Tumgik
#environmental despair
Link
“There’s a huge untapped potential to consider conserving animals as a climate solution. If you do some of the rough calculations, the numbers rival those of what the IPCC is right now promoting in terms of converting everything to solar or wind generation...the numbers are in the same ballpark”
This is called called “trophic rewilding”--many animal species naturally cycle carbon into the soil just by living their lives and restoring these species to their natural range can turn their ecosystems back into carbon sinks.
 “Fortunately, we have the technology to scrub CO2 from the atmosphere. It’s called nature.”
Looking at the list of environmental issues--pollution, climate change, species extinction, etc.--can feel overwhelming, but the reality is that nearly all of these issues are intimately connected. This is just one of many examples of how working on one issue also helps solve the others; if you conserve wildlife and restore habitat it also helps mitigate climate change.
(quotes from Oswald Schmitz)
888 notes · View notes
reasonsforhope · 11 months
Note
How can I stay positive regarding the wildfires?
It can be really hard in the face of so much destruction. I don't know how much anyone can specifically stay positive in the face of disasters like this -
but I can give you some thoughts about how to let hope live alongside everything else you're feeling about this, and how to avoid spiraling and remember that this is not proof that we're doomed.
Possibly relevant note lol is that I've lived my whole life in California, so suffice to say figuring out how to move forward among the consequences and destruction of massive wildfires is something I'm definitely not new to.
I remember walking to my classroom in elementary school, about 20 years ago now, and it was literally snowing ash around me. This too shall pass.
Take a few deep breaths. I know it's cliche but it's also important
Zoom out in terms of perspective: Wildfires can make the sky look apocalyptic (like I said, I have lots of experience with this!), but they are regional, and they always end. These wildfires are awful but this specific wave of fires is happening in just one country in a huge, huge world. There's far more land that isn't burning
Canada is about to get substantial international aid in fighting the wildfires - there are already 200 additional firefighters headed over from the US and France, and Canada (Quebec specifically) is also already in talks with Costa Rica, Portugal, and Chile about additional firefighters/resources. Help is on the way and these numbers really will make a big difference, and as the disaster continues (unfortunately it is uh...pretty early in fire season), more help will be sent. People are doing what they can to help, because in the face of disaster, that's what we're wired to do
There are actually MUCH better fire management plans than just about anyone is using, esp in North America but that we COULD implement and increasingly WILL going forward. A lot of the wildfire situation these days is because of the West's incredibly wrongheaded derision toward traditional Indigenous land and ecosystem management practices, including cultural prescribed burns that keep massive wildfires from happening. California in particular is already partnering with several First Nations to revive prescribed burns, to significant success. As fires continue to be terrible, more and more places will get on board with this. We can and will implement practices that will truly change our situation
Cultural burns work because, ironically, the reason for the wildfires is that "is that we've been so good at putting out every fire possible that it has led to overly dense forests and a buildup of burnable material like branches and dry vegetation" that makes wildfires much worse in a number of ways. At lower intensity, however, as with cultural burns, forest fires can actually have huge environmental benefits
Finally, every time a natural disaster happens like this, as awful and destructive as they are, it serves as a wake-up call for thousands of people and adds both ever-mounting urgency and ever-mounting evidence to the importance of fighting climate change, which really does translate into action. For a lot of people, "saving the environment" feels super distant - but you know what feels super immediate? Saving their homes from burning down (or getting flooded or otherwise destroyed, etc. etc.) In 2021, the UN ran the world's largest climate survey, across 1.2 million people and 50 nations, and almost TWO-THIRDS SAID THAT CLIMATE CHANGE IS A GLOBAL EMERGENCY THAT WE NEED TO WORK HARDER TO ADDRESS. Imagine that 10 years ago! That other third of people aside, this really is real and massive progress
Also, every time there's a big disaster like this, climate change deniers look more and more baldly ridiculous. Think about it: How often did you hear US Republicans bullshitting about climate change denial 10 years ago? And how often do you hear them doing it now? In fact, there's increasing evidence that Republicans really are shifting on climate change (mind you they're managing to do it in an obnoxiously somehow pro-fossil-fuel way, but it's still a major sea change). Some of them are literally calling for a clean energy transition, and Kevin McCarthy himself (guy in charge of the US House right now) created a task force for to a conservative climate change agenda that acknowledges climate change is real. There's now a conservative climate conference that does active lobbying and a House Conservative Climate Caucus, which somehow has SIXTY MEMBERS. Again, something that would've been unimaginable just six or seven years ago.
Every acre that the fires burn this year is an acre that's pretty guaranteed to not burn next year, for what that's worth. (And I do think it's worth mentioning, esp with such a high number of acres)
The battles are going to be hard, but I truly believe that even the ones we lose often bring us closer to winning the war.
Fires burn, but life always grows back.
557 notes · View notes
whaile · 2 years
Text
Tumblr media
late summer / early fall thoughts
89K notes · View notes
titleknown · 1 month
Text
...This is probably going to come off as stupid, but I feel like the whole line of "To preserve a livable planet, no price is too high" is rapidly becoming the eco-leftist version of "There is no alternative,"
At least, specifically WRT the idea of massive cuts to life being the only solution and, in the part that frustrates me the most, actively shutting down any attempts to make the sacrifices necessary suck less/be based on less loss.
IDK, I'm just tired of how whenever anyone says "Hey, maybe with this emerging technological tool we can avoid the horrifying levels of sacrifice," every eco-leftist in a ten mile raidus emerges to yell at them "Go fuck yourself, here's ten thousand papers on why this is bad actually that you can't disprove without seven degrees, fuck you"
61 notes · View notes
aeide-thea · 1 year
Text
A new way of sucking carbon dioxide from the air and storing it in the sea has been outlined by scientists. The authors say that this novel approach captures CO2 from the atmosphere up to three times more efficiently than current methods. The warming gas can be transformed into bicarbonate of soda and stored safely and cheaply in seawater.
16 notes · View notes
greenhouseaffect · 2 years
Photo
Tumblr media
“ At any rate, spring is here, even in London N.1, and they can’t stop you enjoying it...The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, the police are prowling through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but the earth is still going round the sun, and neither the dictators nor the bureaucrats, deeply as they disapprove of the process, are able to prevent it“ - George Orwell, Some Thoughts On The Common Toad, 1946
Happy belated May Day!
84 notes · View notes
headspace-hotel · 10 months
Text
i guess i'm not as despairing as many people about the future of the planet simply because the fact that we're not in way worse shape today suggests the earth is crazy resilient
Reading anything about environmental history is like "and by 1956 the river was so full of uranium and bubonic plague that the only living organism found in it was an single amoeba which died immediately after being documented" and I'm like okay maybe today's problems aren't necessarily uniquely disastrous and unsolvable
9K notes · View notes
fleurdufeu · 1 year
Text
Ok looking for advice here. If anyone read the tags on my reblog of the old growth forest post.
I appear to have genuinely triggered myself. What is the best way to tag for that? I’m looking for the words mostly for myself to know what to avoid specifically to help not look at it as often.
0 notes
luxe-pauvre · 1 year
Quote
In that predicament, if I'm lucky, I'll remember the observation, usually attributed to Joan Baez, that "action is the antidote to despair." People tend to quote this in the context of political or environmental activism, but it applies to everything else, too: an overfilled inbox, a cluttered garage, an intimidating creative project or overdue tax return. If you can get yourself over the gap between knowing what you need to do and taking an action, things can only get better from there. Which means that at least the nature of the immediate challenge is clear: not to "become more productive" or "get motivated" or "make a plan for the month" or something like that, but just to do one thing to address whatever situation you're in. […] If you can approach your daily life in this way for a while – as a sequence of momentary, self-contained, eminently doable actions, rather than as an arduous matter of chipping away at enormous challenges – you might notice something profound, which is that, in fact, this is all you ever need to do. You can make your way through life exclusively in this manner. (As E. L. Doctorow said of writing, it's "like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.") And not just that: actually, it's all you ever could do. There is no achievement, in the history of human civilisation, that has ever been accomplished by any means other than as a sequence of doable actions. In the end, it isn't really a question of "breaking big projects down into small chunks." It's more a matter of seeing that "big projects" are nothing but psychological constructs, quasi-illusory entities summoned into existence by taking a particular view of what our lives really consist of – which is moments, and the actions that unfold in them. After all, in any given moment, we're never actually "working on a big project" or "addressing a major challenge" or anything similar. We're always just taking an action. And then another. And another.
Oliver Burkeman, How to get out of a rut
4K notes · View notes
slavonicrhapsody · 8 months
Text
Let’s talk about Mt. Gelmir
Tumblr media
Mt. Gelmir is one of my favorite locations in the game because of its striking environmental storytelling… the minute you start exploring the slopes of the volcano, you can just FEEL that something awful happened here. The imagery is so potent that I wanted to go through every detail of the region and explore how it supports and expands the story we’re told through dialogue and text. Let’s start with the text on the Mt. Gelmir sword monument:
Tumblr media
“The Assault on Volcano Manor
The squalid, the sick, the blasphemous;
A wretched, unending war with no glory”
This dismal description refers to Leyndell’s attack on Praetor Rykard’s forces at Volcano Manor. After the Shattering war broke out, Rykard declared his intention to take up arms against the Erdtree itself: this was not just treason, but blasphemy, marking him as “an enemy, never to be forgiven.” We can conclude that Rykard’s blasphemy was so unacceptable that Leyndell made it a priority to silence him as quickly as possible, sending an army straight to his doorstep. I believe it’s implied that Rykard had the Mt. Gelmir Minor Erdtree burned as his first act of blasphemy; we find the tree destroyed amidst a smoking ruin:
Tumblr media
The assault on Volcano Manor, introduced to us by Gideon Ofnir as “the most appalling battle in the entirety of the Shattering,” was the site of some of the most horrific violence in the entire story. Traveling around Mt. Gelmir, we can observe the gruesome aftermath of the battle and the remnants of the armies continuing to struggle — some scattered groups of Leyndell soldiers remain, while the only troops left to Rykard are his marionettes and iron virgins, since his knights have long since deserted him after his hideous transformation. (Side note: I love the detail that Rykard uses marionettes and avionettes, which were “crafted to serve the sorcerers;” it further cements his identity as a sorcerer and his connection to his Liurnian heritage.) Despite having no real soldiers though, Rykard’s grim constructs seem to tear through the remaining soldiers of Leyndell with ease, which we can observe in real time:
Tumblr media Tumblr media
The death toll of this conflict cannot be overstated — the slopes of Mt. Gelmir are literally piled high with bodies.
Tumblr media Tumblr media
Within a pit of corpses, we can find the spirit of one of Rykard’s men, who says this:
“Lord Rykard… If this putrid field of death is what your blasphemy would bring, then I can no longer abide. No one can.”
Tumblr media
These unspeakable horrors are enough to make Rykard’s followers question if the cost of resistance is too high a price. Leyndell’s armies are just as badly affected — stranded on the mountain with no hope of reinforcements, we can observe several soldiers feasting on the bodies of their fallen comrades:
Tumblr media
These soldiers have long abandoned any hope of achieving glory, and are little more than mindless husks at this point. Furthermore, if we return to the sword monument, something you’ll notice as you make your way over is that there are several Leyndell soldiers who are affected by the frenzied flame. At the same time, the troll soldier guarding the door to the Manor is also affected by the frenzied flame:
Tumblr media
The frenzied flame is affecting soldiers of both sides of the conflict here, which tells me it wasn’t being used as some kind of weapon, but that it took hold independently… I believe that the frenzied flame was embraced by the soldiers here due to the sheer hopelessness of those who have experienced this uniquely horrific battle. The ethos of the Three Fingers is essentially that the world is full of unendurable pain, so it must all be melted away so no one will suffer ever again: “the Greater Will made a mistake. Torment, despair, affliction... every sin, every curse. Every one, born of the mistake. […] Those who gave me grapes howled without words. Saying they wished they were never born. Become their lord. Take their torment, despair. Their affliction. Every sin, every curse. And melt it all away.” (Hyetta)
The soldiers who fought on Mt. Gelmir have experienced untold suffering, the very worst of humanity… it makes perfect sense that such people would be susceptible to the essence of the frenzied flame; to want to burn this tormented world to the ground.
467 notes · View notes
hope-for-the-planet · 11 months
Link
“This is a monumental win for forests, for wildlife, for climate, and for the hard-working people who have spent countless hours surveying for endangered species, preparing evidence for court cases, lobbying, and campaigning. Some have been fighting for this for over three decades.”
 (Chris Schuringa, Victorian Forest Alliance)
654 notes · View notes
ineffectualdemon · 4 months
Text
I saw a post awhile back that's beem stickingnin my craw
It was a post about how recycling and reusing isn't that valuable to helping the environment or reducing waste because it will still ultimately end up in a landfill and and it doesn't cause reduction in that the thing being produced
And some of the examples given bugged me
First one "if you reuse the plastic container into a plant pot it does nothing in reduction and still ends up in a landfill"
Okay but- What if you recycle that plastic pot but next time you buy something made glass and you use that glass jar for storage for a long time. Reducing the need to buy more storage meaning there is less demand for it and if you do recycle it glass is better for actually recycling into new things and you can find projects and artisans who work to create a closed cycle of recycling glass where they crush it up and make it into something new that can then be crushed and made into something new again
Another example of this kind of thing. I have soany different types of tea. I mostly store them in old jars which is better than buying fancy container for them which is what I would do if I did not use old jars
That is a reduction
Second one: "I made things out of old pieces of clothing but I'm not reducing anything because if I didn't I just wouldn't have them"
Maybe that's true for that person. But as a crafter if I don't recycle old bits of fabric or clothing or go to scrapstore I would still want and need to create and would buy new fabric
Reusing or making use of scrap stores is lessening demand for new
Is it a drop of water in the sea? Maybe
But where I am and my situation in the world that's what I can do. I can do my best to buy things I will reuse again and again rather than discard quickly
And maybe thats not a lot but it's something and I don't think it's useless to encourage people to reuse and recycle. I don't think it's useless to try and be as environmentally sound as we can as an individual. Because people do those things out of hope, and the more hope they have the more they feel able to engage in other actions to help the environment such as protesting or working together in groups or anything else you find more effective
By telling people that what they are doing is "useless" or "pointless" or "won't help" you're just killing any drive they have to try and change things.
No me reusing a honey jar to store tea or taking a old shirt and reusing it to make something new is not going to save the planet. But it's a positive choice that I can do in my own home that gives me a small feeling of control that I can than take and apply to the bigger issue and the corporations making the biggest problems
Also how is people not caring and just creating more and more waste rather then trying to shrink their own footprint better?
Why do you think it's useful to drive people into apathetic despair?
Idk I just get frustrated
161 notes · View notes
hayatheauthor · 5 days
Text
Crafting Sad Scenes: Writing Tears and Emotional Depth
Tumblr media
Creating authentic emotions is vital for immersive storytelling, which is why I decided to make this series on how to write different emotions. After exploring rage, it's now time to delve into sadness!
When it comes to portraying sadness, delving into various aspects of your character's behaviour and environment can deepen the emotional impact. Here's a guide on how to evoke sadness in your writing using different elements:
Facial Expressions
Downcast Eyes and Furrowed Brow: Describe how their eyes lower and brows crease, reflecting inner sorrow or distress.
Quivering Lips or Trembling Chin: Note the subtle quivers in their lips or chin, indicating emotional vulnerability or the effort to hold back tears.
Pained or Distant Gaze: Highlight a gaze that's distant, unfocused, or filled with inner turmoil, showing their emotional detachment or deep sadness.
Tear-Streaked or Reddened Eyes: Mention tear tracks or reddened eyes, portraying recent or suppressed crying, enhancing the visual impact of their sadness.
Hollow Cheeks and Sunken Eyes: Describe physical changes like hollow cheeks or sunken eyes, reflecting fatigue, despair, or prolonged emotional distress.
Body Language and Gestures
Slumped Shoulders and Hunched Posture: Show their dejected stance with slumped shoulders and a hunched posture, conveying a sense of heaviness or defeat.
Fidgeting or Clasping Hands: Detail how they fidget nervously or clasp their hands tightly, indicating inner turmoil or a need for comfort.
Absentminded Touching of Face or Hair: Mention absentminded gestures like touching their face or running fingers through their hair, reflecting introspection or sadness.
Slow or Listless Movements: Describe their movements as slow, lethargic, or lacking energy, mirroring their emotional state of sadness.
Avoiding Eye Contact or Retreating: Highlight how they avoid eye contact or retreat from interactions, seeking solitude or trying to mask their emotions.
Dialogue and Inner Monologue
Subdued or Monotone Speech: Show their dialogue as subdued, with a monotone delivery or pauses, conveying emotional restraint or inner pain.
Expressing Regret, Loss, or Longing: Use dialogue to express their regrets, sense of loss, or longing for something or someone, adding depth to their sadness.
Internal Conflicts and Self-Reflection: Delve into their inner monologue, revealing their conflicts, doubts, or self-reflection, showcasing the complexity of their emotional journey.
Using Metaphors or Symbolic Language: Incorporate metaphors or symbolic language in their dialogue or thoughts, enhancing the poetic or introspective nature of their sadness.
Environmental Cues and Setting
Bleak or Desolate Settings: Set scenes in bleak or desolate environments, such as abandoned places or dimly lit spaces, amplifying the sense of isolation or melancholy.
Rainy Weather or Gray Skies: Describe rainy weather, gray skies, or somber atmospheres, mirroring their emotional state and adding a reflective tone to the setting.
Diminished Colors or Lack of Vibrancy: Use descriptions of muted colors or a lack of vibrancy in the surroundings, reflecting the character's subdued mood and emotional depth.
Actions and Reactions
Withdrawing from Interactions: Show them withdrawing from social interactions, seeking solitude, or avoiding activities they once enjoyed, highlighting their emotional withdrawal.
Seeking Comfort Objects or Routines: Describe how they turn to comfort objects or routines, such as listening to music, writing, or engaging in familiar activities, as coping mechanisms.
Emotional Outbursts or Sudden Changes: Portray occasional emotional outbursts, sudden changes in behavior, or moments of vulnerability, revealing layers of their sadness.
Impact on Relationships and Interactions: Explore how their sadness affects their relationships and interactions with others, showcasing the dynamics of empathy, support, or misunderstanding.
Types of Tears and Emotional Triggers
Watery Eyes: These tears often accompany moments of deep emotional pain, such as hearing hurtful words, experiencing profound disappointment, or feeling overwhelmed by sadness. Characters may blink rapidly or struggle to maintain eye contact as tears well up, indicating their struggle to contain their emotions.
Quiet Tears: Quiet tears are silent and discreet, often shed in moments of solitude or introspection. They may occur when a character reflects on past memories, grapples with internal conflicts, or experiences a poignant realization. These tears are a subtle yet powerful expression of inner turmoil.
Full-On Sobs: Full-on sobs involve audible crying, heaving breaths, and visible emotional distress. They typically arise from intense grief, loss, physical pain, or overwhelming stress. Characters may find it challenging to speak coherently or control their emotions during such outbursts, revealing the depth of their emotional turmoil.
Tears of Joy: Tears of joy occur in moments of immense happiness, relief, or heartfelt connection. They often accompany scenes of reunions, achievements, or profound expressions of love and gratitude. These tears symbolize emotional release and the overwhelming experience of positive emotions.
Tears of Empathy: Characters may shed tears of empathy when witnessing others' suffering or hearing poignant stories. These tears reflect their compassion, sensitivity, and ability to deeply connect with the emotions of others, adding layers of empathy to their characterization.
Writing Prompts and Exercises
Write a scene where your character experiences a sudden wave of sadness in a public setting, struggling to conceal their emotions.
Craft a dialogue between two characters, one trying to comfort the other who is deeply saddened by a personal loss or disappointment.
Describe a setting that reflects the mood of sadness, using sensory details to evoke emotions and create atmosphere.
Explore a character's inner monologue as they reflect on past regrets or missed opportunities, expressing their profound sense of sadness.
Create a symbolic object or motif in your story that represents your character's journey through sadness, using it as a recurring theme for emotional depth.
Incorporating these elements can enrich your narrative and evoke powerful emotions in your readers, fostering a deeper connection to your characters and their emotional journeys.
Looking For More Writing Tips And Tricks? 
Are you an author looking for writing tips and tricks to better your manuscript? Or do you want to learn about how to get a literary agent, get published and properly market your book? Consider checking out the rest of Haya’s book blog where I post writing and publishing tips for authors every Monday and Thursday! And don’t forget to head over to my TikTok and Instagram profiles @hayatheauthor to learn more about my WIP and writing journey! 
102 notes · View notes
titleknown · 1 year
Text
I noticed a version of this depressing-ass post going around my dash, and I wanted to mention something like that I've noticed in a lot of Highbrow Leftist Critique that I'm really fucking sick of.
Namely, please don't fucking talk about it like it's inevitable and it's already happened rather than a thing we can stop, because People Won't Change It.
Like, as an autistic person who has A Complex due to being let down by people constantly in their life both personally and politically, it does not make me want to change things.
It makes me feel feel helpless and useless and scared, it makes me not want to bother doing anything, because why bother if the tools you use are going to be wrecked.
Not only that, it also makes me feel like the people don't have my back, because that's the underlying assumption I see behind most of them. That it is inevitable because The Horde does not want it.
This is an example of misanthropy posing as enlightenment. It is also fucking poison for any sort of collective action.
Like @headspace-hotel talks about a frustration with that in environmental movements too, and given digital stuff is near and dear to my heart too, I now know how she feels.
Like, I learned a new thing to panic about with the fucking Windows thing (here's how to un-mandate that fucking chip) but not much else!
But there are folks in the reblogs who're actually advocating shit to do about this, shoutout to @dominateeye and @aleran for doing good work, and I suppose that's my point.
Do better, don't let your pessimism become a social contagion, and advocate current action rather than predicting inevitable despair...
...Also; if you're in the US; call your congresspeople about killing these bad copyright bills and this bad censorship bill, because those are the major pathways that hypothetical DRM hellscape is going to use to get their hooks in.
1K notes · View notes
cherriko-art · 1 month
Text
Tumblr media
I haven't even started Leah's romance route yet but I've already got their entire relationship and dynamic mapped out in my head.
Rambling into the void, but my female farmer OC, Mili, is basically a female himbo. I'd like to think that she doesn't really get all the passive aggressive jabs Leah makes to the farmer in the beginning of the game, and it makes Leah feel kinda bad abt it later on. As they grow more familiar with each other, I'd believe Mili's tenacious attitude eventually wears down Leah's defensive walls and she starts to grow fond of Mili and her lil' antics (much to Leah's own horror).
And since Mili is kinda airheaded but kind, she's easy to take advantage of, even if others don't exactly have any ill intentions. This would start to annoy Leah as she sees Mili running around helping everyone and their dog around town, and she starts to get kinda overprotective of Mili, and chastises her for never being able to say no to anyone (both farmer siblings are like this tbh). I kinda headcanon that Leah hates Scott bc 1. She's lowkey jealous that Mili and Scott hang out a lot in the mines (but she can't bring herself to go to there herself, its gross and dirty and also there's no reception) but mainly bc 2. She thinks Scott is absolutely full of shit with his museum that exists purely due to all the donations Mili makes to it, but he essentially takes all the credit for. Mili disagrees, but regardless, Leah and Scott don't get along.
After they start dating, Leah becomes an overprotective but proud gf who loves showing Mili off to her followers. The only thing is that she despairs over Mili's lack of fashion sense, esp since Mili's older sibling, Lu-Ran, is perfectly well-dressed themselves. So it becomes her hobby to dress Mili up in cute but practical clothes.
On Mili's end, she's just a simple girl with simple thoughts. Leah is a drop-dead gorgeous gf with a heart of gold (according to Mili, disagreed with by many others). She doesn't really get all the influencer stuff but she's supportive and likes to chat with Leah's followers on livestreams. She doesn't know that Leah's followers have basically formed a Mili Fan Club/Protection Squad.
I also like to think that Leah is a lifestyle influencer and environmental advocate. She donates the money made during livestreams and sponsorships towards environmental research and causes. My headcanon is that she's one of Ling's main sponsor (anonymous of course) for her coral research.
Overall, I'm a big fan of "opposites attract" tropes, so I am obsessed with my OC Mili and seeing how the relationship dynamic with Leah would work out. Mili would help Leah become more emotionally vulnerable and be less rigid, while Leah would be a solid rock in Mili's chaotic life who helps keep her grounded and remind her to take care of herself and not just others. Leah is a bit antisocial though, despite being an influencer, so being together with the social butterfly that Mili is would be quite interesting. With Mili as the bridge, Leah would eventually open up to other villagers too and become friends with Mili's friends too (other than Scott of course). From the get-go, Leah would get along very well with Mili's older sibling (my other farmer OC), Lu-Ran, as they're very down-to-earth, quiet and acceptably-dressed (to Leah's standards).
Anyways, if you actually read my word vomit, thank you for entertaining my 2am brain ramblings.
70 notes · View notes
southernsolarpunk · 23 days
Text
I am once again posting the solarpunk manifesto because I keep seeing people saying that solarpunk is just an aesthetic
Inspired by Solarpunk: A Reference Guide and Solarpunk: Notes Towards a Manifesto
A Solarpunk Manifesto
Solarpunk is a movement in speculative fiction, art, fashion, and activism that seeks to answer and embody the question “what does a sustainable civilization look like, and how can we get there?”
The aesthetics of solarpunk merge the practical with the beautiful, the well-designed with the green and lush, the bright and colorful with the earthy and solid.
Solarpunk can be utopian, just optimistic, or concerned with the struggles en route to a better world ,  but never dystopian. As our world roils with calamity, we need solutions, not only warnings.
Solutions to thrive without fossil fuels, to equitably manage real scarcity and share in abundance instead of supporting false scarcity and false abundance, to be kinder to each other and to the planet we share.
Solarpunk is at once a vision of the future, a thoughtful provocation, a way of living and a set of achievable proposals to get there.
We are solarpunks because optimism has been taken away from us and we are trying to take it back.
We are solarpunks because the only other options are denial or despair.
At its core, Solarpunk is a vision of a future that embodies the best of what humanity can achieve: a post-scarcity, post-hierarchy, post-capitalistic world where humanity sees itself as part of nature and clean energy replaces fossil fuels.
The “punk” in Solarpunk is about rebellion, counterculture, post-capitalism, decolonialism and enthusiasm. It is about going in a different direction than the mainstream, which is increasingly going in a scary direction.
Solarpunk is a movement as much as it is a genre: it is not just about the stories, it is also about how we can get there.
Solarpunk embraces a diversity of tactics: there is no single right way to do solarpunk. Instead, diverse communities from around the world adopt the name and the ideas, and build little nests of self-sustaining revolution.
Solarpunk provides a valuable new perspective, a paradigm and a vocabulary through which to describe one possible future. Instead of embracing retrofuturism, solarpunk looks completely to the future. Not an alternative future, but a possible future.
Our futurism is not nihilistic like cyberpunk and it avoids steampunk’s potentially quasi-reactionary tendencies: it is about ingenuity, generativity, independence, and community.
Solarpunk emphasizes environmental sustainability and social justice.
Solarpunk is about finding ways to make life more wonderful for us right now, and also for the generations that follow us.
Our future must involve repurposing and creating new things from what we already have. Imagine “smart cities” being junked in favor of smart citizenry.
Solarpunk recognizes the historical influence politics and science fiction have had on each other.
Solarpunk recognizes science fiction as not just entertainment but as a form of activism.
Solarpunk wants to counter the scenarios of a dying earth, an insuperable gap between rich and poor, and a society controlled by corporations. Not in hundreds of years, but within reach.
Solarpunk is about youth maker culture, local solutions, local energy grids, ways of creating autonomous functioning systems. It is about loving the world.
Solarpunk culture includes all cultures, religions, abilities, sexes, genders and sexual identities.
Solarpunk is the idea of humanity achieving a social evolution that embraces not just mere tolerance, but a more expansive compassion and acceptance.
The visual aesthetics of Solarpunk are open and evolving. As it stands, it is a mash-up of the following:
1800s age-of-sail/frontier living (but with more bicycles)
Creative reuse of existing infrastructure (sometimes post-apocalyptic, sometimes present-weird)
Appropriate technology
Art Nouveau
Hayao Miyazaki
Jugaad-style innovation from the non-Western world
High-tech backends with simple, elegant outputs
Solarpunk is set in a future built according to principles of New Urbanism or New Pedestrianism and environmental sustainability.
Solarpunk envisions a built environment creatively adapted for solar gain, amongst other things, using different technologies. The objective is to promote self sufficiency and living within natural limits.
In Solarpunk we’ve pulled back just in time to stop the slow destruction of our planet. We’ve learned to use science wisely, for the betterment of our life conditions as part of our planet. We’re no longer overlords. We’re caretakers. We’re gardeners.
Solarpunk:
is diverse
has room for spirituality and science to coexist
is beautiful
can happen. Now
-The Solarpunk Community
66 notes · View notes