The Wordsmith's Forge

Here's another post about solarpunk. This one is much less sensible.

New on OnlySky: Glimpses of the solarpunk future

Glimpses of the solarpunk future on Only Sky


In the near future, ultra-cheap renewable energy is going to drive out expensive, polluting fossil fuel.

Since we are nowhere near tree efficiency with solar, let alone anything else, and since all that infrastructure costs huge amounts of money, I find this implausible. Unless maybe you're talking about heating an earthberm home with passive solar ... oh wait, that's against building codes in most places.


Advanced agricultural robotics will take over the jobs that once required grueling human labor.

Now this would be a great way to compensate for global warming making it unsafe for humans to work outdoors in summer. Except that robots are expensive and made from nonrenewable resources.


Automated manufacturing will end sweatshops and allow every community to make the things it needs for itself.

Dude. We've had the industrial revolution for over two centuries and that hasn't happened yet. People will find a way to screw each other.


Electric mass transit and self-driving cars will bring about the end of car culture and suburban sprawl.

Electric mass transit would be great, except that most American cities can't figure out how to run what little they have now. Do you think they're suddenly going to ask Europe how to do it right? I don't. Also, people don't like the idea of self-driving cars. And if they did, it wouldn't make sprawl better, it would make matters worse, because then people could read or screw in the backseat like they do in taxis. In order to fix suburban sprawl, you must tear down all the modern zoning laws that segregate neighborhoods so that people must live, work, and run errands in far-flung places instead of nearby. Funny how I don't see that anywhere on this list.


When you put all these pieces together, what does the completed jigsaw look like?

A gentrified hellhole full of rich white people patting themselves on the back.


At the top of the list is solar power. Solar (and renewable energy in general) has two crucial traits: it’s incredibly cheap—now far cheaper than fossil fuel—and it’s available everywhere, which makes it inherently decentralized.

I'm guessing he didn't read the map.


As William Gibson said, the future is already here. It's just not evenly distributed.

So if you want it evenly distributed, you have to shatter capitalism. That won't be easy.  But hey, I've listed resources for that if you want them.


We already possess technologies that could create a world that's more sustainable, prosperous and equitable than the world as it is today.

We also possess the technology to provide food, health care, housing, and education for everyone. Humans just damn well don't want to do it.


What's holding us back is that those technologies haven't rolled out to the majority of humanity.

What's holding us back is people in power making damn sure that doesn't happen.


In the solarpunk world, every building would be a passive house that uses little or no energy for heating or cooling.

See above re: map and building codes.


In extreme climates where more is needed, heat pumps could handle it easily.

I have one. No it doesn't. We spend stupid amounts of money running the emergency electric heat because the heat pump is only useful in fairly mild cold when the wind isn't blowing very hard. That's with us also running the woodstove. And in case you're curious, I'm in Zone 6a bordering 6b now. Any colder and it'd be useless as teats on a boar.


Solar panels on every rooftop, combined with battery storage, would supply the power needed for daily life almost for free.

Every off-grid homesteader just wet themselves laughing. Let's look at some examples.

Living Off-Grid with Solar Electricity

Can I Heat My Off-Grid Home with Solar Power?

Paring down for off-grid living

How Many Solar Panels Do You Need? A Comprehensive Solar Calculator

Sure, you can rely entirely on solar power. The problem is most people don't want to do that. They're used to having as much electricity as they wish (or can pay for) and will refuse the kind of cuts that most households have to make in order to use solar power for everything. Heating and cooling are energy hogs, but so are your refrigerator-freezer, your computer -- every major appliance that runs on electricity. Not to mention entertainment and other smaller appliances. Most modern people use a LOT of appliances.


Every town and village would be connected in its own microgrid, intelligently sending energy from where it's produced to where it's needed.

Good luck getting fair market value for the energy from equipment you paid to install and maintain.


Manufacturing would be fully automated. Most consumer goods, instead of being assembled by little-better-than-slave labor in brutal factories as they are today, would be produced when and where they're needed.

And then how will all those people make a living? Because employers don't give a flying fuck about them. Millions more unemployed people is not my idea of a sustainable future.


Every community would have its own makerspace or fab lab with advanced 3-D printers and other machines, capable of creating everything from clothing to appliances to furniture on demand.

Have you see what comes out of 3D printers? Or how much skill it takes to get something even that good? Most people won't want to bother and/or won't be satisfied with results. It's great for certain applications, but in most cases, better materials can be made elsewise.


Everyday goods would be manufactured from freely available open-source templates that can be swapped around, modified and improved. They'd be designed with sustainability in mind, making repairs and upgrades straightforward, as opposed to proprietary products made to be thrown away.

It's like he thinks the megacorps running the world are magically going to disappear and be replaced by competent philanthropists. "Somehow."


Food, too, could be grown locally, within a day's travel of where it's eaten.

Sure, that's what humans did up until the last century or so. Then they decided that they didn't want to do that anymore. Now going back would be extremely difficult due to loss of skills and redistribution of land. And what farmers we do have are mostly growing cash crops, not food for humans.


With high-tech precision farming and the widespread use of robots that can plant, tend and harvest crops, there'd be no need for humans to perform the grueling labor of agriculture.

Now he's firing all the farmers, farmhands, and migrant workers -- or trying to make farmers into computer techs, which they definitely don't want.


There'd also be no need for energy-intensive long-distance shipments—or at least, they'd be reserved for specialty and luxury products.

Good luck breaking down all the world trade agreements designed to maximize long-distance trade.


Transportation, like manufacturing, would see costs plunge thanks to cheap clean energy.

That would make demand and traffic explode like an algae bloom. Do not want. Also, transportation requires lots of nonrenewable resources -- those electric cars are made with rare earths. And let's not forget: they can start monstrously hot fires if they overheat (remember global warming?) or get exposed to saltwater (like from hurricanes or road salt in winter).


High-speed electric trains would be the backbone of a reliable, safe transit network connecting major population centers.

We had trains. People decided they didn't want to do that anymore. Efforts to replace them with any level of train technology have met stiff resistance. Have fun pissing into that wind.


For smaller and more out-of-the-way places, every village would have its own fleet of autonomous, self-driving electric taxis.

And who's going to pay for that? People don't like paying for things they don't own, which is precisely why we don't already have a decent transportation system.

Oh, and the entire hardscaping of America is falling apart and not even the government can afford to fix it.


Rather than the expense and unnecessary duplication of everyone owning their own car—which sits idle in a driveway or garage 95% of the time—these vehicles could be summoned on demand to take you wherever you want to go, then go on to serve the next request.

We already have carshares. Most people don't like them due to the disadvantages. A motor pool can work for people in a unified group, such as a large corporation or an intentional community. Even a small town, not so much.


This would virtually eliminate car-crash deaths and daily traffic jams.

Doing this would require drastically reducing car speed. Most people REALLY do not want to do this and will fight like hell against it. This is because most people live in cities with segregated zoning where everything they have to do is far apart, and so many people are crammed together that they don't know each other so they don't really care if a stranger dies. Where do we see ultra-low driving speeds? Intentional communities where everything is compact, walking or biking is the norm, vehicles are for hauling bulky or heavy loads, and everyone knows everyone else so nobody wants to risk running over anyone ever. We can do this; we know how; some people already are; but most people do not want to live that way.

To put it a different way, Americans choose human sacrifice to the tune of 40,000 people a year so they can drive fast.


As a side benefit, this would also bring about the end of car culture.

When Americans won't give up their cars even though it threatens the survival of the human species, I don't think you're going to have much luck budging that.


In the world as it is today, vast expanses of precious space are devoted to roads, garages and parking lots.

This is true.


In the solarpunk world, that wouldn't be needed.

That doesn't mean people won't still WANT it.


In place of acres of asphalt and soulless suburban sprawl and highways like impassable barriers,

... that people built because they wanted to.


we could return to pleasant, walkable towns with parks and green spaces and pedestrian plazas lined with cafes and small shops, where housing is plentiful and affordable and everything you need on an average day is within a few minutes' stroll of your front door.

Not everyone wants to live that way. And how are you planning to break the back of the massively powerful housing industry, regulatory constraints, and the tax structure that has created our current housing shortage? Because it has nothing to do with resources, humans invented that problem entirely from scratch. Solving it as described above is illegal almost everywhere.


Best of all, universal green energy would make communities resilient to climate change and the floods, storms and other natural disasters that come with it. Solar, wind and geothermal power need no long-distance supply lines that can be severed, no tankers that foul the seas and the coasts, no pipelines that have to be bulldozed through pristine wilderness and cause ecological catastrophe when they leak.

But of those, solar and wind both have relatively fragile above-ground structures that are expensive to produce and install but very easy to damage with high winds or other rough weather. Sturdier options exist but predictably cost more. How many windmills do you think will withstand a hurricane? When we're a few MPH short of needing Category 8 that nobody wants to admit?


It will also mean a more peaceful, more equitable world.

That requires training people in peace skills and egalitarian practices.


Everyone has equal access to the sun and the wind.

And here's the map showing wind power potential. Solar map is above.


There will be no massive power plants for terrorists to sabotage,

So he's against utility solar. Get ready to cut your power hogs, everyone.


no resource-rich regions for greedy and warlike nations to covet, no sacrifice zones ravaged by extraction, and no corporate oligarchies that profit by keeping a stranglehold on the world's access to energy.

And how are you planning to break the oligarchs? Who own the government, which can ban everything you want to do and brand you a terrorist.


This is an ambitious picture, but none of it is science fiction.

No, it's fantasy.


There is room to doubt if these technologies will eventually become available to everyone, or whether they'll remain playthings of the rich and the privileged. But that's a problem we can solve through the political process.

History favors the rich and privileged. At least until the riots start and people tear them limb from limb.


Look, I like solarpunk, I really do. But you have to design for the users you have, not the users you wish you had. That means considering what people need to know in order to implement a plan, and offering affordable options for people who aren't made of money. In order to make a solarpunk future, we have to build it from the compost pile up, not the cloud castle down.