It would probably take a much longer analysis to fully explain but solarpunk has never sat well with me. Like... the whole "cyberpunk is too nihilistic and steampunk is reactionary therefore solarpunk" seems deeply insulting to the fact that survival in the face of climate change is going to require staring nihilism in the face. It's going to require grappling with the depersonalization of the 21st century world and it's going to require an understanding that the likelyhood of a picturesque artisinal villa is extremely low while the likelyhood desperate and violent survival is extremely high (and already the norm for much of the world).
Furthermore the idea of a political duty towards optimism is already completely congruent with ruling class ideology. Day in and day out anyone in any sort of white collar position is going to be bombarded with propaganda about the importance of "positive energy" and "maintaining optimism" in the face of an alleged nihilism that is likened to depression, inaction, laziness, and quite often misogyny and right wing politics.
I cannot trust an alleged radical position that is just as interested in suppressing despair as the ruling class for all the same reasons. I think if we are to survive the relentless assault of industrial civilization upon the earth, we're going to have to recognize that we are working from a position of desperation. Of bleakness. Of suicidal tendencies and the threat of complete depersonalization.
But Solarpunk can't bring itself to address what is practically the zeitgeist of our time for the same reason your corporate PR manager can't: when you are attempting to manage people for a political formation (where corporate or activist), the idea that we might all be fucked doesn't motivate people to organize into a formation that is manageable. It makes people desperate and chaotic, which is not ideal for those who seek to manage us via boardrooms or via megaphones. I think its telling that New Urbanism is often cited by Solarpunks as desirable, because the whole movement is the realm of urban planners, who have historically sided with capital in every instance, and represent the idea that the mass of humanity can and should be managed from above.
I love the idea of proliferating makers spaces, of low-tech solutions, of kicking capitalism to the curb, but quite frankly I have been drowning in false positivity throughout my whole life and I can recognize it when I see it. For all its alleged critiques of the genre, I really think it would behoove people who consider themselves Solarpunks to absorb some of the lessons of Cyberpunk, namely that:
"We live in desperate times where people are fighting over scraps. Our personhood and our skills are already compromised in service of a leviathan that is destroying the earth. But there are cracks in the machine, and resistance can truly come from anywhere, even from the most depersonalized, desperate amongst us."
I am DONE with positive vibes and optimism. We must acknowledge that we are staring off the edge of a yawning precipice, that many of us are finding fewer and fewer reasons to continue living, and that our resistance to capital will in all Likelyhood more resemble a desperate animal than a city planner.
Let's let the tools against capital proliferate and truly see one another for where we are, not comforting visions of where we would like to be.
