Solarpunk - Tumblr Posts
In the earliest 2000s I saw a documentary where a very esteemed ecologist (idk his name, don't remember, I was a kid ya know) said "Money isn't real. The environment is." and I have been excessively annoying about this exact subject (that money is FAKE but our planet is REAL) ever since
It's a wierd phenomenon, seeing as traditionalists are usually so dynastic.
Do yall ever feel no cares about our society and environment and everything.. I'm watching the world end before my eyes and everyone my age I talk to could care less I want people to care because what will fucking happen when your way of life is no longer possible I don't care about your status in cookie run kingdom STFU AND CARE ABOUT THIS PLANET WE ARE WATCHING IN REAL TIME OUT SOCIETY FALLING AND YOUR DOING NOTHING NOW IS THE TIME TO LEARN HOW TO CAN FOOD OR HUNT IT SEWING MAKING CONNECTIONS WITH PEOPLE WHO HAVE KNOWLEDGE IN TRADITIONAL CRAFTS PEOPLE YOUR DYING AND DOING NOTHING ABOUT IT YOU ARE PART OF THE RAT RACE THAT WILL ONLY END WITH YOU DEAD
Why are humans so fucking evil
It's fucking NINETY DEGREES OUT on September 30th
This is inhumane, this is evil, this is horrific
Genuinely think it would be best if all humans were fucking exterminated I do not give a shit
Everyday I read about how many bombs are detonated, how strong the hurricanes are, how green Antartica is turning, and how the 6th extintion event happened because of capital greed, and I just can't wrap my head around the world as I know it ending, with me in it.
I'm not the kind of human to survive harsh winters, strong weather anomalies or hunger. Even if humans can survive another 100 years in a different kind of society, I'm not strong enough. I'll die, and my family will die, and all my friends will die.
And I'm just supposed to go to work because it's Monday.
hi everyone!
i know that this hashtag is sort of dead but can any active solarpunk blogs interact with this post so i can follow you? ty!
In honor of the Lunar New Year, I’ve come up with a few solarpunk-related resolutions. I want to make the commitment to living a more sustainable lifestyle overall, but I feel like it’ll help if I set out specific resolutions to stick to as well.
1. Only buy one item of new clothing per month (excluding necessities such as shoes when they wear out, underthings etc). I’ve found that I often use the excuse of “well, it was at a thrift store and would’ve been gotten rid of anyways”, but this has led to an unnecessary and wasteful accumulation of clothing. Instead, I’m committing to only wearing the clothing I have or making new clothing by hand. The one-new-item per month is there because I collect vintage clothing, and my partner loves to visit thrift shops… in other words, in case of emergency!
2. Produce/gather more of my own food. Right now I have a small indoor apartment garden producing herbs and the occasional tomato, but I’m hoping that I get a community garden plot this year. Even if I don’t, I’d like to expand my home garden setup and perhaps produce, say, all of the leafy greens my household consumes. I also want to forage way more— I think feeding myself from the environment not only improves my knowledge of the bioregion I live in, it also provides a necessary reminder that industrial agriculture isn’t the only way for humans to eat.
3. Produce less waste. My partner and I have made great strides in reducing the amount of food waste we produce (getting much better about eating leftovers and only buying what we need), but we still produce a lot of food packaging waste (side note: it’s crazy how much food comes packaged non-optionally in plastic, even non-processed foods!). This year I plan to reduce waste by shopping at farmer’s markets, stores with bulk bins and simply buying less overall.
Happy Year of the Rabbit, everybody!!
since it’s been almost a month since i’ve posted anything original (oops!) I figured that i’d share some solarpunk shenanigans that i’ve been up to lately…
- i finally cancelled my Amazon Prime! for ethical reasons i’ve minimized my Amazon usage for at least a year, and i’ve been on an “Amazon fast” since December of last year. i don’t want to give jeff bezos another dollar… ever!!
- it’s almost the start of the foraging season in earnest here in the PNW, so i’m brushing up on my existing knowledge and checking out many (so many) books from my local library so that when the weather finally clears up i’ll be ready!!!
- i’ve also been working on expanding my knowledge and skill set for living a more sustainable life! for example, if i buy a whole chicken and break it down, i have enough food for ten (!!!!) meals for my partner and i, with a minimal amount of plastic waste (the wrapper). this means that i can also afford to buy better-quality and more sustainable meats, since the dollar-per-meal cost is so low! the next thing i need to work on is making more of my own snacks, Trader Joe’s single-use-plastic-packaged yet delicious novelty snacks will be my downfall…
and here’s the first cherry blossom of the year!!!
Hi fellow solarpunk people! I've recently learned about the Transition Movement (or Transition Network?) which, according to Wikipedia, refers to "grassroots community movements that aim to increase self-sufficiency... especially around food production and energy usage". While I haven't done an extensive amount of research, I think it's really cool that a movement to encourage community-building exists and it could be a great way for solarpunks to meet like-minded people!
I've included links to The Transition Handbook and the Transition Movement web page so that if anyone's interested they can find more info easily.
https://www.cs.toronto.edu/~sme/CSC2600/transition-handbook.pdf
~an introduction to ecobricking~
hello fellow solarpunks! i've been interested in ecobricking for a while but i recently invested some time into researching them so here's a guide! it's a responsible way to sequester plastic from the environment, but making them is slightly more involved than just stuffing plastic in a bottle, if you want to use them for construction or weight-bearing projects like furniture. I'm mainly using information from GoBrik, which had the most comprehensive guide, but feel free to comment or rb with supplemental information.
FAQ:
Isn't it better to recycle plastic rather than ecobricking?
There are many plastics, such as food wrappers or packaging, that can't be recycled and end up degrading rapidly. Ecobricking sequesters those kinds of plastics from the ecosystem and also reduces the surface area exposed, which limits plastic degredation over time.
How do you use ecobricks?
You can use ecobricks in many applications, from furniture to structures. The long-term environmental impact of using ecobricks is still speculated on, but responsible upkeep mitigates their potential environmental impacts, which are still far less than the impact that plastic would have were it not sequestered.
How To Ecobrick:
Find a plastic bottle. The bottles that you use for ecobricking should all be the same variety, which will help in any building projects that you may choose to use them for.
Find some plastic! Make sure to wash and dry your plastic, as any food residue or moisture could make your brick moldy or structurally unsound. You can cut up larger pieces of plastic, like food packaging (think bags of shredded cheese or frozen berries, or the plastic bags inside cereal boxes)-- just pack em in. If you want to be fancy, GoBrik recommends making the bottom layer of your ecobrick all one color, for aesthetic purposes later on. But it's really up to you. Please avoid putting biodegradable material, such as cardboard or paper, as well as glass or metal, in your ecobrick-- it'll affect the density and preferred composition. Plus, you can recycle those!
Calculate the density! This is the only part that involves math, I swear. You want to aim for a density of about 0.37 grams per milliliter; it shouldn't be under 0.33 g/ml or it'll be structurally unsound. It's also good to aim for a density less than 0.7 g/ml, or your bricks might be too heavy to move comfortably. The equation is just the weight in grams divided by the milliliters of the container you're using, so, for example, if you used a bottle than was 1250 ml, you would be aiming for about 475-500 g of plastic (including the bottle). (a kitchen scale is great for weighing, and you can thrift them pretty easily) Of course, if you're ecobricking to sequester plastic and not necessarily to build, you don't need to worry too much about the density, but if you wanted to donate your ecobricks to a project in the future I would encourage you to try to keep track of density.
Cap your bottle tightly, leaving 1-2 cm at the top of the bottle (basically, you don't want the cap to bulge, because it will make the cap degrade rapidly and crack). Label them with the density of the bottle (if it's relevant) and the date (so you know how long the brick has been around so you can maintain it if needed)-- nail polish works the best. Keep them out of the elements (especially the sun) and off the ground until you plan to use them.
There are tons of ways to use ecobricks! I'll link a few ideas below.
https://ecobricks.org/en/build.php
https://ecobricks.org/en/modules.php
anways, happy bricking! i'll post a picture of my finished ecobrick when it's done (hopefully not soon!)
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecobricks
https://ecobricks.org/en/how.php
Years before the covid pandemic began, author Naomi Kritzer wrote the charming, emotionally genuine short story "So Much Cooking," which was a pandemic log through the eyes of a cooking blog. The premise is that the author is a home cooking blogger raising her kids, and then a pandemic hits--and bit by bit she's feeding not only her own, but her sister's kids, some neighbors' kids, and so on, in a situation of pandemic lockdown and food shortages.
It's very good, and was prescient for a lot of the early days of the covid pandemic. I found myself returning to it often in the first couple of years because of how steadfast it was in its hopefulness.
Last year she wrote a novelette, "The Year Without Sunshine," which attacks a similar problem in a similar way; instead of pandemic, this one is about the aftereffects of a distant nuke or a massive volcano explosion (it doesn't say), which has churned a great deal of dust into the air, causing massive damage to society and agriculture. The story covers one neighborhood, pulling together to keep each other alive--not through violence, but through lawn potatoes and message pinboards and bicycle-powered oxygen concentrators.
I recommend both stories. They're uplifting in a way that a lot of what I see lately isn't. They're a bit of a panacea for constant fearmongering about intracommunity violence and grinding hatefulness. We can be good to each other, if we try.
Golf Courses ARE Being Converted
The Solarpunk "fantasy" that so many of us tout as a dream vision, converting golf courses into ecological wonderlands, is being implemented across the USA according to this NYT article!
The article covers courses in Michigan, Pennsylvania, California, Colorado, and New York that are being bought and turned into habitat and hiking trails.
The article goes more into detail about how sand traps are being turned into sand boxes for kids, endangered local species are being planted, rocks for owl habitat are being installed, and that as these courses become wilder, they are creating more areas for biodiversity to thrive.
Most of the courses in transition are being bought by Local Land Trusts. Apparently the supply of golf courses in the USA is way over the demand, and many have been shut down since the early 2000s. While many are bought up and paved over, land Trusts have been able to buy several and turn them into what the communities want: public areas for people and wildlife. It does make a point to say that not every hold course location lends itself well to habitat for animals (but that doesn't mean it wouldn't make great housing!)
So lets be excited by the fact that people we don't even know about are working on the solutions we love to see! Turning a private space that needs thousands of gallons of water and fertilizer into an ecologically oriented public space is the future I want to see! I can say when I used to work in water conservation, we were getting a lot of clients that were golf courses that were interested in cutting their resource input, and they ended up planting a lot of natives! So even the golf courses that still operate could be making an effort.
So what I'd encourage you to do is see if there's any land or community trusts in your area, and see if you can get involved! Maybe even look into how to start one in your community! Through land trusts it's not always golf course conversions, but community gardens, solar fields, disaster adaptation, or low cost housing! (Here's a link to the first locator I found, but that doesn't mean if something isn't on here it doesn't exist in your area, do some digging!)
I was talking to my dad about renewable energy and he was like “the only problem with solar farms is they take up so much space.”
And it made me think about a city and how much sun exposure all the rooftops in a city get and…why not just make the city it’s own solar farm by putting solar panels on every rooftop?
“We Can Grow A Better World” backpatch, linocut on canvas, 13” x 9.5”, December 2022.
Anyway, not-so-friendly reminder that nihilism/doomerism/accelerationism is a conspiracy theory meant to keep people complacent and docile in the event of an authoritarian regime, and the online Left really needs to start shunning these groups with the same vehemence that we shun radfem/terf groups.
The biggest threat to systemic evil is hope, and this nonsense “the world will never get better, so why bother trying to make it better” ideology literally exists to serve those systems. The doomerism movement is pro-capitalist, pro-fascist, pro-authoritarianism, etc. because they accept these systems as inherent to the nature of humanity, unable to be changed… which is exactly what the fascists running the system want. After all, why resist the rise of evil if evil is always inevitable? Why fight to make the world a better place if the world is just going to end soon anyway? Why not just stand aside and let the authoritarians do their thing? It doesn’t even matter anyway, right?
The point is, the Left is far too tolerant of doomerism, and it’s driving me insane.
You know what, I actually have more to say on this:
It’s natural to feel upset, angry, and sacred regarding all the terrible things happening all over the world right now. In fact, those feelings are vitally important to have, to prevent yourself from becoming numb and desensitized to tragedy. But if all you ever feel is upset, angry, and scared, and if all you can ever think about is The Bad Stuff, and if you truly want humanity to go extinct because you believe that humans are inherently evil, and if you genuinely believe that society will collapse in the near future… that’s not a natural response to current events. That’s depression, and it’s caused by a chemical imbalance in your brain, not by current events.
If you’re struggling with doomerism of this degree, I would urge you to seek professional help, if it’s within your means. But if you’re unable to do so, I have a few suggestions based on some things that helped me escape the trap of nihilism:
Opening Up: Confide in a loved one who you trust to support you about how you’re feeling, and do not spare them a single gory detail. This is also a good resource on alternatives to therapy.
The News: Schedule one day a week where you don’t look at any source of news about current events, from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to sleep. I promise you are not a bad person if you aren’t 100% tuned in to every single issue all of the time.
Online Spaces: Leave every single group/forum that doomer-posts, even the ones you have friends in because your mental health comes first. Block tags—yes, even the ones that you think would make you a horrible person for blocking—and people liberally, and unsubscribe from downer YouTube channels, no matter how informative they are. Join groups/forums with an explicit focus on positivity. This is a great list of positive subreddits. Join online communities centered around aspects of your life that are inherently positive, such as a hobby, a fandom you love, or niche scientific topic that fascinates you. Avoid online communities centered around aspects of your life that are NOT inherently positive, such as illnesses/disabilities and political beliefs.
Distraction: It’s a cliche piece of advice, but learning a new skill is a great way to ground yourself in the present and focus on what you can control. Pick up a new hobby, or learn a new language, or reorganize your entire bedroom, or any other simple activity that takes place entirely offline.
Community: It’s another cliche, but getting involved in your local community really does help ground yourself. If you’re in school/university, join a low-commitment club with a flexible schedule. If you’re not in school/university, get a membership ship to your local library. See if they have a book club you can join, or if you can volunteer there, or simply go to mingle with the other patrons in your free time.
Nature: Spend some time away from urbanized areas. It doesn’t need to be a full-hiking trail—you could go the lake at your local park, or literally just wander through a patch of forest on the side of the road.
If you can rediscover your love for this planet and the people on it, you will find that it’s worth fighting for. And if you join the fight, we’ll be one step closer to wining.
Anyway, not-so-friendly reminder that nihilism/doomerism/accelerationism is a conspiracy theory meant to keep people complacent and docile in the event of an authoritarian regime, and the online Left really needs to start shunning these groups with the same vehemence that we shun radfem/terf groups.
The biggest threat to systemic evil is hope, and this nonsense “the world will never get better, so why bother trying to make it better” ideology literally exists to serve those systems. The doomerism movement is pro-capitalist, pro-fascist, pro-authoritarianism, etc. because they accept these systems as inherent to the nature of humanity, unable to be changed… which is exactly what the fascists running the system want. After all, why resist the rise of evil if evil is always inevitable? Why fight to make the world a better place if the world is just going to end soon anyway? Why not just stand aside and let the authoritarians do their thing? It doesn’t even matter anyway, right?
The point is, the Left is far too tolerant of doomerism, and it’s driving me insane.
Not one to let the grass grow under her feet: today i started thirty purple beans in peat pots, and two jars of lentil and fenugreek for sprouts. The seedlings will be too numerous to plant here, so i will give most of them away once they set. I have another little greenhouse tray and plenty of peat pots left, perhaps i will start some hot peppers.
Hello to everyone reviewing me for the discourse! Thank you for revisiting my claim to exist as such, as the tea leaves are inaccurate. I reject all public interpretations of my autobiography, i proclaim harmlessness. Thank you weird sisters, for keeping the gate! Maybe one day i will be fit to use your hashtag
This is the bucket farm at the old place, last year, before the landlord put us out. Moving the plants traumatized them, so the crop mostly failed.The beans died. I got about a bushel of potatoes, We’ll try again, this year.
Biogas is a mixture of different gases produced by the breakdown of organic matter in the absence of oxygen, called also anaerobic digestion. It is produced from biodegradable materials and more than half of the resulting gas is methane. You can run that through a propane burner or a stove, and worldwide, lots of subsisting people do. It’s about as close to free fuel as you can get.
Of course, if you source a self-renewing pest crop like kudzu to produce your fuel, it becomes even more cost-effective. Of course, nothing is truly free. There is some physical labor involved in maintenance and cleaning.
Cost of overhead is minimal, and a 55-gallon drum biodigester can be hacked together from found items and salvage with minimal skill. Unless it’s larger than that, a digester setup should take no longer than one afternoon.These DIY pages are pretty concise, with detailed shopping lists. If you want this to happen, it’s not hard.
Granada biogas project start to finish
https://youtu.be/mWefbc1spd0
Four free, hot-weather plans, perfect for the Southern United States:
https://www.completebiogas.com/digester-plans
The success story of the biogas digester in Merida, Mexico:
https://youtu.be/ApDq4I20ZfU
How-to in Hindi and Urdu:
https://youtu.be/pKZgnXQCp98
Community-sized biogas plant reportback from Richmondvale:
https://www.completebiogas.com/B_55Gal.html
Solar Cities plastic drum biogas plant plans
http://www.solarcities.eu/education/472
hello tumbler people! did anyone here ever organised a clothes-mending workshop? i'm thinking of organising one in my city but i don't have much experience in mending nor organising workshops so i'm looking for some tips! did you ever attended/organised one and how did it look like?