Imagine Montessori School near Valencia was built by architects Gradolí & Sanz using natural materials such as wood and baked clay. The children learn in flexible classrooms with a connection to the green surroundings.”