Context
Earlier this year I began a digital project I named Solarpunk Solutions. The primary purpose of the Digital Artefact was to leverage the potential of social media to foster a better understanding and implementation of strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GGEs). At the heart of this project lay the ambition to contribute to limiting the global average temperature increase to 1.5 Degrees Celsius by 2050, in line with the aim of the 2015 Paris Agreement.
Solarpunk Solutions was born out of my love for science fiction. The solarpunk genre of speculative fiction imagines a future where society lives in harmony with nature, powered primarily by renewable energy sources. The project aimed to disseminate this ethos through a series of blog posts, Tweets, and TikTok videos.
Solarpunk Solutions sought to go beyond merely discussing potential future technologies or developments. It aimed to inspire its audience to engage in practical ways to reduce GGEs now, focusing not on future technologies, but on evidence-backed direct action. In my pitch, I described my plan to systematically analyse solarpunk texts, extracting and communicating valuable methodology from them, and promoting solarpunk aesthetics, themes, and messages. These elements were used as a tool to inspire decarbonisation efforts among the audience. In essence, Solarpunk Solutions endeavoured to foster a spirit of non-consumptive living, urging people to transform their lives and communities towards a zero-carbon future.
My project pitch also outlined my interest in various themes within the solarpunk genre, including arcology/green architecture, transport, and agricultural techniques such as permaculture and subsistence farming. With the conviction that speculative fiction has the power to drive social change, Solarpunk Solutions aimed to engage the audience with an optimistic vision of a greener future, making non-consumptive living appealing and achievable for everyday people.
Through a planned schedule and a plethora of media content, Solarpunk Solutions aimed to create an engaging platform where people can learn about solarpunk and be motivated to take direct action in their lives towards reducing GGEs.
Ultimately, it didnāt work out that way.
While I had planned to begin publishing media two weeks into my research, I ended up not starting until several weeks later. I stuck to my research schedule ā consuming solarpunk texts, news articles and academic journals ā but ultimately found that I had little to go on in terms of interesting technology to feature. This disheartened me and I continued to try to find new media that might give me what I was looking for, rather than simply begin outputting content based on what I had learned, which in hindsight would have been the much better option.
Even at the time of my writing, I have published far less media than I had planned to originally and the type of media I have published is quite different than what I thought I would. Nethertheless, Iāve been surprised by the engagement and response I received on one of the platforms: TikTok. More on that later.
Methodology
The methodology for Solarpunk Solutions involved three steps: research, application, and communication. My intention was to begin doing all three at once, by outputting media as I researched ā but I ended up doing each step more-or-less sequentially.
The first step involved a comprehensive exploration of solarpunk media. This included literature such as ‘Walkaway’ by Cory Doctorow, movies like ‘Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind’, board games, and video games. The goal of this research was to delve into the representation of regenerative/restorative technologies and concepts in solarpunk media. Critical analysis and note-taking of these resources facilitated the extraction of elements relevant to real-world decarbonisation strategies. The biggest problem I ran into here was that honestly, most media that is labelled solarpunk isnāt actually solarpunk. My research into the genre led me to understand that solarpunk is the antithesis of dystopian sci-fi. Some post-climate apocalypse fiction may very well have deep solarpunk vibes and aesthetic, but I felt it missed the point if it wasnāt hopeful and grounded in reality. Nethertheless, I decided that if there was tech implementation in this media, I would research it.
Simultaneously, academic research was undertaken first to understand more deeply the solarpunk genre and its potential for driving social change, and second to research the specific technologies I featured on Solarpunk Solutions. I engaged with academic sources including ‘Making people responsible: The possible, the probable, and the preferable’ by Bell Wendell and ‘Art, Energy and Technology: the Solarpunk Movement’ by J.D. Reina-Rozo among others, and used them to inform my content.
Next came the application of these theories and concepts into real-world decarbonisation strategies. For this, I investigated the practicality of the technologies and methodologies featured in the solarpunk genre, evaluating their feasibility for implementation on both micro and macro levels.
The final step revolved around the communication of these strategies. This was done through the creation and dissemination of content via three social media platforms: WordPress, Twitter, and TikTok. Each piece of content had a specific theme, inspired by the solarpunk media consumed. For example: āSolarpunk Food Production: Urban Agriculture, Vertical Farming, and Permacultureā. For each theme, a blog post was first written, and then a series of videos and tweets were curated via remixing these blog posts. The media was designed to introduce each concept, illustrate its presence in solarpunk media, highlight real-world examples, provide academic insight, and suggest ways viewers and readers could support these concepts in their own lives.
The use of AI was crucial throughout the entire production process. I used ChatGPT-4 to suggest solarpunk media, topics, research, to help write my blog posts, tweets, and to script my TikTok videos. Meanwhile I prompted Midjourney 5 & 5.1 to generate eye-catching solarpunk images which were utilised throughout my content. A typical content series would consist of an introduction to the concepts, followed by a discussion of specific solarpunk media that feature the concept. The next step would highlight a real-world example of the concept(s) in action, explaining its benefits and implications. Following this, I would present academic research related to the concept, simplifying complex ideas with graphics and layman’s terms. Lastly, I would provide practical ways for the audience to adopt and support these concepts, thus empowering them to take direct action towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Results
While at the time of writing I havenāt managed to get through as many topics as I would have liked, the response, at least on TikTok ā which was always intended to be my primary platform – was generally quite good, with each post gaining more and more traction and engagement. My latest TikTok video, for example, generated a significant amount of debate in the comments and reached nearly 2000 views within 24 hours. At the time of writing I am sitting on 33 followers, 297 likes and 2,892 views.
I think a large factor in the engagement I have received is due to the use of striking AI-generated images captivating my audience, causing them to stop doom-scrolling momentarily, and allowing them to digest my written content. If I am to continue on my trajectory of iterating and producing content for Solarpunk Solutions, I could see the channel eventually growing into a thriving community.
In this way I would call the project a limited success. Limited in that I did not put out as much content as I could have, and therefore did not iterate as much on my methodology to find out what works and what doesnāt. And also limited in that while it got people excited to discover solarpunk, and even debating fiercely in the comments, itās difficult to gauge how much action Iāve generated. Another limitation was that my Twitter and WordPress accounts have not received much engagement to date – I think I could have made an effort to link the three profiles together, funnelling traffic from TikTok to my other accounts. Nethertheless, as Iāve said many times throughout my pitch and Solarpunk Solutions blogposts, promotion of the solarpunk genre and ideals constitutes action on climate change, in that science fiction imagined futures help make possible futures reality and in this way I would call Solarpunk Solutions a success.
Media & References
Below I’ll list a selection of solarpunk media I researched, read, listened to, watched, or played.
Video games:
- Anno 2070
- ABZU
- Eco
- Cloud Gardens
- Outer Wilds
- Terra Nil
- Timberborn
Board games:
- Solarpunk Futures
- Wingspan
- Photosynthesis
- Ecosystem
Screen:
- Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind & other Ghibli films
- Beasts of the Southern Wild
- Black Panther
- The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind
- Ocean Girl
Literature:
- Walkaway by Cory Doctorow
- The Summer Prince by Alaya Dawn Johnson
- Earthseed by Octavia E. Butler
- Ecotopia by Ernest Callenbach
And some academic articles which were utilised throughout Solarpunk Solutions:
- Asseng, Senthold & Guarin, Jose & Raman, Mahadev & Monje, Oscar & Kiss, Gregory & Despommier, Dickson & Meggers, Forrest & Gauthier, Paul, 2020, ‘Wheat yield potential in controlled-environment vertical farms’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117, 202002655. 10.1073/pnas.2002655117.
- Bell, Wendell 1998, Making people responsible: The possible, the probable, and the preferable, American Behavioral Scientist, Vol 42(3), Nov-Dec, 1998 Special Issue: Futures studies in higher education, pp. 323-339.
- Evans, Rebecca, 2018,Ā Nomenclature, Narrative, and Novum: āThe Anthropoceneā and/as Science Fiction,Ā Science Fiction Studies Vol. 45, No. 3, SF and the Climate Crisis (November 2018), pp. 484-499 (16 pages)Ā https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5621/sciefictstud.45.3.0484Ā
- Happer, C. and Philo, G., 2013, The role of the media in the construction of public belief and social change,Ā Journal of social and political psychology,Ā 1(1), pp.321-336.
- Holleran, Sam, 2019, Putting the Brakes on Dystopia: Speculative Design, Solarpunk, and Visual Tools for Positing Positive, web.
- Papadaki, Nikolaou & Assimakopoulos, 2022, ‘Circular Environmental Impact of Recycled Building Materials and Residential Renewable Energy’, Sustainability, 14, 4039. 10.3390/su14074039.
- Ragheb, El-Shimy & Ragheb, 2016, ‘Green Architecture: A Concept of Sustainability’, Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, Volume 216, Pages 778-787, ISSN 1877-0428, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.12.075.
- Reina-Rozo, J.D., 2021, Art, Energy and Technology: the Solarpunk Movement, International Journal of Engineering, Social Justice, and Peace, 8(1), pp.47-60.
- Stead, M., Macpherson-Pope, T. and Coulton, P., 2022, The Repair Shop 2049: Mending Things and Mobilising the Solarpunk Aesthetic, Branch (EIT Climate KIC, Mozilla Foundation, Climate Action Tech, and the Green Web Foundation), (4).
- Williams, R., 2019, āThis Shining Confluence of Magic and Technologyā: solarpunk, energy imaginaries, and the infrastructures of solarity, Open Library of Humanities, 5(1).
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