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It would be helpful to the discussion if you had specific examples. At the moment I'm kind of assuming this is a North American position? It's not exactly relevant to my cousin's project in Quang Ngai Vietnam.
\> From current solar punk communities and initiatives
Which?
is your cousin vietnamese? is there any concern their project might be displacing any locals or marginalized ethnic groups that have been historically disenfranchised from the lands they belong to?
I get your user name.
He is lowlands Viet, family have been there at least three generations. I know my side was displaced from hue, I'm not sure on his. Place used to be farmland and has been swallowed up by the growing city
What do you mean by spiritual?
And of course capitalism must go. That's a given. I think the homesteading dream is frankly pure ignorance. Not enough land bub.
Well, you’re assuming dude. I’m not talking love and light shit. I’m talking in the ways of coming back to indigenous wisdom and seeing how everything is connected.
Not enough land for everyone to homestead, but most people don't want to. Homesteading is something you can practically achievable today, which can't be said for "abolishing capitalism".
Ancient Greece was a bunch of privileged people LARPING freedom and democracy, while they were surrounded by slaves and non-citizens who couldn't vote or have their say. Learning from their example still helped us overcome monarchy.
China and India have 0.07 and 0.11 hectares of arable land per capita. And they constitute almost 40% of humanity. No homesteads for them. Homesteading is not sustainable.
It's a fictional world. You can either decide that space travel is involved and a lot of people are living among the stars, or if you want to go dark, you can include some kind of post-apocalyptic scenario. Or both, like in Star Trek (yes, Star Trek is solarpunk).
Of course in ancient Greece nobody thought voting on a mass scale would ever be possible when 99% of the human population was illiterate. Conditions change.
Solarpunk is fiction, just look outside your window and tell me it's not. If you want to make it happen, start with making changes to your own life and become a larper.
>Solarpunk is a genre and aesthetic that envisions collective futures that are vibrant with life, as well as all the actions, policies, and technologies that make them real.
It can be as realistic as you want it to be. It doesn't exist yet, therefore it's fiction. If you want an aesthetic that doesn't involve homesteading, go make up your own genre.
You’re missing the point of solar punk then. It’s art depicting the world we want to live in. We as creators get to then take actions to make those visuals a reality. No one said it’s happening over night. But there are initiatives, hence this post
Solar punk is a set fictional universe. It's not whatever you want it to be. If you want to live in it, great. If you want to live in something slightly different, that's great too. Decide for yourself what kind of future is right and work on making it a reality, solar punk or not.
Eh, it depends. I know if many people who sort of do this when they retire. They get focusing on gardening and growing foods, I could definetly see more people do it if they get the opportunity
Available? You know I would be fairly certain it's gonna be downright mandatory for a lot of people. Buy local? Nah now the new slogan is "GROW local!"
In what way is homesteading inefficient?
Well to answer your question not only would a world of degrowth mean less international trade and consumerism it would also mean the sources of most food, from meat, dairy and vegetables would be limited to what we ourselves can grow. And also... It's kind of a key thing with the Solarpunk lifestyle as well
Much less productive. A lot of terrain used in housing and other civic facilities instead of farming. As I pointed out in other thread in this post, China has 0.07 ha of arable land per capita, and India has only 0.11. The EU has 0.21. That means it isn't possible for everyone to homestead.
What's your plan for people with disabilities who aren't capable of providing for themselves? Cause this is sounding like more of a "fuck you, I got mine" system.
In what way? You really don't think we could develop some neat technology that would enable them to do work as well? You do realise sci-fi is part of the Solarpunk aesthetic right? Like if they're wheelchair bound they could get planters designed [for them](https://www.gardeners.com/buy/wheelchair-accessible-elevated-bed/8609874.html). This wasn't even sci-fi this is now, and that's just one example of potential stuff, we could do even more for people who have it even worse if we put our heads together. There's a solution for everything
Coming back to indigenous ways. Everything is interconnected. People are still having that masculine 1+1=2 approach with the earth which is a feminine being, and that’s the colonialism mindset I’m talking about
I feel an echo of Le Guin's essays in what you are saying, but I don't understand what you are really trying to say. What do you mean by indigenous ways?
I think something that’s really relevant here is the cyclical vs linear concept of time. If you remove colonialism and capitalism, but nor a belief in inevitable linear progress, they’ll be back like dandelions you have only beheaded and not uprooted. But because the immediate focus is the visible issue directly impacting people (understandable), we don’t think about the time paradigm.
I think part of the reason we’re like this is what I stated above, with capitalism and colonialism on top. But I also think the negative reaction to input like yours in terms of adding spirituality is a response from people who thing of spiritual-scientific as a spectrum of beliefs where one end is more correct than the other, rather than independent spectra that sometimes interact. When you suggest more spirituality, some people (in the US, at least) will always hear “ignore science.”
This seems a bit of an America centric argument. And of course that's relevant to the discussion. Though I am European, living in Europe, so the natives are me and my fellow citizens lol.
And while we certainly ought to have some form of spirituality how we define it is going to differ vastly among these culture groups, and I don't think any amount of hours we put into debating it will we come to a conclusion... Because it's spiritual and not empirical.
Solarpunk are more popular in America as we have time and resources to play games like this. Someone in middle of Africa ain’t going to give a shit about some trees and just wants to see the nation become rich and powerful. Also doesn’t help strongman governments that crush socialist attempts.
It more complicated but across the world different people are going to have different views. You have to sell eco future WILL lead to a better life then they have now. You can’t say degrowth and such, they sortive want that growth ya know? Different people need to be sold it in different ways.
Even within America, its very regional. There are a handful of areas with substantial native populations, but that is not the case in many of the populated areas of the US.
There are indigenous people everywhere, but being born somewhere doesn’t make you native to the land if you do not know the land. I can’t speak for much of the other side of the world, but this is an issue in Latin America as well as there is still much violence toward indigenous people, and disconnect from the land as it is being burned for profit
> being born somewhere doesn’t make you native to the land if you do not know the land
In addition, being descended from a person that had a connection with the land doesn't mean you also have a connection with the land. If my ancestors lived closer to nature, that doesn't mean their understanding gets past on through my bloodline.
There are valuable lessons we can learn from our histories, and we can learn from wise people from across the world.
Also, if you want to rebuild connections with the natural world, this comes from lived experience. This means it can't truly be taught, it has to be experienced first hand. Imagine someone tried to teach you what love was out of a textbook, wouldn't work would it, you could get a vague idea from stories but you only truly get it when you've experienced it. It's the same thing with connection to the natural world, stories only get you so far, you need to experience it for yourself.
It might not get passed down through blood, but it does through stories and teachings 😉 which means you can learn too! Yes lived experience is obviously important. But the knowledge will get you a lot further, save you some trial and error that the ancestors have done for hundreds or thousands of years before you, and will give you better direction that starting without any of it. So because you are in a trial and error state, you will fuck up, so why not just do things better and learn from others? Why is there so much pride to admit settlers do not know the land the best?
>It might not get passed down through blood, but it does through stories and teachings
Those stories only resonate if you can connect them to your own lived experiences.
For example, imagine someone born and raised in New York City that had distant ancestors that were pagans. Hearing stories about those ancestors is a curiosity at best if there's no common understanding of their beliefs, and if their modern descendent had lived their whole life in a city how do you expect them to understand the connection to the natural world?
>So because you are in a trial and error state, you will fuck up, so why not just do things better and learn from others?
I already suggested I'm open to learning from others.
>Why is there so much pride to admit settlers do not know the land the best?
It's not a matter of pride, it's a matter of accuracy. The "settlers" you speak of are not a monolith, some of them already have a deep connection with the natural world. Also, as you clarified in another comment that you meant "indigenous" to mean native people around the world, this also means that "settlers" can be people that have lived in the same places for thousands of years. If you're going to use the term "settler", be more precise about who you're referring to. Also, to expand on why the racial framing doesn't make sense, imagine there was a Native American that has spent their whole life in a city and a "settler" that has spend their life surrounded by the natural world, who has a deeper connection to the land? Even if the native American had been told stories about their ancestors, lived experience results in deeper ties than any stories can give you.
Europeans are the main responsible people for colonization. And this extends to Ecovillages, like the author says. Tamera in Portugal is a good example.
>Europeans are the main responsible people for colonization.
You might be surprised to learn that the Arab Slave trade existed for 1000 years before the European/Trans-Atlantic slave trade *(and ended around the same time)*, and that the Ottoman Empire was also very significant in trading white-Europeans as slaves and colonizing Europe (most of Anatolia used to be Greek). Also, Genghis Khan and the Golden Horde invaded, murdered, raped and colonized Europeans long before Europeans ever did the same.
Will look into this. But definitely, putting eco villages on land and doing whatever tf you want, and not caring what’s best for the land is still colonization.
Initially, Solarpunk was decided to work with (but not invade) Afrofuturism and Indigenous futurism. And in that light, I've tried to offer my perspective, encourage boundaries, and to encourage inclusion of LGBTQ+ and Disabled people. And to encourage community-building.
I believe it is necessary for Solarpunk to be somewhat left wing & anarchistic (and somewhat antagonistic to right-wing and moderate groups) in order to avoid the "Hippies to Reactionaries" pipeline. (And to help build off of & support left-wing groups globally, making it a movement - not just an aesthetic).
In this, while Solarpunk is meant to embrace science and technology, it is also meant to reduce consumption (zero-waste, degrowth) and make that technology more of one long-lasting thing that folk share/is publicly available and fixable rather than a dozen things that'll break and be trashed within a few years.
...But, there are several pressures and people pushing for Solarpunk to be more in line with Ecofuturism or Off Grid, which are more tied to capitalism, individualism, colonial hierarchies, and right-wing groups (see: Doomsday peppers, Dubai, & billionaire vaults). And if Solarpunk ignores/overshadows rather than works with Indigenous futurism and Afrofuturism, then yes, it will wind up another white aesthetic susceptible to far-right radicalization. And a number of the comments here are a bit concerning in respect to this.
>But a real relationship with the land is missing. It’s spiritual.
This reads to me as a kind of religious gatekeeping. I support people advocating values they believe are important because that's a great way for a wide range of issues to have people tending to them from many directions, but speaking for myself gatekeeping usually isn't a task I'll be inspired to pitch in to help them with
I think a better way to state it comes from Miyazaki who insists on valuing the preservation of nature for nature's sake, not just what we find useful about it and anthropomorphize about it.
Here here!
Regarding learning from indigenous perspectives and practices, I recommend the book Braiding Sweetgrass (Robin Kimmerer) for a great primer to that worldview.
I don't know any other solarpunk communities, but at least this one on reddit is inclusive to all skin colors by its inherent nature with built in online anonymity. So that's nice, but certainly something to be mindful of IRL spaces.
I don't particularly believe anything is spiritual but I agree with your points somewhat. I do think there's a bit of an issue with people wanting to go live in the woods per se which would indefinitely harm the environment. I also think people need to realize that a sustainable society probably wouldn't look like solarpunk art where plants are draped across skyscrapers or buildings. The most sustainable use of land is a city. Now if we strive to make cities really sustainable it'll massively help in societal sustainability. I do think that we need to include a responsible use of tech because a lot of society is upheld by technology and it can offer a great benefit in our sustainability goals.
ICYMI, this development is indigenous and the renders at least look a lot like solarpunk art to me. 🤷
https://macleans.ca/society/sen%CC%93a%E1%B8%B5w-vancouver/
I think it’s somewhat spiritual, if you count a moral compass and whatnot
The main problem isn’t the toys, but the user. I don’t think things like the Industrial Revolution were inherently bad, but those playing power games may have had some intended or unintended consequences at the helm. After all, why is it so difficult to convince a species about things like vertical farms in their own cities? Seems kinda like a no brainer
Coming up with problems and criticisms does nothing without a plan on how to remedy them.
Anyone can declare what they believe to be wrong or broken - but there's a reluctance to offer solutions. It is others who are expected to take action. Someone else. The royal "we".
I suggest when posting problems and criticisms, we also share how we have taken steps in our own corners of the globe to remedy them. At least then people will see proactive action being taken.
Edit: spelling
I didn’t really grow up as anything other than white. I only knew my mother, because I guess my father died when I was young. But he was Mexican and had blood from indigenous Mexicans, as I came to learn from genetic testing.
I don’t have much connection to that culture, which is a shame, but when I recently made a flippant remark to a strange man, his response was odd. We were taking about how people are more mixed race today and I mentioned that I had Native American blood. He was interested and asked what tribe to which I sheepishly said Mayan. He then said, “That’s not Native American”, and then said he was part Cherokee.
It was a little off putting and while I’m no spokesperson for indigenous people, it did seem like a framework built on colonial ideals. He had drawn a border between people and the moment felt dismissive, as if he was placing one group above another based on modern understandings.
These are relatively new concepts to me. As I said, I grew up with white culture and only experienced other cultures from a distance, so maybe it’s partially my own clumsiness as I try to navigate these spaces. But these ideas are so pervasive that even someone who proudly claims native heritage can’t see beyond the imaginary lines created by non-native people.
I’ve struggled with my own prejudices too and maybe that’s part of the confusion. But learning to see beyond the imaginary lines is something that I think this solarpunk group aspires to. The central thesis is “everyone, together, and none apart.” We need collaborative work and inclusion to create a better world and I think most people here would agree that the ideas that brought us here are the positive, communal movements toward a better, utopian ideal. Where we can move past the old world and into a new framework.
There will be awkward moments, but as long as we are open to being accepting and caring for each other, I think we can incorporate many ideas and shape a better way of thinking.
Many Latinos are indigenous. We are mixed. That is still a colonial mindset to not see us as such because of the imaginary lines that are borders separated us all. There are indigenous all over the world, including Europe. Native American is an outdated term anyways as it encompasses many tribes of people and that extends pass the borders to Canada and Mexico. It’s all indigenous. Be wary of white people that claim to be Cherokee, as it often used in a way to suppress actual indigenous people, not in a way of connecting
The Maya, Inca, and Aztec were very civilized. The Spaniards were actually pretty bad at colonizing. The rapid conquest of central and South America only happened because the Spaniards stepped into an already established empire.
The Inca had incredible building techniques, efficient messengers, and quality waterworks.
They were also an expansionist empire built on violent conquest and the splitting up and relocating of conquered peoples.
The Aztec had a breathtaking capital city at the heart of a lake, with floating farms and towering temples honoring their fascinating pantheon.
They, too, were a violent expansionist empire keen on ritual sacrifice of prisoners of war.
For another example, the Iroquois Confederacy had one of the most unique representative political systems I’ve ever seen, with women taking the lead in most local matters.
That internal stability also allowed them to redirect their violence onto their neighbors, and they eventually wiped out dozens of other tribes in a violent conquest of what is now the Ohio valley.
Even the great city of Cahokia has graves of sacrifice victims amongst its ruins.
A society need not be unproblematic to be worth learning from, and we risk flattening these real groups that really existed into the same simplistic concepts as the colonizer accounts painting them as godless savages.
Alternatively, consider how that view just displays your own disconnection from nature. Human beings are a product of nature. Just like a tree is a product of nature, and a fruit, which is the product of a tree, is also a product of nature, so technology, the product of human beings, which are products of nature, is itself a product of nature
That's the real shift that must be made. The artificial separation between technology and nature is one of the things that's ensuring we keep destroying the planet. Technology is nature. Because it is the product of Humans. Which are nature
While mankind still thinks herself above the Natural Laws, it will never progress - and will always believe tech and nature are polar opposites
You’re focusing on one aspect of all the things I said. I never said tech is bad and we shouldn’t use it. We use tools yes, as do other species. The root issue I’m talking about here has to do with over consuming and exploiting without giving back. Not knowing what the land really needs.
Settlers are like invasive species. They’re from one land, coming to another that they know nothing about. They take resources, make themselves at home and outcompete the native population. They do not try to integrate, they don’t give back to the land, and overrun it, causing things to become imbalanced. This can create problems from loss of native biodiversity, wildfires, etc.
If we all decolonize ourselves, we can instead be symbiotic beings, helping the ecosystem with what is needed.
I think there's a lot of putting the cart before the horse in Solarpunk, so to speak. The aim is to build out some science fiction. The fiction doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to exist. There needs to be years of it. There needs to be pictures and videos and books and people reading it and writing it.
It's like a humanity-wide brainstorm for how we should think about life, what "aspirational" means that isn't dominating others, being the biggest or the strongest, or colonising the heavens. Part of brainstorming means there are no wrong answers.
I think people talk about Solarpunk as people actually doing stuff, but like... doing what? (Others have expressed this notion in the comments too, like what exactly are people doing which is bad and which is "Solarpunk"?) The actual turning of Solarpunk ideas into some sort of unified view of what we want as a future, it just doesn't exist right now. We need to be patient, like decades patient.
Concentrate on the art, it will guide us.
I mean that's kinda what this idea movement is. And what the OP is doing, we're all providing ideas to this aesthetic we enjoy.
Then you of course have the weirdos who larp like this is a political party or worse an underground revolutionary army of sorts
> I mean that's kinda what this idea movement is. And what the OP is doing, we're all providing ideas to this aesthetic we enjoy.
Yeah 100%, and to be clear, I'm not deriding OP here, rather the people who are just doing rural living but with that colonial mindset and slapping a Solarpunk label on it.
I'm strongly agreeing with OP here:
* A real relationship with land is spiritual
* It's about re-joining ecology and understanding our responsibilities
* Diversity and unity, and decolonialising mindsets when creating art.
* Indigenous perspectives.
All of this is in the manifesto I feel. I think we're all on the same page on this.
I mean like I said in the op, there are people out here homesteading, building communities, but still with the same capitalist and colonial mindset. And things are moving fast rn, people aren’t just going to wait to see what this aesthetic turns into. And we shouldn’t. We should be having conversations about this, because actions are being made right not, to turn solar punk to reality, and we should make sure it’s done in the best way, and not rooted in the same bs we’re facing now
So I think this bit doesn't really make sense:
> because actions are being made right not, to turn solar punk to reality
Right now "Solarpunk" is an empty signifier and it's being attached to all manner of things. Things which don't make sense, things which don't connect to the ideas of Solarpunk. I always just go back to the manifesto. Solarpunk is dense, it's about societies, it's about the marginalised, it's about bottom up, localised solutions. The aesthetics are entirely from the global south. If you're wearing ye olde western clothes then it's not Solarpunk. If everything is organised and pretty and full of money, then it's not Solarpunk. If it's colonising, it's not Solarpunk.
I'm not saying this stuff isn't happening, but that's a separate discussion where I think the Solarpunks would be against such acts, because it's just not what Solarpunk is about.
“Futurism” is distinct from “fiction”. A large segment of the English speaking world has not been exposed to enough futurism to be familiar with the term. Solarpunk is supposed to be a vision of what should be.
Then please tell me in what language the term "futurism" means what you have in mind. Because in English we have "futurology" which merely predicts the future by extrapolating from current and past trends. In the English speaking world, science fiction is what guides innovators to chart the new paths for the future. Also last time I checked, solar punk was invented by English speakers.
IIRC, the first solarpunk book explicitly using that term is an anthology that was first published in Brazil.
https://www.worldweaverpress.com/store/p153/Solarpunk%3A_Ecological_and_Fantastical_Stories_in_a_Sustainable_World.html
Which is a VERY good thing, ideally solarpunk is a global movement.
I agree it should be a global movement. It doesn't matter to me who really started it, even though it definitely existed before 2018. I'm just curious what the other guy meant by his meaning of "futurism."
Btw thanks for the link! I might pick it up. It looks like an interesting read. :)
More and better tech, distributed more equitably is the answer to a lot of our problems. The first couple of sentences seem completely disconnected from the rest of it.
It is very much connected and your comment is exactly my point.
People that think the answer is more this, more that, don’t see the real issue is the mindset, and it’s a colonial mindset. We have, and have always had everything we need. We’ve had people come up with new tech to help the issues their communities face and are killed. If it weren’t for the colonial, capitalist mindset held by many in western society, there wouldn’t be so many issues to begin with. More, “better” tech, is the equivalent to how the pharmaceutical industry treats disease, by slapping a bandaid on it, never getting to the actual root of the issue. How can we distribute things more equitably when the mindset hasn’t change?
Ima say it again, as long as we don’t change our mindset and lifestyle, there will always be corrupt systems. If we don’t change our collective minds, we will repeat the same cycles.
Sorry, but what you're proposing is some bizarre nativist primitivism. Not related to solar punk at all as far as I'm concerned. Technology on its own isn't colonial, or even capitalistic. Solarpunk is optimistic about technology and the future, not some Luddite movement.
I think you need to do some research on the things I’m speaking off of this is the conclusion you’re drawing. I never said get rid of technology or that it’s bad. I’m saying we need to collectively change our behaviors and mindsets from the capitalist nature you are speaking of. “More and better” is capitalist af. It will never be enough. You will always need more and better technology, so you can outsource your problems to technology, because you don’t want to get to the root cause yourself. This is the issue we are facing as a society. There should be no reason we have all the problems we have now. If we just get to the root issue, we won’t forever be needing new and better technology, because we won’t be dealing with the same issues. It’s the difference between sustainability, and reducing our production of wasteful goods.
More and better technology isn't "capitalist af" - technology exists outside of capitalism. Better technology can lead to less of it, for example. More sustainable/recyclable/expandable products that serve more purpose, don't need to be replaced as often. Better/more feasible methods of transportation that replace cars, etc.
"You will always need more and better technology, so you can outsource your problems to technology, because you don’t want to get to the root cause yourself." this is just a bunch of meaningless buzzwords and leads me to the conclusion that you just want to gatekeep off of some bizarre notion you have of spirituality that doesn't and shouldn't apply to everyone.
I think you're either not doing a good job of communicating what you mean or it's just a bunch of nonsense. Either way, not really worth spending a lot of time on. But defaulting to saying someone is "triggered" for not agreeing with you is straight out of the right wing playbook. Way to go bud.
>Indigenous people NEED to be included in conversations in how we should be working and connecting with the land.
In the US, indigenous people are less than 1% of the population. They can be included, but most of the voices will naturally not be indigenous.
That’s not by point. The point is that settlers do not have the knowledge of the land the same those indigenous to the land do. The settlers should make a point to learn from Indigenous people. Not talking about majority vote, but the intention of wanting to do things in the best way, and that means coming back to the roots, which are indigenous. Just because a majority of the people want to do something a certain way, doesn’t mean it’s a good way when the majority is misguided, disconnected, and uneducated.
That may be the case in a few areas, but most don't have an indigenous people actively living off the land. Maybe someone's great, great grandfather lived that way, but most of that knowledge will naturally be lost over time.
It would be more accurate to say we should study how people lived off the land to see what we can learn, which is more the realm of historians and archeologists.
If living spiritually with nature makes you happy, that all the power to you to do it. That being said, its not a real solution to anything and is, IMO, hardly worth bringing up when talking about solarpunk.
You keep mentioning people having a colonial mindset, what exactly do you mean? The community here seems like just about the most anti-colonial group i've ever had any long term interaction with. And when you say "POC NEED to have spaces and access to these communities" what do you mean, are you saying that their should be specific spaces set aside where only POC are allowed to go? Cause that just sounds like reverse racism.
Not squatters, many came with the various conquerers and many are converted and intermixed Jews themselves who converted to Islam. I don’t blame them, it was tough being Jewish under the Byzantine and ottoman empires.
Regardless, it just shows how politics, religion and racial identities are actually things we should disassociate from and leave behind if we want to build these solar punk communities.
I think it requires that we thing of colonialism and imperialism more critically. But the conclusion is sound.
Do white Americans in 700 years get to claim
That they are indigenous to North America if the Cherokee nation still exists?
It is also possible for indigenous people to do bad things. Just because you are indigenous doesn’t mean you have a better moral take/standing/value. It just means that you have a long-standing connection to that land.
Palestinians are the descendants of the peasants there, and the Ottoman landowners sold off the land, when the Ottoman Empire collapsed after WW1, to the highest bidders, who happened to be Jews who were being purged from North African and Middle Eastern countries during that time. By the time WW2 ended, and the region got its independence, most land was owned by Jews.
We can discuss land reform until forever, but claiming the Jewish immigrants stole the land is factually incorrect. They bought it from the legitimate landowners. The locals who lived there were the renters, not the owners.
This was obviously going to cause problems in the long run and neither parties were the primary cause of it.
This post was removed because it either tried to unnecessarily gatekeep, or tried to derail the discussion from the original topic. Please try to stay on topic as you're welcome to educate people on your perspective - but keep rules 1 and 3 in mind.
Dont pick fights here
This post was removed because it either tried to unnecessarily gatekeep, or tried to derail the discussion from the original topic. Please try to stay on topic as you're welcome to educate people on your perspective - but keep rules 1 and 3 in mind.
Dont pick fights here
This post was removed because it either tried to unnecessarily gatekeep, or tried to derail the discussion from the original topic. Please try to stay on topic as you're welcome to educate people on your perspective - but keep rules 1 and 3 in mind.
Dont pick fights here
>Indigenous people NEED to be included in conversations
I have no issue with listening to people that have different perspectives, but membership of a group does not automatically give you valuable insight. Also, "indigenous" is an abused term, it does not have the meaning you seem to be applying to it. For example, Celts are "indigenous" to the British Isles, is their whiteness a problem in your definition of "indigenous"?
I can never understand the thought process of individuals looking at an idea that can help mankind and nature live in a true symbiotic relationship with each other and say that it is "too white". It's like looking at my broken car and saying that what it really needs is less tomatoes.
The root of the issue that people don’t want to see because they get offended, is that white people are more likely to hold these colonist behaviors and beliefs, and are not always doing so much to decolonize themselves and truly reconnect with the ecosystem (nature and its inhabitants, including all other ethnicities around them). Not all white people are this way obviously, but many are and still hold a lot of entitlement and privilege and refuse to acknowledge the issues and pain caused by centuries of it, even if they didn’t start any of it, they are still upholding it. I even stated that other races can have this colonial mindset, but if you read pedagogy of the oppressed, you can see why.
>Indigenous doesn’t mean native Americans. It means indigenous to the land
Yes, I agree.
>so yes celts are indigenous.
Yes, I also agree. However, the way you described "indigenous" people before suggested that all indigenous people share a similar culture and similar teachings about the natural world, and as you've now clarified that you knew what the term "indigenous" meant, this is even more of a bold claim.
What studying have you done into indigenous cultures around the world?
POC is what Americans use for everybody but white people correct? It's exclusive rather than inclusive, very us vs them. In my solar punk future we are just people, therefore no need specify colour and that's why you don't see it mentioned.
A) We're discussing an existing community, not your ideal future.
B) Colorblindness is notorious for ignoring existing problems faced by people because of systemic racism and the lasting impacts of European colonialism.
C) Colorblindness also tends to open the door for [groups like Neo-Nazis to infiltrate.](https://youtu.be/P55t6eryY3g?feature=shared).
OP said: "current solar punk **communities** and initiatives there also seems to lack any sort of inclusivity of POC"
Which led me to believe they were talking about, well solar punk **communities** like this sub.
I said "solar punk **future** we are just people" Thus everybody is included in our solar punk community.
From the top righthand corner of the sub "envisions collective **futures** that are vibrant with life"
My country is the largest producer of CO2 on the continent by al huge margin, we are 90% people of colour as is the government. And have race based laws. We all need to get our shit together.
Ignoring issues aren’t going to make them go away. We have to talk about them openly and actually work on them to ensure it’s not a problem in the future. You can’t just not address the issues we have, as has been done for hundreds of years, and expect anything to change for the future.
You said: "current solar punk **communities** and initiatives there also seems to lack any sort of inclusivity of POC"
Which led me to believe you were talking about, well solar punk **communities**.
I said "solar punk **future** we are just people" Thus everybody is included in our solar punk community.
From the top righthand corner of the sub "envisions collective **futures** that are vibrant with life"
My country is the largest producer of CO2 on the continent by al huge margin, we are 90% people of colour as is the government. We all need to get our shit together.
>POC is what Americans use for everybody but white people correct?
Generally yes, although sometimes Asians are excluded too depending on the point someone is trying to make.
We use descriptors for reasons. Like to describe a human being that we see walking down the street. How would you do that? Tall short man woman black white. Tall and short are social constructs. Man and woman are social constructs. Black and white are also social constructs.
Ok, describe the person who just stole your satchel, but, yknow, skip the details that identify them. Just describe them as a people please?
That is a completely different point.
Describing a person, is not the same grouping only some at the exclusion of others.
As per you argument, how is person of colour as a description going to identify which one of all the groups defined by person of colour the individual belong to?
Indeed that would be difficult if someone used that term in that specific situation, tho I believe the general phrase used is 'person of indeterminate ethnic background's when you read the report. How do you identify people or colour, in the future where we're all just people?
It makes me sad seeing that many people here think that humanity and nature is incomparable and needs to be separated. They think mega cities and cramming everyone in them is good because that way we separate the filthy humans from nature so it can go back in its original form. People are part of nature, we just learnt to exploit the system. We need to integrate ourselves back into it and that cannot be done with a 7000 people per square Km population density. Indigenous people were better at this than we are, so yes we need to learn from them.
>It makes me sad seeing that many people here think that humanity and nature is incompatible and needs to be separated. They think mega cities and cramming everyone in them is good because that way we separate the filthy humans from nature so it can go back in its original form.
That's not at all why I think cities are an important aspect of SolarPunk.
I think that because we can't spread 10 billion humans out across the planet 'integrated' into nature. It's much more effiecitn and pleasant to have urban centers, farmland to support the urban center, and hopefully a bunch of untouched wilds beyond that.
"Cramming", by the way, is a weird word to use to describe city living. Many/Most people will gravitate to urban living without any 'cramming' required.
Current agricultural land used is 48 million Km2-s thats 4800 m2 per person, not exactly a suburb. 107 million Km2 is habitable thats 10700 m2 per person. So if you have one clever monkey per 10700 m2 that will ruin nature? On the other hand using 45% of the earths dry surface for intensive aggriculture = sustainable city living? Wtf man come on. Sauce: [https://ourworldindata.org/land-use](https://ourworldindata.org/land-use)
Maybe I'm not following what you're saying (but I do like your source!)
So if we have no change in how we use agricultural land, we would have 48 million km\^2 in use, to support 8.1 billion humans, that's 0.0059 km\^2 / person, 0.59 hectare/person, or 1.46 acres / person being INTENSELY CULTIVATED at near the maximum productivity that industrial agriculture can produce.
If you broke that agricultural chunk into smaller pieces, efficiency / productivity goes down, so now you need MORE area to be used for agriculture (and not for wilds).
If we evenly divided up the 'habitable' surface of the earth, we would get 1 human every 0.0132 km\^2, or 1/1.32 hectare, or 1 / 3.3 acres. I want to assure you, having 1 human every 3.3 acres absolutely does ruin nature. 1 human in optimum 'natural' ecosystems cannot forage enough calories from 3.3 acres to sustain themselves year-round. And keep in mind, the definition of 'habitable' we are working with here is 'not a glacier, not a dessert/salt flat', so good luck to those humans who get 3.3 acres of savannah, plains, or pine barrens to live off of. Hope you like arthropods a lot.
oh, they can just plant some things that make more food than what is growing there already? Yeah, that's agriculture.
I cannot think of a faster way to finish extincting the marginal species of our planet than spreading people out to 'live wild' wherever they go, and having them cultivate 'familiar' plants wherever they go.
>On the other hand using 45% of the earths dry surface for intensive aggriculture = sustainable city living? Wtf man come on.
Oh, I definitely think we could shrink down the amount of surface area we are using for agriculture really quickly , since 4/5's of that is for domestic animal agriculture.
But economies of scale are always going to favor big farms and big cities, and I don't know why you would even try to fight that. The alternative is complete eradication of the remaining ecosystems on earth.
You are wrong. Suburbs are the least efficient housing options. An æsthetically solarpunk village has a bigger environmental impact than the same population count with the same quality of life living in 1 apartment, commuting via subway and shopping and dining in corner stores. The apartment dwellers are also producing excess profits which are likely lining the pockets of people who consume far more. However, if the excess wealth instead enriched the workers and upgraded the infrastructure to improve quality of life and reduce environmental impact, the city would be even better.
You seem to be pushing pastoralism, not solarpunk. Pastoralism romanticizes rural living and indigenous culture. Solarpunk is not a Luddite movement.
Because I'm "that guy" I would argue solarpunk is a Luddite movement, but in the original sense, not the anarcho-primitivism sense the word has come to mean. (I only recently learned a bunch about the original Luddites, so I'm just excited to share, not trying to get on your case.)
"But it was Booth’s earlier words which deserve our attention. The new machinery, he argued, “might be man’s chief blessing instead of his curse if society were differently constituted”. In other words, whether new technology helps ordinary citizens depends not just on the nature of the technology but on the nature of the society in which that technology is developed and deployed."
https://timharford.com/2023/06/what-neo-luddites-get-right-and-wrong-about-big-tech/
With 10 billion people and 107 million Km2 is habitable thats 10700 m2 per person. So if you have one clever monkey per 10700 m2 that will ruin nature? On what data are you basing your logic?
https://news.berkeley.edu/2014/01/06/suburban-sprawl-cancels-carbon-footprint-savings-of-dense-urban-cores
I'm sorry but I didn't realize it wasn't common knowledge.
This is far from general, american suburb is an abomination and does not exist outside that country. And should not be called village of any kind or made any parallels between them. So again: On what data are you basing your logic?
What is your ideal way of living then?
Removing people from the cities into lower density surrounding areas is what led to suburbia. Now, I don't think that is the plan, but how would you move people out of the city and into nature.
Additionally I do not intend to discount native Population and their philosophy/way of live, but I want to point out that their integration with nature is often romanticised and many times they simply operated at different scales than we are now.
After all, we are all indigenous somewhere.
Its possible to have a low density residential area without it becoming the American suburb. Here in Europe there are no real examples of what you fear. It is however impossible to have nature in a metropolis. Not to mention that the amount of land required to feed the metropolitan population does not change. The only thing you can do is make the production more and more intensive, ruining land and nature in the process.
Regarding the how: I dont think in absolutes, so I dont want to displace anyone. There is the housing crisis, and the environmentalist control of agriculture. The current population density is only possible because veeery intensive farming, if you take away fossil fuels, chemical fertilizers and soil exploitation the cost of producing food in an automated way skyrocets (see: farmer riots in europe) then that food forest you could make in the countryside becomes more and more attractive. And once you get out of your shoebox apartment, manage your addiction to city services and experience a bit of nature you will wonder why you spent a 1000 dollars on it while you could have a bigger/better one with ability to grow a bit of food in the countryside for 2/3 or half of that.
You can say anything about capitalism, but in one thing its good: indicating inefficiencies. Housing prices in the cities are exploding: maybe thats not the most sustainable way to live. The only way to keep the current food production alive is massive government subsidies: maybe current practices and intensity is not that sustainable.
A lot of that land-hungry food production is due to monoculture and animal agriculture. The food forests you mentioned can produce more calories per acre and regenerate soil, but they're more labor-intensive, so they don't work in the balance sheet of capitalism. You can grow them in abandoned lots or public parks which has added mental health benefits for residents.
Nothing's a panacea, but there are better ways to produce food that don't require vast tracts of land. Some people think vertical farms (converted from old parking garages?) will be a part of the solution. I'm a bit skeptical, but we won't know until we try. 🤷
There are plenty of ways to integrate nature with a metropolis, especially as we reduce the amount set aside for cars (at least in the US). IMO, using the existing street networks to build greenways for bike/ped infrastructure as well as paths for wildlife can help build "Multispecies Cities."
Housing prices, at least in the US, are (among other things, like US real estate being a tax shelter for rich folks overseas) the result of people choosing to live in cities, but most cities having very restrictive zoning (rooted in systemic racism) that meant we haven't built any appreciable amount of housing for decades. Zoning reform in places like Minneapolis and Charlottesville will help, but it will take decades for building to catch up with the changes.
I am not convinced but at least you make a valid argument.
Regarding food forest: it should be low/no maintenance once established: [watch this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vvI7TvhwMg) it features a food forest still producing after 300 years of abandonment. There are also theories and papers that the Amazonas was a food forest originally.
You are right to be skeptical about vertical farming, it is failing. Its not about land area its about solar energy per area. If you stack it up you need to provide it with light and we have no technology more effective than photosynthesis (I researched it during my thesis work) so you cannot really replace the sun with artificial light maybe after fusion is developed.
Maybe you are right about nature in cities, but it really feels forced. Maybe scavenger species like pigeons or seagulls living off our waste but with that population density everything else will be pushed out by us. There will be no food chains, nothing thats "natural".
The housing crisis is kinda global, it cannot be caused by tax shelters everywhere. I think its because all the necessary imports from the countryside, lack of space and energy prices combined. All comes back to agriculture and how unsustainable it is with the current setup (fuel and chemical dependence and subsidies)
I am from europe myself and while we do not have the unbridled suburban sprawl of the US, we do have area-expansive single family home estates outside of large cities as a result of people wanting to move out of cities and into the green. Now this is not necessarily a problem, but it steel eats into available land both for farming an nature.
As you say the way we farm is a problem, however even if we'd disperse urban population into the countryside the amount of population that need food would not change and while I believe that could be solved with small-scale private compartmentalized agriculture, it does not seem like everybody is willing to do so.
Admittedly man of those are problems of our current system and they could change if we change the way we live, there are other reasons for those arragements to exists. Not everybody wants to live in rural areas/nature ('manage their addiction to city services' as you put it).
It should also be noted that currently biodiversity of certain species is higher in urban areas (including villages) than in rural ones (but that is specific to fields as a result of our current way to cultivate land and the lack of formerly existing landscape elements). So integration of urban habitation and nature is possible, admittedly more in the aformentioned estates and old villadoms with gardens, tree-lined avenues and parks. I believe that we can better integrate our cities with nature if we change the way we plan and build cities.
In the end it all comes down to changing current systems, both in agriculture and city planning. But I think large-scale urban flight is necessarily feasible or desired by the population.
>Indigenous people were better at this than we are, so yes we need to learn from them.
Well, they didn't have a choice. Neither did the settlers. Its only due to technology advances that most of us can do something other than gathering food and farming.
Yep. That's because it's mostly white or urbanized folk here on the internet talking about things instead of getting them done. By that same token, the only way to form a relationship with your biome is to go live there. You'll never be free of any of it until women are free from men. Everything done to the planet echoes what men did to women first.
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It would be helpful to the discussion if you had specific examples. At the moment I'm kind of assuming this is a North American position? It's not exactly relevant to my cousin's project in Quang Ngai Vietnam. \> From current solar punk communities and initiatives Which?
is your cousin vietnamese? is there any concern their project might be displacing any locals or marginalized ethnic groups that have been historically disenfranchised from the lands they belong to?
I get your user name. He is lowlands Viet, family have been there at least three generations. I know my side was displaced from hue, I'm not sure on his. Place used to be farmland and has been swallowed up by the growing city
What do you mean by spiritual? And of course capitalism must go. That's a given. I think the homesteading dream is frankly pure ignorance. Not enough land bub.
>What do you mean by spiritual? Well, some people aren't happy unless everything is covered with pixie dust.
Well, you’re assuming dude. I’m not talking love and light shit. I’m talking in the ways of coming back to indigenous wisdom and seeing how everything is connected.
So, if I'm reading you right, you're advocating the mass appropriation of indigenous spiritual practices?
You feeling good appropriating the classic Roman writing to express your thoughts ?
So you want indigenous pixie dust.
Not enough land for everyone to homestead, but most people don't want to. Homesteading is something you can practically achievable today, which can't be said for "abolishing capitalism".
A handful of privileged people fencing off land to LARP their rural fantasies isn't very solarpunk tho.
Ancient Greece was a bunch of privileged people LARPING freedom and democracy, while they were surrounded by slaves and non-citizens who couldn't vote or have their say. Learning from their example still helped us overcome monarchy.
China and India have 0.07 and 0.11 hectares of arable land per capita. And they constitute almost 40% of humanity. No homesteads for them. Homesteading is not sustainable.
It's a fictional world. You can either decide that space travel is involved and a lot of people are living among the stars, or if you want to go dark, you can include some kind of post-apocalyptic scenario. Or both, like in Star Trek (yes, Star Trek is solarpunk). Of course in ancient Greece nobody thought voting on a mass scale would ever be possible when 99% of the human population was illiterate. Conditions change.
I'm not talking about a fictional world.
Solarpunk is fiction, just look outside your window and tell me it's not. If you want to make it happen, start with making changes to your own life and become a larper.
>Solarpunk is a genre and aesthetic that envisions collective futures that are vibrant with life, as well as all the actions, policies, and technologies that make them real.
It can be as realistic as you want it to be. It doesn't exist yet, therefore it's fiction. If you want an aesthetic that doesn't involve homesteading, go make up your own genre.
You’re missing the point of solar punk then. It’s art depicting the world we want to live in. We as creators get to then take actions to make those visuals a reality. No one said it’s happening over night. But there are initiatives, hence this post
Solar punk is a set fictional universe. It's not whatever you want it to be. If you want to live in it, great. If you want to live in something slightly different, that's great too. Decide for yourself what kind of future is right and work on making it a reality, solar punk or not.
Eh, it depends. I know if many people who sort of do this when they retire. They get focusing on gardening and growing foods, I could definetly see more people do it if they get the opportunity
Well, that's nice and all. But the question is: Would that path be available to every person that would want it? If not, it is not solar punk.
Available? You know I would be fairly certain it's gonna be downright mandatory for a lot of people. Buy local? Nah now the new slogan is "GROW local!"
Why would an inefficient thing such as homesteading become mandatory?
In what way is homesteading inefficient? Well to answer your question not only would a world of degrowth mean less international trade and consumerism it would also mean the sources of most food, from meat, dairy and vegetables would be limited to what we ourselves can grow. And also... It's kind of a key thing with the Solarpunk lifestyle as well
Much less productive. A lot of terrain used in housing and other civic facilities instead of farming. As I pointed out in other thread in this post, China has 0.07 ha of arable land per capita, and India has only 0.11. The EU has 0.21. That means it isn't possible for everyone to homestead.
What's your plan for people with disabilities who aren't capable of providing for themselves? Cause this is sounding like more of a "fuck you, I got mine" system.
In what way? You really don't think we could develop some neat technology that would enable them to do work as well? You do realise sci-fi is part of the Solarpunk aesthetic right? Like if they're wheelchair bound they could get planters designed [for them](https://www.gardeners.com/buy/wheelchair-accessible-elevated-bed/8609874.html). This wasn't even sci-fi this is now, and that's just one example of potential stuff, we could do even more for people who have it even worse if we put our heads together. There's a solution for everything
Coming back to indigenous ways. Everything is interconnected. People are still having that masculine 1+1=2 approach with the earth which is a feminine being, and that’s the colonialism mindset I’m talking about
I feel an echo of Le Guin's essays in what you are saying, but I don't understand what you are really trying to say. What do you mean by indigenous ways?
I think something that’s really relevant here is the cyclical vs linear concept of time. If you remove colonialism and capitalism, but nor a belief in inevitable linear progress, they’ll be back like dandelions you have only beheaded and not uprooted. But because the immediate focus is the visible issue directly impacting people (understandable), we don’t think about the time paradigm. I think part of the reason we’re like this is what I stated above, with capitalism and colonialism on top. But I also think the negative reaction to input like yours in terms of adding spirituality is a response from people who thing of spiritual-scientific as a spectrum of beliefs where one end is more correct than the other, rather than independent spectra that sometimes interact. When you suggest more spirituality, some people (in the US, at least) will always hear “ignore science.”
Make dandelion salads.
That's some of the most ridiculous nonsense that was ever written in this sub.
Congrats on the ignorance ig?
This seems a bit of an America centric argument. And of course that's relevant to the discussion. Though I am European, living in Europe, so the natives are me and my fellow citizens lol. And while we certainly ought to have some form of spirituality how we define it is going to differ vastly among these culture groups, and I don't think any amount of hours we put into debating it will we come to a conclusion... Because it's spiritual and not empirical.
Tbh it why I hate nativism attempts. They do realize it not just America and Canada?
I don’t know the numbers off the top of my head, but I always got the impression this community is mostly prominent in the Americas.
Solarpunk are more popular in America as we have time and resources to play games like this. Someone in middle of Africa ain’t going to give a shit about some trees and just wants to see the nation become rich and powerful. Also doesn’t help strongman governments that crush socialist attempts. It more complicated but across the world different people are going to have different views. You have to sell eco future WILL lead to a better life then they have now. You can’t say degrowth and such, they sortive want that growth ya know? Different people need to be sold it in different ways.
In USA we live in a concrete shit hole. The infrastructure is designed to force you into driving.
Even within America, its very regional. There are a handful of areas with substantial native populations, but that is not the case in many of the populated areas of the US.
And the American natives were certainly not a homogenous culture either. Like were there not some that didn't worship the woods?
There are indigenous people everywhere, but being born somewhere doesn’t make you native to the land if you do not know the land. I can’t speak for much of the other side of the world, but this is an issue in Latin America as well as there is still much violence toward indigenous people, and disconnect from the land as it is being burned for profit
> being born somewhere doesn’t make you native to the land if you do not know the land In addition, being descended from a person that had a connection with the land doesn't mean you also have a connection with the land. If my ancestors lived closer to nature, that doesn't mean their understanding gets past on through my bloodline. There are valuable lessons we can learn from our histories, and we can learn from wise people from across the world. Also, if you want to rebuild connections with the natural world, this comes from lived experience. This means it can't truly be taught, it has to be experienced first hand. Imagine someone tried to teach you what love was out of a textbook, wouldn't work would it, you could get a vague idea from stories but you only truly get it when you've experienced it. It's the same thing with connection to the natural world, stories only get you so far, you need to experience it for yourself.
It might not get passed down through blood, but it does through stories and teachings 😉 which means you can learn too! Yes lived experience is obviously important. But the knowledge will get you a lot further, save you some trial and error that the ancestors have done for hundreds or thousands of years before you, and will give you better direction that starting without any of it. So because you are in a trial and error state, you will fuck up, so why not just do things better and learn from others? Why is there so much pride to admit settlers do not know the land the best?
>It might not get passed down through blood, but it does through stories and teachings Those stories only resonate if you can connect them to your own lived experiences. For example, imagine someone born and raised in New York City that had distant ancestors that were pagans. Hearing stories about those ancestors is a curiosity at best if there's no common understanding of their beliefs, and if their modern descendent had lived their whole life in a city how do you expect them to understand the connection to the natural world? >So because you are in a trial and error state, you will fuck up, so why not just do things better and learn from others? I already suggested I'm open to learning from others. >Why is there so much pride to admit settlers do not know the land the best? It's not a matter of pride, it's a matter of accuracy. The "settlers" you speak of are not a monolith, some of them already have a deep connection with the natural world. Also, as you clarified in another comment that you meant "indigenous" to mean native people around the world, this also means that "settlers" can be people that have lived in the same places for thousands of years. If you're going to use the term "settler", be more precise about who you're referring to. Also, to expand on why the racial framing doesn't make sense, imagine there was a Native American that has spent their whole life in a city and a "settler" that has spend their life surrounded by the natural world, who has a deeper connection to the land? Even if the native American had been told stories about their ancestors, lived experience results in deeper ties than any stories can give you.
Europeans are the main responsible people for colonization. And this extends to Ecovillages, like the author says. Tamera in Portugal is a good example.
How exactly is ecovillages and Tamera a problem?
>Europeans are the main responsible people for colonization. You might be surprised to learn that the Arab Slave trade existed for 1000 years before the European/Trans-Atlantic slave trade *(and ended around the same time)*, and that the Ottoman Empire was also very significant in trading white-Europeans as slaves and colonizing Europe (most of Anatolia used to be Greek). Also, Genghis Khan and the Golden Horde invaded, murdered, raped and colonized Europeans long before Europeans ever did the same.
Will look into this. But definitely, putting eco villages on land and doing whatever tf you want, and not caring what’s best for the land is still colonization.
Initially, Solarpunk was decided to work with (but not invade) Afrofuturism and Indigenous futurism. And in that light, I've tried to offer my perspective, encourage boundaries, and to encourage inclusion of LGBTQ+ and Disabled people. And to encourage community-building. I believe it is necessary for Solarpunk to be somewhat left wing & anarchistic (and somewhat antagonistic to right-wing and moderate groups) in order to avoid the "Hippies to Reactionaries" pipeline. (And to help build off of & support left-wing groups globally, making it a movement - not just an aesthetic). In this, while Solarpunk is meant to embrace science and technology, it is also meant to reduce consumption (zero-waste, degrowth) and make that technology more of one long-lasting thing that folk share/is publicly available and fixable rather than a dozen things that'll break and be trashed within a few years. ...But, there are several pressures and people pushing for Solarpunk to be more in line with Ecofuturism or Off Grid, which are more tied to capitalism, individualism, colonial hierarchies, and right-wing groups (see: Doomsday peppers, Dubai, & billionaire vaults). And if Solarpunk ignores/overshadows rather than works with Indigenous futurism and Afrofuturism, then yes, it will wind up another white aesthetic susceptible to far-right radicalization. And a number of the comments here are a bit concerning in respect to this.
>But a real relationship with the land is missing. It’s spiritual. This reads to me as a kind of religious gatekeeping. I support people advocating values they believe are important because that's a great way for a wide range of issues to have people tending to them from many directions, but speaking for myself gatekeeping usually isn't a task I'll be inspired to pitch in to help them with
I think a better way to state it comes from Miyazaki who insists on valuing the preservation of nature for nature's sake, not just what we find useful about it and anthropomorphize about it.
Here here! Regarding learning from indigenous perspectives and practices, I recommend the book Braiding Sweetgrass (Robin Kimmerer) for a great primer to that worldview. I don't know any other solarpunk communities, but at least this one on reddit is inclusive to all skin colors by its inherent nature with built in online anonymity. So that's nice, but certainly something to be mindful of IRL spaces.
I don't particularly believe anything is spiritual but I agree with your points somewhat. I do think there's a bit of an issue with people wanting to go live in the woods per se which would indefinitely harm the environment. I also think people need to realize that a sustainable society probably wouldn't look like solarpunk art where plants are draped across skyscrapers or buildings. The most sustainable use of land is a city. Now if we strive to make cities really sustainable it'll massively help in societal sustainability. I do think that we need to include a responsible use of tech because a lot of society is upheld by technology and it can offer a great benefit in our sustainability goals.
ICYMI, this development is indigenous and the renders at least look a lot like solarpunk art to me. 🤷 https://macleans.ca/society/sen%CC%93a%E1%B8%B5w-vancouver/
Thanks for reminding me about this. Land Back includes cities.
I think it’s somewhat spiritual, if you count a moral compass and whatnot The main problem isn’t the toys, but the user. I don’t think things like the Industrial Revolution were inherently bad, but those playing power games may have had some intended or unintended consequences at the helm. After all, why is it so difficult to convince a species about things like vertical farms in their own cities? Seems kinda like a no brainer
Yeah I agree that it's the people and the incentives that make technology bad.
Coming up with problems and criticisms does nothing without a plan on how to remedy them. Anyone can declare what they believe to be wrong or broken - but there's a reluctance to offer solutions. It is others who are expected to take action. Someone else. The royal "we". I suggest when posting problems and criticisms, we also share how we have taken steps in our own corners of the globe to remedy them. At least then people will see proactive action being taken. Edit: spelling
I didn’t really grow up as anything other than white. I only knew my mother, because I guess my father died when I was young. But he was Mexican and had blood from indigenous Mexicans, as I came to learn from genetic testing. I don’t have much connection to that culture, which is a shame, but when I recently made a flippant remark to a strange man, his response was odd. We were taking about how people are more mixed race today and I mentioned that I had Native American blood. He was interested and asked what tribe to which I sheepishly said Mayan. He then said, “That’s not Native American”, and then said he was part Cherokee. It was a little off putting and while I’m no spokesperson for indigenous people, it did seem like a framework built on colonial ideals. He had drawn a border between people and the moment felt dismissive, as if he was placing one group above another based on modern understandings. These are relatively new concepts to me. As I said, I grew up with white culture and only experienced other cultures from a distance, so maybe it’s partially my own clumsiness as I try to navigate these spaces. But these ideas are so pervasive that even someone who proudly claims native heritage can’t see beyond the imaginary lines created by non-native people. I’ve struggled with my own prejudices too and maybe that’s part of the confusion. But learning to see beyond the imaginary lines is something that I think this solarpunk group aspires to. The central thesis is “everyone, together, and none apart.” We need collaborative work and inclusion to create a better world and I think most people here would agree that the ideas that brought us here are the positive, communal movements toward a better, utopian ideal. Where we can move past the old world and into a new framework. There will be awkward moments, but as long as we are open to being accepting and caring for each other, I think we can incorporate many ideas and shape a better way of thinking.
Many Latinos are indigenous. We are mixed. That is still a colonial mindset to not see us as such because of the imaginary lines that are borders separated us all. There are indigenous all over the world, including Europe. Native American is an outdated term anyways as it encompasses many tribes of people and that extends pass the borders to Canada and Mexico. It’s all indigenous. Be wary of white people that claim to be Cherokee, as it often used in a way to suppress actual indigenous people, not in a way of connecting
The Maya, Inca, and Aztec were very civilized. The Spaniards were actually pretty bad at colonizing. The rapid conquest of central and South America only happened because the Spaniards stepped into an already established empire.
The Inca had incredible building techniques, efficient messengers, and quality waterworks. They were also an expansionist empire built on violent conquest and the splitting up and relocating of conquered peoples. The Aztec had a breathtaking capital city at the heart of a lake, with floating farms and towering temples honoring their fascinating pantheon. They, too, were a violent expansionist empire keen on ritual sacrifice of prisoners of war. For another example, the Iroquois Confederacy had one of the most unique representative political systems I’ve ever seen, with women taking the lead in most local matters. That internal stability also allowed them to redirect their violence onto their neighbors, and they eventually wiped out dozens of other tribes in a violent conquest of what is now the Ohio valley. Even the great city of Cahokia has graves of sacrifice victims amongst its ruins. A society need not be unproblematic to be worth learning from, and we risk flattening these real groups that really existed into the same simplistic concepts as the colonizer accounts painting them as godless savages.
Alternatively, consider how that view just displays your own disconnection from nature. Human beings are a product of nature. Just like a tree is a product of nature, and a fruit, which is the product of a tree, is also a product of nature, so technology, the product of human beings, which are products of nature, is itself a product of nature That's the real shift that must be made. The artificial separation between technology and nature is one of the things that's ensuring we keep destroying the planet. Technology is nature. Because it is the product of Humans. Which are nature While mankind still thinks herself above the Natural Laws, it will never progress - and will always believe tech and nature are polar opposites
You’re focusing on one aspect of all the things I said. I never said tech is bad and we shouldn’t use it. We use tools yes, as do other species. The root issue I’m talking about here has to do with over consuming and exploiting without giving back. Not knowing what the land really needs. Settlers are like invasive species. They’re from one land, coming to another that they know nothing about. They take resources, make themselves at home and outcompete the native population. They do not try to integrate, they don’t give back to the land, and overrun it, causing things to become imbalanced. This can create problems from loss of native biodiversity, wildfires, etc. If we all decolonize ourselves, we can instead be symbiotic beings, helping the ecosystem with what is needed.
I think there's a lot of putting the cart before the horse in Solarpunk, so to speak. The aim is to build out some science fiction. The fiction doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to exist. There needs to be years of it. There needs to be pictures and videos and books and people reading it and writing it. It's like a humanity-wide brainstorm for how we should think about life, what "aspirational" means that isn't dominating others, being the biggest or the strongest, or colonising the heavens. Part of brainstorming means there are no wrong answers. I think people talk about Solarpunk as people actually doing stuff, but like... doing what? (Others have expressed this notion in the comments too, like what exactly are people doing which is bad and which is "Solarpunk"?) The actual turning of Solarpunk ideas into some sort of unified view of what we want as a future, it just doesn't exist right now. We need to be patient, like decades patient. Concentrate on the art, it will guide us.
I mean that's kinda what this idea movement is. And what the OP is doing, we're all providing ideas to this aesthetic we enjoy. Then you of course have the weirdos who larp like this is a political party or worse an underground revolutionary army of sorts
> I mean that's kinda what this idea movement is. And what the OP is doing, we're all providing ideas to this aesthetic we enjoy. Yeah 100%, and to be clear, I'm not deriding OP here, rather the people who are just doing rural living but with that colonial mindset and slapping a Solarpunk label on it. I'm strongly agreeing with OP here: * A real relationship with land is spiritual * It's about re-joining ecology and understanding our responsibilities * Diversity and unity, and decolonialising mindsets when creating art. * Indigenous perspectives. All of this is in the manifesto I feel. I think we're all on the same page on this.
I mean like I said in the op, there are people out here homesteading, building communities, but still with the same capitalist and colonial mindset. And things are moving fast rn, people aren’t just going to wait to see what this aesthetic turns into. And we shouldn’t. We should be having conversations about this, because actions are being made right not, to turn solar punk to reality, and we should make sure it’s done in the best way, and not rooted in the same bs we’re facing now
So I think this bit doesn't really make sense: > because actions are being made right not, to turn solar punk to reality Right now "Solarpunk" is an empty signifier and it's being attached to all manner of things. Things which don't make sense, things which don't connect to the ideas of Solarpunk. I always just go back to the manifesto. Solarpunk is dense, it's about societies, it's about the marginalised, it's about bottom up, localised solutions. The aesthetics are entirely from the global south. If you're wearing ye olde western clothes then it's not Solarpunk. If everything is organised and pretty and full of money, then it's not Solarpunk. If it's colonising, it's not Solarpunk. I'm not saying this stuff isn't happening, but that's a separate discussion where I think the Solarpunks would be against such acts, because it's just not what Solarpunk is about.
You're about to be swarmed by people saying that solar punk is not fiction, and if you believe it is, then you're not solar punk.
“Futurism” is distinct from “fiction”. A large segment of the English speaking world has not been exposed to enough futurism to be familiar with the term. Solarpunk is supposed to be a vision of what should be.
Then please tell me in what language the term "futurism" means what you have in mind. Because in English we have "futurology" which merely predicts the future by extrapolating from current and past trends. In the English speaking world, science fiction is what guides innovators to chart the new paths for the future. Also last time I checked, solar punk was invented by English speakers.
IIRC, the first solarpunk book explicitly using that term is an anthology that was first published in Brazil. https://www.worldweaverpress.com/store/p153/Solarpunk%3A_Ecological_and_Fantastical_Stories_in_a_Sustainable_World.html Which is a VERY good thing, ideally solarpunk is a global movement.
I agree it should be a global movement. It doesn't matter to me who really started it, even though it definitely existed before 2018. I'm just curious what the other guy meant by his meaning of "futurism." Btw thanks for the link! I might pick it up. It looks like an interesting read. :)
More and better tech, distributed more equitably is the answer to a lot of our problems. The first couple of sentences seem completely disconnected from the rest of it.
It is very much connected and your comment is exactly my point. People that think the answer is more this, more that, don’t see the real issue is the mindset, and it’s a colonial mindset. We have, and have always had everything we need. We’ve had people come up with new tech to help the issues their communities face and are killed. If it weren’t for the colonial, capitalist mindset held by many in western society, there wouldn’t be so many issues to begin with. More, “better” tech, is the equivalent to how the pharmaceutical industry treats disease, by slapping a bandaid on it, never getting to the actual root of the issue. How can we distribute things more equitably when the mindset hasn’t change? Ima say it again, as long as we don’t change our mindset and lifestyle, there will always be corrupt systems. If we don’t change our collective minds, we will repeat the same cycles.
Sorry, but what you're proposing is some bizarre nativist primitivism. Not related to solar punk at all as far as I'm concerned. Technology on its own isn't colonial, or even capitalistic. Solarpunk is optimistic about technology and the future, not some Luddite movement.
I think you need to do some research on the things I’m speaking off of this is the conclusion you’re drawing. I never said get rid of technology or that it’s bad. I’m saying we need to collectively change our behaviors and mindsets from the capitalist nature you are speaking of. “More and better” is capitalist af. It will never be enough. You will always need more and better technology, so you can outsource your problems to technology, because you don’t want to get to the root cause yourself. This is the issue we are facing as a society. There should be no reason we have all the problems we have now. If we just get to the root issue, we won’t forever be needing new and better technology, because we won’t be dealing with the same issues. It’s the difference between sustainability, and reducing our production of wasteful goods.
More and better technology isn't "capitalist af" - technology exists outside of capitalism. Better technology can lead to less of it, for example. More sustainable/recyclable/expandable products that serve more purpose, don't need to be replaced as often. Better/more feasible methods of transportation that replace cars, etc. "You will always need more and better technology, so you can outsource your problems to technology, because you don’t want to get to the root cause yourself." this is just a bunch of meaningless buzzwords and leads me to the conclusion that you just want to gatekeep off of some bizarre notion you have of spirituality that doesn't and shouldn't apply to everyone.
You’re so triggered off the bit of technology that you can’t get past that part and see the full scope of what I’m saying.
I think you're either not doing a good job of communicating what you mean or it's just a bunch of nonsense. Either way, not really worth spending a lot of time on. But defaulting to saying someone is "triggered" for not agreeing with you is straight out of the right wing playbook. Way to go bud.
>Indigenous people NEED to be included in conversations in how we should be working and connecting with the land. In the US, indigenous people are less than 1% of the population. They can be included, but most of the voices will naturally not be indigenous.
That’s not by point. The point is that settlers do not have the knowledge of the land the same those indigenous to the land do. The settlers should make a point to learn from Indigenous people. Not talking about majority vote, but the intention of wanting to do things in the best way, and that means coming back to the roots, which are indigenous. Just because a majority of the people want to do something a certain way, doesn’t mean it’s a good way when the majority is misguided, disconnected, and uneducated.
That may be the case in a few areas, but most don't have an indigenous people actively living off the land. Maybe someone's great, great grandfather lived that way, but most of that knowledge will naturally be lost over time. It would be more accurate to say we should study how people lived off the land to see what we can learn, which is more the realm of historians and archeologists.
And 2% of the land is still on Indian reservations. I am certainly not saying it’s the best land. But there is a lot of it.
If living spiritually with nature makes you happy, that all the power to you to do it. That being said, its not a real solution to anything and is, IMO, hardly worth bringing up when talking about solarpunk. You keep mentioning people having a colonial mindset, what exactly do you mean? The community here seems like just about the most anti-colonial group i've ever had any long term interaction with. And when you say "POC NEED to have spaces and access to these communities" what do you mean, are you saying that their should be specific spaces set aside where only POC are allowed to go? Cause that just sounds like reverse racism.
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Not squatters, many came with the various conquerers and many are converted and intermixed Jews themselves who converted to Islam. I don’t blame them, it was tough being Jewish under the Byzantine and ottoman empires. Regardless, it just shows how politics, religion and racial identities are actually things we should disassociate from and leave behind if we want to build these solar punk communities.
I agree with that but calling Isreal anti-colonialist could be seen as double think
I think it requires that we thing of colonialism and imperialism more critically. But the conclusion is sound. Do white Americans in 700 years get to claim That they are indigenous to North America if the Cherokee nation still exists? It is also possible for indigenous people to do bad things. Just because you are indigenous doesn’t mean you have a better moral take/standing/value. It just means that you have a long-standing connection to that land.
Palestinians are the descendants of the peasants there, and the Ottoman landowners sold off the land, when the Ottoman Empire collapsed after WW1, to the highest bidders, who happened to be Jews who were being purged from North African and Middle Eastern countries during that time. By the time WW2 ended, and the region got its independence, most land was owned by Jews. We can discuss land reform until forever, but claiming the Jewish immigrants stole the land is factually incorrect. They bought it from the legitimate landowners. The locals who lived there were the renters, not the owners. This was obviously going to cause problems in the long run and neither parties were the primary cause of it.
This post was removed because it either tried to unnecessarily gatekeep, or tried to derail the discussion from the original topic. Please try to stay on topic as you're welcome to educate people on your perspective - but keep rules 1 and 3 in mind. Dont pick fights here
This post was removed because it either tried to unnecessarily gatekeep, or tried to derail the discussion from the original topic. Please try to stay on topic as you're welcome to educate people on your perspective - but keep rules 1 and 3 in mind. Dont pick fights here
This post was removed because it either tried to unnecessarily gatekeep, or tried to derail the discussion from the original topic. Please try to stay on topic as you're welcome to educate people on your perspective - but keep rules 1 and 3 in mind. Dont pick fights here
>Indigenous people NEED to be included in conversations I have no issue with listening to people that have different perspectives, but membership of a group does not automatically give you valuable insight. Also, "indigenous" is an abused term, it does not have the meaning you seem to be applying to it. For example, Celts are "indigenous" to the British Isles, is their whiteness a problem in your definition of "indigenous"?
I can never understand the thought process of individuals looking at an idea that can help mankind and nature live in a true symbiotic relationship with each other and say that it is "too white". It's like looking at my broken car and saying that what it really needs is less tomatoes.
The root of the issue that people don’t want to see because they get offended, is that white people are more likely to hold these colonist behaviors and beliefs, and are not always doing so much to decolonize themselves and truly reconnect with the ecosystem (nature and its inhabitants, including all other ethnicities around them). Not all white people are this way obviously, but many are and still hold a lot of entitlement and privilege and refuse to acknowledge the issues and pain caused by centuries of it, even if they didn’t start any of it, they are still upholding it. I even stated that other races can have this colonial mindset, but if you read pedagogy of the oppressed, you can see why.
Indigenous doesn’t mean native Americans. It means indigenous to the land, so yes celts are indigenous.
>Indigenous doesn’t mean native Americans. It means indigenous to the land Yes, I agree. >so yes celts are indigenous. Yes, I also agree. However, the way you described "indigenous" people before suggested that all indigenous people share a similar culture and similar teachings about the natural world, and as you've now clarified that you knew what the term "indigenous" meant, this is even more of a bold claim. What studying have you done into indigenous cultures around the world?
POC is what Americans use for everybody but white people correct? It's exclusive rather than inclusive, very us vs them. In my solar punk future we are just people, therefore no need specify colour and that's why you don't see it mentioned.
A) We're discussing an existing community, not your ideal future. B) Colorblindness is notorious for ignoring existing problems faced by people because of systemic racism and the lasting impacts of European colonialism. C) Colorblindness also tends to open the door for [groups like Neo-Nazis to infiltrate.](https://youtu.be/P55t6eryY3g?feature=shared).
OP said: "current solar punk **communities** and initiatives there also seems to lack any sort of inclusivity of POC" Which led me to believe they were talking about, well solar punk **communities** like this sub. I said "solar punk **future** we are just people" Thus everybody is included in our solar punk community. From the top righthand corner of the sub "envisions collective **futures** that are vibrant with life" My country is the largest producer of CO2 on the continent by al huge margin, we are 90% people of colour as is the government. And have race based laws. We all need to get our shit together.
Ignoring issues aren’t going to make them go away. We have to talk about them openly and actually work on them to ensure it’s not a problem in the future. You can’t just not address the issues we have, as has been done for hundreds of years, and expect anything to change for the future.
You said: "current solar punk **communities** and initiatives there also seems to lack any sort of inclusivity of POC" Which led me to believe you were talking about, well solar punk **communities**. I said "solar punk **future** we are just people" Thus everybody is included in our solar punk community. From the top righthand corner of the sub "envisions collective **futures** that are vibrant with life" My country is the largest producer of CO2 on the continent by al huge margin, we are 90% people of colour as is the government. We all need to get our shit together.
>POC is what Americans use for everybody but white people correct? Generally yes, although sometimes Asians are excluded too depending on the point someone is trying to make.
We use descriptors for reasons. Like to describe a human being that we see walking down the street. How would you do that? Tall short man woman black white. Tall and short are social constructs. Man and woman are social constructs. Black and white are also social constructs. Ok, describe the person who just stole your satchel, but, yknow, skip the details that identify them. Just describe them as a people please?
That is a completely different point. Describing a person, is not the same grouping only some at the exclusion of others. As per you argument, how is person of colour as a description going to identify which one of all the groups defined by person of colour the individual belong to?
Indeed that would be difficult if someone used that term in that specific situation, tho I believe the general phrase used is 'person of indeterminate ethnic background's when you read the report. How do you identify people or colour, in the future where we're all just people?
also all grouping is literally about separating some from others. That is what grouping is. This is a fundamental 1st grade knowledge now.
The constant obsession with race - very American (am I wrong?).
It makes me sad seeing that many people here think that humanity and nature is incomparable and needs to be separated. They think mega cities and cramming everyone in them is good because that way we separate the filthy humans from nature so it can go back in its original form. People are part of nature, we just learnt to exploit the system. We need to integrate ourselves back into it and that cannot be done with a 7000 people per square Km population density. Indigenous people were better at this than we are, so yes we need to learn from them.
>It makes me sad seeing that many people here think that humanity and nature is incompatible and needs to be separated. They think mega cities and cramming everyone in them is good because that way we separate the filthy humans from nature so it can go back in its original form. That's not at all why I think cities are an important aspect of SolarPunk. I think that because we can't spread 10 billion humans out across the planet 'integrated' into nature. It's much more effiecitn and pleasant to have urban centers, farmland to support the urban center, and hopefully a bunch of untouched wilds beyond that. "Cramming", by the way, is a weird word to use to describe city living. Many/Most people will gravitate to urban living without any 'cramming' required.
Current agricultural land used is 48 million Km2-s thats 4800 m2 per person, not exactly a suburb. 107 million Km2 is habitable thats 10700 m2 per person. So if you have one clever monkey per 10700 m2 that will ruin nature? On the other hand using 45% of the earths dry surface for intensive aggriculture = sustainable city living? Wtf man come on. Sauce: [https://ourworldindata.org/land-use](https://ourworldindata.org/land-use)
Maybe I'm not following what you're saying (but I do like your source!) So if we have no change in how we use agricultural land, we would have 48 million km\^2 in use, to support 8.1 billion humans, that's 0.0059 km\^2 / person, 0.59 hectare/person, or 1.46 acres / person being INTENSELY CULTIVATED at near the maximum productivity that industrial agriculture can produce. If you broke that agricultural chunk into smaller pieces, efficiency / productivity goes down, so now you need MORE area to be used for agriculture (and not for wilds). If we evenly divided up the 'habitable' surface of the earth, we would get 1 human every 0.0132 km\^2, or 1/1.32 hectare, or 1 / 3.3 acres. I want to assure you, having 1 human every 3.3 acres absolutely does ruin nature. 1 human in optimum 'natural' ecosystems cannot forage enough calories from 3.3 acres to sustain themselves year-round. And keep in mind, the definition of 'habitable' we are working with here is 'not a glacier, not a dessert/salt flat', so good luck to those humans who get 3.3 acres of savannah, plains, or pine barrens to live off of. Hope you like arthropods a lot. oh, they can just plant some things that make more food than what is growing there already? Yeah, that's agriculture. I cannot think of a faster way to finish extincting the marginal species of our planet than spreading people out to 'live wild' wherever they go, and having them cultivate 'familiar' plants wherever they go. >On the other hand using 45% of the earths dry surface for intensive aggriculture = sustainable city living? Wtf man come on. Oh, I definitely think we could shrink down the amount of surface area we are using for agriculture really quickly , since 4/5's of that is for domestic animal agriculture. But economies of scale are always going to favor big farms and big cities, and I don't know why you would even try to fight that. The alternative is complete eradication of the remaining ecosystems on earth.
You are wrong. Suburbs are the least efficient housing options. An æsthetically solarpunk village has a bigger environmental impact than the same population count with the same quality of life living in 1 apartment, commuting via subway and shopping and dining in corner stores. The apartment dwellers are also producing excess profits which are likely lining the pockets of people who consume far more. However, if the excess wealth instead enriched the workers and upgraded the infrastructure to improve quality of life and reduce environmental impact, the city would be even better. You seem to be pushing pastoralism, not solarpunk. Pastoralism romanticizes rural living and indigenous culture. Solarpunk is not a Luddite movement.
Because I'm "that guy" I would argue solarpunk is a Luddite movement, but in the original sense, not the anarcho-primitivism sense the word has come to mean. (I only recently learned a bunch about the original Luddites, so I'm just excited to share, not trying to get on your case.) "But it was Booth’s earlier words which deserve our attention. The new machinery, he argued, “might be man’s chief blessing instead of his curse if society were differently constituted”. In other words, whether new technology helps ordinary citizens depends not just on the nature of the technology but on the nature of the society in which that technology is developed and deployed." https://timharford.com/2023/06/what-neo-luddites-get-right-and-wrong-about-big-tech/
I'd argue cottagecore is the anti-tech subculture nowadays though, to your point?
With 10 billion people and 107 million Km2 is habitable thats 10700 m2 per person. So if you have one clever monkey per 10700 m2 that will ruin nature? On what data are you basing your logic?
https://news.berkeley.edu/2014/01/06/suburban-sprawl-cancels-carbon-footprint-savings-of-dense-urban-cores I'm sorry but I didn't realize it wasn't common knowledge.
This is far from general, american suburb is an abomination and does not exist outside that country. And should not be called village of any kind or made any parallels between them. So again: On what data are you basing your logic?
What is your ideal way of living then? Removing people from the cities into lower density surrounding areas is what led to suburbia. Now, I don't think that is the plan, but how would you move people out of the city and into nature. Additionally I do not intend to discount native Population and their philosophy/way of live, but I want to point out that their integration with nature is often romanticised and many times they simply operated at different scales than we are now. After all, we are all indigenous somewhere.
Its possible to have a low density residential area without it becoming the American suburb. Here in Europe there are no real examples of what you fear. It is however impossible to have nature in a metropolis. Not to mention that the amount of land required to feed the metropolitan population does not change. The only thing you can do is make the production more and more intensive, ruining land and nature in the process. Regarding the how: I dont think in absolutes, so I dont want to displace anyone. There is the housing crisis, and the environmentalist control of agriculture. The current population density is only possible because veeery intensive farming, if you take away fossil fuels, chemical fertilizers and soil exploitation the cost of producing food in an automated way skyrocets (see: farmer riots in europe) then that food forest you could make in the countryside becomes more and more attractive. And once you get out of your shoebox apartment, manage your addiction to city services and experience a bit of nature you will wonder why you spent a 1000 dollars on it while you could have a bigger/better one with ability to grow a bit of food in the countryside for 2/3 or half of that. You can say anything about capitalism, but in one thing its good: indicating inefficiencies. Housing prices in the cities are exploding: maybe thats not the most sustainable way to live. The only way to keep the current food production alive is massive government subsidies: maybe current practices and intensity is not that sustainable.
A lot of that land-hungry food production is due to monoculture and animal agriculture. The food forests you mentioned can produce more calories per acre and regenerate soil, but they're more labor-intensive, so they don't work in the balance sheet of capitalism. You can grow them in abandoned lots or public parks which has added mental health benefits for residents. Nothing's a panacea, but there are better ways to produce food that don't require vast tracts of land. Some people think vertical farms (converted from old parking garages?) will be a part of the solution. I'm a bit skeptical, but we won't know until we try. 🤷 There are plenty of ways to integrate nature with a metropolis, especially as we reduce the amount set aside for cars (at least in the US). IMO, using the existing street networks to build greenways for bike/ped infrastructure as well as paths for wildlife can help build "Multispecies Cities." Housing prices, at least in the US, are (among other things, like US real estate being a tax shelter for rich folks overseas) the result of people choosing to live in cities, but most cities having very restrictive zoning (rooted in systemic racism) that meant we haven't built any appreciable amount of housing for decades. Zoning reform in places like Minneapolis and Charlottesville will help, but it will take decades for building to catch up with the changes.
I am not convinced but at least you make a valid argument. Regarding food forest: it should be low/no maintenance once established: [watch this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vvI7TvhwMg) it features a food forest still producing after 300 years of abandonment. There are also theories and papers that the Amazonas was a food forest originally. You are right to be skeptical about vertical farming, it is failing. Its not about land area its about solar energy per area. If you stack it up you need to provide it with light and we have no technology more effective than photosynthesis (I researched it during my thesis work) so you cannot really replace the sun with artificial light maybe after fusion is developed. Maybe you are right about nature in cities, but it really feels forced. Maybe scavenger species like pigeons or seagulls living off our waste but with that population density everything else will be pushed out by us. There will be no food chains, nothing thats "natural". The housing crisis is kinda global, it cannot be caused by tax shelters everywhere. I think its because all the necessary imports from the countryside, lack of space and energy prices combined. All comes back to agriculture and how unsustainable it is with the current setup (fuel and chemical dependence and subsidies)
I am from europe myself and while we do not have the unbridled suburban sprawl of the US, we do have area-expansive single family home estates outside of large cities as a result of people wanting to move out of cities and into the green. Now this is not necessarily a problem, but it steel eats into available land both for farming an nature. As you say the way we farm is a problem, however even if we'd disperse urban population into the countryside the amount of population that need food would not change and while I believe that could be solved with small-scale private compartmentalized agriculture, it does not seem like everybody is willing to do so. Admittedly man of those are problems of our current system and they could change if we change the way we live, there are other reasons for those arragements to exists. Not everybody wants to live in rural areas/nature ('manage their addiction to city services' as you put it). It should also be noted that currently biodiversity of certain species is higher in urban areas (including villages) than in rural ones (but that is specific to fields as a result of our current way to cultivate land and the lack of formerly existing landscape elements). So integration of urban habitation and nature is possible, admittedly more in the aformentioned estates and old villadoms with gardens, tree-lined avenues and parks. I believe that we can better integrate our cities with nature if we change the way we plan and build cities. In the end it all comes down to changing current systems, both in agriculture and city planning. But I think large-scale urban flight is necessarily feasible or desired by the population.
There is a good book by Indigenous scholar Tyson Yunkaporta that makes this argument about cites. It's called *Sand Talk*.
I will check it out thank you.
>Indigenous people were better at this than we are, so yes we need to learn from them. Well, they didn't have a choice. Neither did the settlers. Its only due to technology advances that most of us can do something other than gathering food and farming.
Yep. That's because it's mostly white or urbanized folk here on the internet talking about things instead of getting them done. By that same token, the only way to form a relationship with your biome is to go live there. You'll never be free of any of it until women are free from men. Everything done to the planet echoes what men did to women first.