I honestly am wondering where all the people come from right now who want to have opinions on Solarpunk without putting even a smidgen of effort into researching about it. But you know what?
Whatever. Let's do this again. Let me explain Solarpunk to y'all.
Images are all from the Solarpunk Seed Library. The list of artists can be found at the bottom of the entry.
Three years ago I have written a little essay on the history of the genre. But to quickly go over it once more: there is this commonly held belief that Solarpunk originated in the UK and came from the Steampunk community there. Which is not true. There was an aesthetic existing in the UK Steampunk community that also was called Solarpunk and also used some Art Noveau visuals, but was otherwise quite different from what we know as Solarpunk. It was indeed literally an idea built from Steampunk.
The Solarpunk we now associate with the world originates from Brazil and grew largely out of the Amazofuturism movement in the early 2000s. By now the oldest reference I found to it was from 2006, though I am almost certain it likely originated from a convention in 2005. But I could never quite verify it. Either way. It grew out of Amazofuturism, though it also made it quite clear from the beginning that it took a lot of influence from a couple of non-Latin-American artists. Most notably Miyazaki and Ursula K. LeGuin.
The oldest stories that carried the Solarpunk label were in the Brazilian Anthology Solarpunk: Histórias ecológicas e fantásticas em um mundo sustentável.
The Anthology above released in 2012, which if we assume that the idea for Solarpunk originated in 2005 or 2006 means the idea for the genre was about six to seven years at the time. The Solarpunk Manifesto would not be defined till 2014, which is kind of part of the reason why a lot of the earlier stuff for Solarpunk is somewhat fuzzy on where it wanted to be on the entire "Utopia to Dystopia" scale. You can see that a lot in the anthology above, which kinda spans the fully spectrum between anarchist utopia and "Soylent Green is People". (Literally, mind you. There is a sort of Soylent Green story in there.)
The general idea was kinda clear from the beginning: renewable energies, sustainability, land back. And the entire "Miyazaki + LeGuin" influence also emerged quite early. But of course Miyazaki and LeGuin also are a spectrum, with their stories tendencially trying to navigate the question of how to create a better world, while actually trying to stick to... realistic restrictions.
But over the course of those first couple years some core ideas emerged - partially no doubt due to who was involved. And this eventually ended in the Solarpunk Manifesto.
I spoke about this a lot before. But once more: the entire core idea of Solarpunk is that the entire idea of Solarpunk is about being against capitalism, against colonialism, against the status quo, and against giving into despair.
Because here is the thing: Cyberpunk might also be of the general opinion that "yeah, capitalism is kinda bad", but then it shrugs and says: "But it is not like anyone can do anything about it." The entire point is that Solarpunk is post-capitalist, and decolonized, and anti-hierarchical (so anarchist).
There is this wonderful quote by Ursula K. LeGuin that kinda expressed the basic idea of the genre:
We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.
It is basically saying: "We imagine a world that is sustainable, non-capitalist, and decolonized, because if we do not learn how to imagine it we cannot archive it."
A bunch of the people refusing to do research keep complaining about it being too "rural", though frankly: actually it is the opposite. Technically speaking too much Solarpunk actually is more urban (especially if we talk genre), because a lot of people active in this space are queer, neurodivergent people kinda traumatized by rural life.
Originally a lot of the art was more urban, though that has admittedly shifted - though frankly, the reason for the art shift is that a lot of newer Solarpunk art has been done by smaller artists, who often struggle with those endless cityscapes.
Solarpunk is not ecofascist. If you think it is, you do not know shit about it and you kinda ignore that this is a movement in which the core voices who took part in defining this were largely non-white people - and still are. If you think Solarpunk is ecofascist, it says more about how you and how you view the world, than it says about Solarpunk.
Land Back, and decolonization are core values of the Solarpunk movement. Just as anti-capitalism is. Solarpunk is not achievable under capitalism, and most people who seriously work within the genre are quite aware of this fact. There is a reason why the world at large right now has not switched over to renewable, sustainable energies, despite those being cheaper by now than fossil fuels. And that is that capitalism is built largely on fossil fuels. In the moment in which we admit that fossil fuels are not longer sustainable, capitalism might not instantly fail, but it will take a nosedive.
And despite how pretty it is: Solarpunk is not necessarily Singapore style green sky scrapers, as those are pretty, but not sustainable, which in the end is the goal. Just as it is not inherently rural or urban.
Solarpunk is also not Sierra Club style environmentalism, which is not based in sustainable practices, and once upon a time indeed did originate with ecofascist ideas.
Generally I am begging y'all to just... do some research, instead of looking at some images and a bloody commercial and then base your idea on what a fucking genre and movement are about on those things.
Look, I personally do actually like the commercial, because it is pretty, and it is well animated, and all of that. But it is still a commercial, and not a piece of actual Solarpunk media.
The only piece of actual Solarpunk media outside of stories that we have right now is the French movie Arco, which you should go and see if you have not done it yet.
But honestly, you do not sound as respectable as you think you are, if you think you can have an opinion on something that you did clearly not even do a small google search on.
Image credit goes to (from top to bottom): Daniele Turturici (first two), Dustin Jacobus, The Lemonaut, Commando Jugendstil.
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