How Solarpunk Fiction Envisions a Better Tomorrow | Video Essay 

to be honest, i kinda feel that solarpunk would pair well with cyberpunk as a "post-cyberpunk recovery" sort of situation, solarpunk infrastructure over the old cyberpunk ruins of the old world, or something like that

I gotta say, this got me a little emotional. As someone who is going through the regular to's and fro's of life it's easy to forget to look towards a better a future. This was a very good reminder. Thank you.

I’m shocked that Final Fantasy 7 didn’t at least get a mention in the games section. It might not quite hit Solarpunk but it’s definitely something-punk. It’s ‘let’s blow up all the oil refineries’-punk. Aerith’s garden growing in a disenfranchised area of a class-divided and ecologically dead city, and the significance of the hope it brings to the story. A tiny group of people trying to organise in defiance of capitalism and the state to save their planet before it dies. And FF7 came out in 1997.

This deserves so many more views, such a good quality video

Saw a Tiktok a while back mentioning solarpunk as an aesthetic but had forgotten the term for it when I tried looking for some good media. So really glad to have found an extremely well written and well produced video essay on just this topic!

And in books, most of Ursula K. LeGuin's sci-fi works have elements of solarpunk as well

This is severely underrated. Gonna use this as my answer when new people ask me about what solarpunk is. Thanks for this!

The scenarios that are described in solarpunk always take place AFTER an apocalypse. I am sure that life would "find a way" after an apocalypse. The futures imagined in solarpunk-type worlds are very hopeful and beautiful, but not for you and I or close-future generations. Maybe a kind of punk we would need nowadays would imagine how our generations could avoid an apocalypse (read : surviving and being happy for everyone, not just a more ""lucky"" part of the world), while still allowing the far-future generations to get a solarpunk future (or a less anthropocentric future). I still really enjoy seeing solarpunk worlds, I really hope we all get to them one day (sorry if its not very clear, english is not my first language)

I have been living what you describe as a solarpunk life since 2002 - creating and managing my own solutions to life's needs in as harmonious a way as possible with the life of the land we are on, gently bending the vigorous nature here towards our needs... And I think you're right, in order for a green and hopeful future to happen, we have to put forward that image as being a good life. It is hard to convince most people though, since the image of an industrial, technological future being superior to our green past has been so strongly impressed on people over the last century that a great deal of effort will be needed to make it feel relevant to the generation that matters, the one currently starting the process of building their lives, and looking to start families. Most people seem to have forgotten that Land is Life, lets help them remember.

First this is a fantastic video and deserves so many more views!!! Second, two other great solar punk games are Timberborn and Dorfromantik!

I'm currently studying Environmental Management. Generally I'm optimistic and I know that truly us as a species have what it takes to pull our heads out our asses and do what we need to do, I know for sure that we will, but sometimes it just gets so much, reading about greed and destruction and such like it just gets you down, but still I'll one day do my small part in making things better.

Hayao Miyazaki ended up super pessimistic. There's a manga version of nausicää of the valley of the wind. Check it out some time

I'm so glad this popped up in my recommended, one of the best and most optimistic videos I've seen recently

Great video, I already knew that I loved solarpunk, but I haven't heard of some of the games you mentioned. Definitely going to play them now!

Beautiful. The way to organise a Solarpunk future is, I think, Regenerative Design. Daniel Christian Wahl has written about that a lot. While less sexy in tone and pictures, this knowledge is full of practical wisdom by people already practicing it around the world, and a great addition to this video. So are many indigenous wisdoms, permaculture, project Drawdown and thousands of others pioneering the alternative, yet too often invisible for main stream media, and too often not being rewarded for the amount of work they do, not waiting for a government to finally aid those who actually design the future to strive for. ;)

I'm all for ecological improvement and living alongside nature. I want to make that clear; I deeply care about the issues stated in this video. HOWEVER, "Solarpunk" is NOT the proper term for this type of fiction. All "punks" emphasize and satirize their attached term, and comment on the negatives of associated with each term. "Dieselpunk" is brutalist, dirty, and always depicts air seemingly poisonous to breathe- it is associated with warfare and death. "Steampunk" draws from the awful socioeconomic divide between aristocrats and commoners present in the Victorian age and "Cyberpunk" does the same between corporate elites- modern aristocrats- and modern day societal commoners. Punks fight AGAINST their associated term, criticize it. "Solarpunk," by this trend, can only be called such if it examines a negative aspect of our society AND negative aspects of a "Solarpunk" society- say, how such a world would have supply chain issues, less access to medical care, more consumption of land, or a necessary- dogmatic- enforcement protocol to FORCE everyone to live in such an ecologically-sound society. But in the end, I like what "Solarpunk" aesthetically looks like and represents. But it is not a "punk."

The author Becky Chambers. Her tea monk and robot books "Psalm for the wild built" and "Prayer for the crown shy" are perfect examples of a society who purposefully went down the 'solarpunk' path after their industrial age.

I dont think Solarpunk is explicitly Utopian. I have seen some stories where a setting very similar to this where although the environment is abundent and diverse, the social structure is truly depraved and technology has stopped or regressed. I cant remember its name, but there was a great Anime Mange Adaptation that did this. All the kids had Psychic powers and relied on that over tech, it was a underpopulated Post-Apoc world reclaimed by nature, but the community leaders would send their assassins on anyone they considered a threat. Oh, not to mention the genetically-devolved Humans expicitly treated as subhumans. Another good depiction of this is the Seraphites from TLOU2, they are at one with nature, but hateful of people who are not. The reason why Cyberpunk has seen a recent explosion in popularity is because people are not optimistic towards their futures anymore, they see the world only getting worse, so Cyberpunk where everything is worse, but technology is better, keeping most people blindly placated to their awful living conditions, unable to change anything even if they wanted to. I do consider this latter future much more likely, but i dont want it to be. Remember what the Capitan of the Axiom said in Wall-E "I dont want to survive, I want to live." An interesting note is that I want to end on is that as technology gets more advanced in a sustainable way, it more seems to resemble nature.

The best, most intentional example of Solarpunk in current popular media would be the X-Men comic House of X by Jonathan Hickman. Krakoa and it’s design, especially in contrast to human and machine society, are explicitly Solarpunk

SolarPunk is a lot less idealistic than most think, if you ask me. You just have to look a little harder. Argument: SolarPunk is unrealistic for densely populated communities. Rebuttal: NYC has the lower carbon footprint per capita than any suburb/car-centric city in the U.S. Densely populated areas produce far LESS carbon emissions than pretty much anywhere else, Bikes, walking, and trains are how people tend to get around. Sure, maybe the power generation isn’t renewable, but hydro-power and wind supply quite a bit of NY’s energy already. Almost everyone in the city has access to Central Park, a giant green space saved for the public. Perhaps it’s the inequality, the over-consumption of the rich and wealthy, and the grey-looking industrial and high-tech skyscrapers that dont match the aesthetics. Indeed, they’re pretty cyberpunk. But I think we’re a little too cynical about SolarPunk’s potential. I think if we actually want SolarPunk to be a remedy for Cyberpunk we’ll need to replace production-for-consumerism with production-for-necessities and production-for-play… I think the difference is just Capitalism lol

As a genre fiction writer who is trying to write a Solarpunk work the optimism is the issue. Writing dystopia is easy because there's baked in conflict. You want to make a nation that embodies solarpunk virtues, but as an author you want to avoid utopianism because it feels Mary Sue-ish. You want the nation to struggle. You want them to have to make compromises on some level because nothing is perfect. You don't want some technobabble reason why everything is perfect. My theoretical scenario was: "What is Solarpunkia has to go to war, not offensively, but would they rationalize that while nuclear fission is not the most environmentally responsible option and would require the storing of spent rods, would the power be considered clean enough and the benefits of having depleted uranium for weapons of war." Or how about electric cars? My own opinion is that the current EV craze is the wrong path for sustainability. I think the hydrogen-car is a much better more environmentally minded and socially just option. There are just so many issues in creating something optimistic that isn't just utopian James-Cameron caliber enviro-propaganda. It feels like as a writer that the genre so optimistic and pure that trying to give people something realistic where people are trying, but they also fail from time to time betrays that optimism and I know I wouldn't want to be accused of ruining it or greenwashing. Plus there's the problem that people are increasingly unable to conceive of a world without Capitalism. There's just so much power in it, so much concentrated power and how do you overcome human selfishness of such an institution presents without necessarily relaying on less speculative things like: Miyazaki Neo-Shinto Spiritualism or future Horizon tech. How to you present something that's an unbridled expression of hope but in a way that is realistic, that faces conflict and struggle both from without and... from within? This is paradoxically a genre that invites you to relish its ceaseless optimism but also makes you feel like you're betraying it at the same time when you're trying to write something compelling that relies on something closer to the current timeline, and that could be because there's so much despair under the skin of the world right now, but I want to write something earnest that people can't just dismiss as environmental-commie fantasy but present a world that's not perfect but is definitely better. Yeah, I want to do it, but I'm struggling. I guess it'd be non-post-scarcity Solarpunk if you tried to label it because post scarcity just tends to turn off the people you're trying to bring around.

The firelights in Arcane are pretty solarpunk coded

When it comes to games, I highly recommend giving Anno 2070 a try as it is one of the most beautiful representations of solar punk for me. In Anno, the whole gameplay loop is basically building your own little society from the ground up, this seems perfect for giving you the sense of actually being able to "build" a better future. The artwork really focuses on making you feel the contrast between profit oriented, eco-destructive technologies and sustainable alternatives. Being able to play the game both ways, it does a great job at making you feel the impact of these kind of choices. For me, it's impossible to look down on a tycoon cityscape drowning in smog and dirt and feel satisfied at the end of a playthrough. Because playing the eco fraction, I could have built myself a little paradise in harmony with nature, spending just a bit more time along the way making sure to keep my ecological footprint balanced. In my oppinion, the game perfectly delivers this message of just needing to actually care and dedicate enough time and effort to living a balanced life, because it will definitely be worth it in the end. With this video I finally have the explanation why I fell in love with this game all that time ago, and maybe I can even talk some of you into giving it a try :)

you are very talented and deserve thousands of subs

Thank you so much for making this video. You give credit to movies and games for making awareness of a better future imagined, but don't forget that this video adds just as much!

Solarpunk revolution has begun

Gorgeous essay, thank you so much Cristian. I want 2023 to be a breakthrough year for solarpunk.

Im a new artist who loves world building and I've been struggling to find an art style with a proper theme, and i just realized love the idea of solar punk so I guess I'll start working on it. Thanks for the inspiration

what's more dissapointing about Cyberpunk 2077 was that it was this perfect medium to criticize our system, industrialization, corporate greed, war, and the crushing of nature, but it was disappointing because it only highlighted some

This is a great video, hopefully you can connect with other likeminded content creators

Oh no, who knew sailing ships had lower emmisions? Who oh who could've possibly guessed?

I think one of the most solar punk games is Dark Sun. Now while there is no green environment, those that live in the universe hope for a sustainable environment. There’s a rumor in the game of a creature called the Avitar which is a human that becomes completely helpless to then sacrifice itself to make an oasis. None exist in the game but there’s always the hope. Which in my opinion there’s nothing more punk than that in a hopeless world.

Book recommendation: Becky Chambers - Wayfarers series. Esp. Book #2 A Closed and Common Orbit -- and Book #3 Record of a space-born few

Wow the analogy <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="352">5:52</a> Had a thought seed burst forth and grow into a massive tree. Brought me to tears in the beauty and peace that it brought forth inside me.

Fantastic video essay - thank you! Bring forward the anti-dystopian Solarpunk vision! 🌻🕊☮☀

Having a genre, aesthetic, fiction framing - whatever you want to call it - rooted in hope can do far more for an individual than one rooted in destruction

I think the main issue is many want to switch to green energy immediately without the full replacement of fossil fuel infrastructure. You see California switching to green energy and all electric vehicles and so on, yet they suffer from widespread rolling blackouts. What’s the point in switching to green energy if you can’t keep up with normal energy usage? The switch needs to be 1 for 1. Maybe ever 2 for 1 as green energy is not as reliable compared to fossil fuels. Green energy is definitely the future but if society can't function due to lack of energy then the switch will actually set us backwards in development.

This year i have done a deep dive in the world of Solarpunk. What I've found is that it is more complex than I could ever imagine. I've had this feeling of powerlessness for a while. Seeing the world colapse; the climate becoming hostile through the actions of those in power, inequality stemed from systematic accumulation of wealth, more and more people defaulting to nihilitic views and accepting defeat for a societal trajectory of lifeless domination. Cyberpunk is how we call it and I began to prescribe to it aswell. But something in me knew that this couldn't be the only option. There must be something we can do. And through my defeated escapism in RU-vid's endless archive of opiatic entertainement, I stumbled into Solarpunk. This is what I was looking for. For the first time I saw with my own eyes what a better future might look like. And maybe, just maybe, it could become a reality. I wanted to do something that actually mattered, something that could change the world. Well that was a high bar considering I'm not particularly gifted at anything. Quite conveniently, all these AI tools began to come out. They all promised to give us, mere humans, superhuman abilities. Not a good writer? hey GPT will do it for ya! Dont know how to draw? We got something for that too! That got me excited. I started researching and playing with these tools. At first I was enamored. Everything was possible now! But then, after a while, I began to catch on to some things. What GPT wrote seemed somewhat offputting. It was almost as though the words were empty. I started to see through them, as if they were transparent, and inside their bodys there was no heart attached. No pulse. The same happened with Image generators. When I asked to see a person, a faceless being came into existence. Not just in the sense that they were disfigured. That can easily be fixed. It was something beyond that. They had no emotion. As hyperrealist, 8K, best quality as they were they always seemed to be made out of something other than humaness. Not plastic or clay. Something even more disturbing. When generating cities it was even more obvious. For starters, there were never any humans to be seen... anywhere! Even when palying around with refined models, even some specifically made for Solarpunk, there was no life in them, litterally. For some reason the machine chose not to see us. And for me at least, the images started to become more and more uninteresting. That made me think about what actually makes something worth looking at. It didn't seem to be the level of realism or detail, the machine was plenty capable of doing that. It also didn't seem to be a lack in variety of style. So what then, makes an image impactfull? What made Myazaki's movies touch me? Why did that 1 minute long Dear Alice yogurt comercial make me so inspired? Myazakis story are often quite grand. There is usually this threat to the balance of the world almost. And ultimately, it is about *people*. People connecting and overcoming greed. Dear Alice inspired me because it showed *people* living in harmony. My conclusion then, is that Solarpunk really isn't that much about the Solar. It's way more about the punk: rebbeling against what has become mainstream dominant culture. Cyberpunk was once counter-culture. It's not anymore. For those who use Stable Diffusion, I guess the values could be represented metaphorically as - (solar:0.8)(punk:1.2). As a final note, I think I have come to disagree with this video essay as it regards to Laputa's Island in Castle in the Sky. As beautiful as it might be from afar, Laputa is NOT Solarpunk. It lacks the most important aspect of Solarpunk. It lacks the punk. It lacks life. It lacks the people.

I congratulate you for getting the love that you deserve with this video. You deserve it given the 100s you have created to have come here. You made me realise how powerful the mediums like anime or movies can be in terms of impacts of visions for the future. One of my most worth it 27 mins of the day well spent. Good luck on ur journey!

Solarpunk is cool but we more than anything need a visualization of what to do next in the next couple years.

This was absolutely phenomenal. I didn't know about Solarpunk, but I am excited to explore works in its style!

Nausicaa also by Miyazaki is also really great I grew up with it, is there a link to the Solarpunk manifesto?

Great video! I can really feel your love for cyberpunk, and feel your vision for the future! And, this is the perfect combination of serious and hopeful! I feel really focused and hopeful after watching this! Thank you!

This is an excellent video,you describe SolarPunk so well. I working on designing my land to fit this life style.

I do agree that we need more optimism but the truth is solarpunk isn't very convincing. These depictions are almost always in small scale communities. It's just doesn't make sense how you arrive there from our densely populated megalopolises while also managing to reform most common socioeconomic ideologies. I don't think it's impossible but, it fails to encourage optimism because it is so drastically different from current society. It's hard to transmute current society like that without making drastic sacrifices that are just not addressed.

One of the best video essays i have ever watched. Thanks so much!

I was just on a RU-vid recommended video about futuristic architecture and I was thinking what about worlds where science and nature blend seamlessly or co-efficiently. This video was the next recommendation. Thanks for uploading this video

Thank you for this. I was searching for a meaning to a story I've felt called to write since I was younger. Doing research led me to this, and really altered the direction it was going with an emphasis on hope. ♥ Thank you.

You know why dystopian games are hot? Simple. There's a huge shortages of stuff, thus makers can control what people can find and use as in most medieval games. And the surroundings are a threat full of dangers, which means tensions and fights. How strange it may seem, we also need stories of Solarpunk gone wrong! Like Horizon West, Why? Say we have a world where some nature has gone rogue (because of industrialists) and society is threatened by this. Weapons don't work, but nature itself can help heal if the heroes find the source of the issue fast enough.

Make earth, humanity, nature and wildlife 100% strong ageless sustainable solarpunk immortal utopian resilient future

One other work I can think of, though more Ocean Punk, is Suisei No Gargantia.

THIS CHANNEL IS GOING PLACES

We have demonstrated what is wrong, now we must demonstrate what is possible

Wind pump helps gravity boyancy generator To Compress air The air tank fills up So we can power things with it Like machines and vehicles biohazards are not required And intermittent power sources are kinda outdated But still useful so long as we don't need batteries So instead we create continuous sources of energy that don't require batteries Such as magnetic generators and gravity Idealic Solar punk architecture speaks for itself But the only way our walls will turn green Is if we plant them up

What a wonderful essay! Really well done!

Feels like a video like this would have more views and come from a bigger channel.

Anyone who says that a certain movement is THE future doesn’t understand how the world works. It’s impossible to predict the future.

I relate so much to those autonotons

Solarpunk needs absolute power and absolute violence to deter people who wants control over other people

this deserves 100 million views

Laputa is great, but the difficult thing is that it doesn't really provide a blueprint for what solar-punk ought to be. The solution can't be, "Get rid of all humans" or "Become automatons", because the real-world interpretation of that quickly leads to eco-fascism.

This is one of the best breakdowns of solarpunk I've seen! Well done!

After my next album on a Cyberpunk future, I plan to explore Solarpunk

supergiant's "bastion" fits the bill as well i feel. it's not really tech, but it certainly is about restoring a post apocalyptic world.

That Mass Effect 3 soundtrack though! ❤

Thank you for sharing this new genre

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="414">6:54</a> The Solarpunk Committee has declared that if you are racist, you have no solar panels. <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="510">8:30</a> For some reason, i feel like needing green technology AND the Western liberalist ideals(unrelated to green energy) would disqualify at least some of Miyazaki's creations. Decolonialism was mentioned as a part of or a requirement of something being solarpunk. What would be the classification if the colonial empire ends up creating more sustainable technologies than the solarpunk societies shown onscreen or otherwise? What happens if something declared nonsolarpunks, out solarpunks the official solarpunk?

Wow such futuristic editing

This video made me feel. Thank you

if only the world was like this but we all know this ain't happening any time soon

What an amazing video on this so important topic! Well done!

Walkaway by Cory Doctorow is a great reference for that type of society.

We can do it together, we need to take it by force but we can make a future that is beautiful.

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="770">12:50</a> that's literally the Monserrate palace in portugal!, I was there a month ago lol didn't know it featured in films

Even though it's not exactly Solarpunk, but I think both Star Trek and Star Wars have examples of Solarpunk elements. But those points just aren't main points and get overshadowed with other more exciting things

@<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="180">3:00</a> What is the game where he's riding the bike through a field???

💌If you're reading this, play OUTER WILDS. It's never a bad time to recommend this game.🌲

After over 100 years of compressed air vehicles why are they not all up in these kind of games Seven million die from pollution each year It's kind of scarey to me that we are on the edge of completely collapsing our ecosystems I figured perhaps the earth could heal if we all live in sky ships So the trees can grow back my glass castle in the sky Is so bouncy will not need paint And it doesn't rust Instead it bounces higher than rubber glass is the way

THE AIR BURRITO

The issue I ultimately had with the solarpunk community is the tenant of post capitalism. Post capitalism is utterly unrealistic, at least in the near term, because we need massive amounts of capital to make the transition to any approximation of a solarpunk future. The basic infrastructure and technology has only gained traction because of recent market viability. Lithium and nickel have to be mined, high tension lines need to be built, and waste management systems need to be developed. Maybe some day post capitalism, but before that happens corporations are building solutions and they want return on their investment.

Let's see them try and Coopt the meaning of _Solarpunk_ from us

Brilliant!

hmm, this sounds like Sonic CD's 'Good Future' versions of the levels

Love the video. Might consider running some sort of filter to get rid of all the sharp “s”, actually hurts with headphones :/

What is the video being showcased at <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="293">4:53</a>?

Does anybody knows the game at <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="180">3:00</a> and at <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1338">22:18</a> please ? Thanks you a lot 😁

Thank you for creating this.

made me tearful with joy - thank you!

The needs more views! Algorthim! Do your work, god damn it!

Can someone tell me what movie / anime / cartton is used at <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="600">10:00</a> - <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="615">10:15</a> ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-qSaXAsi8XAY.html ? Seems like a nice anime.

Amazing and informative.

Im sorry, I would love to love this solar punk idea but i think it is naive escapism at best and distracts from the real issues we have at worst. I think the fight should be to get business out of government, more regulations for business starting with a unified tax system for business across borders, the end of suburbs or low density housing, the end of car culture. But above all this there is our energy system than needs a big overhaul in a very short time. Just my 2 cents.

That subnautica music gave me ptsd

"The planet is dying". The planet is fine, people are not. Planet does not give a f about polution, it's us who need to breathe.

I see Laputa, I click on video

Thank you for the inspiring video!

What's the game with the character called Roshee?

What a lovely video!

Insane quality

i hope everyone lives a happy life