What Do You Think Of Vertical Axis Wind Turbines? Seems To Me They'd Complement Small Domestic PV Installations

the ideal of “farms everywhere in every garden!!1!” is a huge selling point of the solarpunk and self-sustainablity communities, especially with farmcore/cottagecore and nature aesthetics being more popular nowadays.

however these posts often overlook a few things

1) we already overproduce food, we don’t need more farms we need better farm and food management.

2) not everyone can farm or wants too. Space, the local environment, disabilities, and lack of interest needs to be acknowledged more. I’m awful with plants no matter how much i love them, and i am certain there are plenty more people who would agree.

3) the idea of farms for everyone and the aesthetic of “everyone having their little plot of land” is not community driven, and sadly comes from a place of colonialism. YES a cute lil cottage with a chicken pen out the back and a garden out the front is cute, but this is not possible for everyone on the planet.

4) NATURAL DIVERSITY IS VERY IMPORTANT. instead of making everyones garden into a food forest, we should aim to grow more native plants and help cultivate the natural environment.

5) not every country is the same, we have our own biodiveristy, and often these posts are *very* american/american based

I just jerked out of my midday dissociation and realized that seed bombing a golf course with mint would be the ultimate crime.

Oh my god this is so evil. 

I love it. 

oh godddd

Me, waking you up at two am: hey, do you ever think about how we live in a culture of rejecting our local “wild places” in favor of fetishizing and romanticizing the distant and different?

There’s this overwhelming rhetoric we’re fed that the only nature worth protecting is Grand and Huge and most of all Somewhere Else.

Nobody thinks about the wetland behind their local Walmart that is in Desperate need of protection, or the little remnant prairie in a cemetery, because they’re too focused on the abstract and often flawed concept of “wilderness” somewhere else.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to travel to see something new and unique, but the way I hear people talk about our own backyard, the way the last remnants of what we have here are ignored or outright rejected, breaks my heart.

My professor has spent his entire career in the Midwest trying to protect wetlands from housing developments and new superstores, but he almsot always loses, not just because the developers have money, but the community doesn’t care enough to do anything about it.

Afterall, what’s a few old oak and birch trees in a little puddle of a swamp compared to miles of marsh in Scandinavia? What’s a grassy hill to a distant mountain range?

Well, to the duck, to the heron, to the bluebird, and to precious few people, I’d say it’s Everything.

I love to travel myself, and I know people probably don’t know that when they say “why is our wildlife/plant life etc. so lame” that they’re contributing to an attitude of rejecting what unique beauty we do have,

But

I hope one day people can see the wonder nearby and fight to protect it. I hope there’s something left to protect.

Anyway…..where do u keep your cups I want some water.

Hey solarpunk community! In light of several posts that have been going around, I was thinking it would be worthwhile to talk about the real, physical things we can do to make this world a more solarpunk place. Because speculation and aesthetics and thinkpieces are awesome, but a movement isn’t a movement without real action behind it. So what are things we can all do to make the present closer to our solarpunk future?

i learned that Binghamton University researchers have been working on a self-healing concrete that uses a specific type of fungi as a healing agent. When the fungus is mixed with concrete, it lies dormant until cracks appear, when spores germinate, grow and precipitate calcium carbonate to heal the cracks (x)

Solarpunk conflict Sugestions

Naturalist Vs Bioengineers:

Trouble could be brewing between two ideologies in your solarpunk setting. Those who believe in keeping nature ‘pure’ and those who believe in integrating nature and technology closer together.

New world Vs old remnants

A lot of mistakes were made before the world reached its current setting. What if one of those mistakes has survived? A malfunctioning weaponised drone/robot is accidentally reactivated and now prowls the streets and it’s a race against time to stop it.

Solarpunk Vs Lunarpunk

Conflicting cultures. City dwells vs nomadic tribes. Eco tech vs. Eco occultism. Two different branches of humanity struggling to understand one another and clashing cultural values. 

Man vs the dark side of nature

Mankind may have stopped being a threat to the planet, but the natural world is full of threats. new diseases and plant blights are always evolving, not to mention eruptions, floods, droughts, and meteors all still happen.

New tech murder mystery

Society as a whole may be better, but crime still happens. What is it like being a detective in such a world? how many new ways does the world’s new biotech provide for murderers looking to get away with it? 

sustainability as a concept done on an individual basis shouldn’t be framed as planet saving because it’s. not. you can’t save the earth by planting your own tomatoes, because the destruction of the earth is due to corporations

what you CAN do is use individual sustainability to gain a level of independence from capitalism for yourself and for your community through things like sharing grown food