Place and Futures (4) – a possible solarpunk future

Writing about place – evoking a vision of contemporary Newcastle/Muloobinba/Mulubinba and some potential futures

These pieces were written on the unceded lands of the Awabakal people, in the western parts of Muloobinba (Newcastle, NSW, Australia), mid-2021 to mid-2022. These very much represent early draft attempts to engage ethnographically with the city I live in and potential future trajectories for it. Apologies for these being a bit of a long read, hopefully interesting though.

2.c. Possible Futures: Scenario three – A proper hopeful future

What could the world – and Muloobinba/Newcastle – look like if we move beyond the logics of the current system to create a truly sustainable and positive world informed by solarpunk principles (themselves drawing inspiration from anarchism, some strands of permaculture, Indigenous knowledges, punk, wide-ranging social and environmental justice movements, and a range of speculative genres trying to imagine more positive worlds)?

Achieving a more solarpunk world that centres environmental sustainability, ecological rehabilitation, and social justice for all will take lots of sustained effort from pretty much everyone over an extended period of time. Even if we do everything right and continue doing so literally from tomorrow there is so much carbon dioxide, warming, and climate destabilisation already baked in that things are going to keep getting worse for a while before they get meaningfully better. Even with that, and even if we face more delay and push-back from those in power for several more years, and even if only some areas are actually making the changes needed, that doesn’t mean we should give up trying. Every little bit of warming and climate destabilisation we avoid or make less severe will have a massive impact on the health of global ecosystems and the quality of life of everyone living on this planet. It’s gonna be a fight, and I don’t know how exactly we’re gonna do it, and probably in my lifetime all I’ll be able to do is plant the seeds of the solarpunk future that I personally will not ever see come into fruition. But still, if we nurture that stubborn hope and solidarity and keep fighting to make the better world, what would it be like?

Globally, regionally, and locally people come together as individuals, activist groups, and communities to put pressure on different levels of government to enact actual systemic changes. Legislation is enacted to shut down fossil fuel industries, support widespread renewable energy and transitions for workers and communities that have historically relied on mining and other fossil fuel activity to support themselves. Massive expansions to welfare and healthcare systems, along with systems to ensure free housing and basic resources such as food staples and water are available to everyone are implemented. These government policy and spending changes, while substantial, are only the beginning. In my view of a solarpunk future governments and businesses are not the ones leading and directing the change, they are following the lead of community groups and Indigenous nations.

Further changes that need to happen are moving more and more things out of the capitalist market system to the point that we are functionally no longer structuring our societies along capitalist lines. While some resources and luxuries may be traded using local and regional markets, all of the things we actually need to live and thrive are shared with people based on need rather than wealth. If operating well – and in the interests of their citizens – governments can help facilitate and manage these changes, at least in the interim. But, particularly in nations built upon colonisation and genocide such as Australia, there then needs to be a process of dismantling the current government and legal system and then replacing them with new systems of local and regional governance driven by the Indigenous nations whose land we all live on as well as all the other blended local communities in each region.

Obviously while all this is happening the shitty conservative politicians and corporate interests will be continuing to screw us over in their pursuit of profits and hating minorities. Even with a sudden massive shift away from this and rapid decarbonisation of the economy and industry we are pretty much guaranteed more than 1.5 degrees of global warming. There will still be sea level rise, shifting and more extreme weather patterns, impacts on crops and water availability. Globally there will be more refugees fleeing authoritarianism and climate devastation. But approaching these challenges using solarpunk principles looks very different from the responses in the two other scenarios I have laid out above.

A truly solarpunk approach to managing climate and social crises is inherently not authoritarian. It is not punitive. Removing capitalist profits as a driving logic, defunding and then abolishing pretty much the entirety of the current policing and carceral system, seizing industry and infrastructure and placing it under a mix of government and local community management with workers making day to day decisions and affected communities driving longer term strategies. All of this allows a focus on sharing resources and supporting the vulnerable while we work to limit as much climate change as we can and figure out how to adapt and manage the impacts of the climate change we cannot avoid. Relaxing borders and welcoming refugees fleeing climate devastation and political instability is another key aspect. As a wealthy nation founded on colonialism, especially as one who has benefited massively from fossil fuel industrialisation and global extractive trade systems while also joining in with military ‘interventions’ and occupations (invasions really) of many of the countries now facing the worst impacts of climate change and rising authoritarian regimes, the only moral choice is to welcome refugees – particularly from those areas we have fucked over for the last several decades – into our society and provide them with the same respect and support we should be giving to our citizens.

Tech development will obviously still necessarily continue, but again this will have to be focused on finding appropriate technological solutions to address actual problems and help provide for people in ways that are ecologically beneficial rather than harmful. This is very different from tech and product development focused on creating new wants, inventing new ‘needs’, creating solutions to problems that have been invented to justify the technology, all of which is oriented to increasing profits and wealth for the tiny minority that control the global economy. To the extent that people still ‘need’ to work in order to do all the tasks and manufacture things needed for society to function, this does not need to happen in the destructive way work currently operates under capitalism.

If I let myself indulge in truly hopeful and optimistic dreaming about the solarpunk future I wish for, particularly one that avoids social collapse while addressing the climate crisis, it might be something like the following:

Yes, the climate has continued to destabilise, but we got enough critical mass and action on structural change that we managed to limit the worst of it to between 1.5 and 2 degrees average global warming. With continued hard work on decarbonisation, reorganisation of socio-economic systems, and adaptation to the new climate extremes, we are able to avoid widespread death and devastation.

We have harnessed tech developments and changes to logistics flows so that medications can be manufactured locally on smaller scales to meet the needs of people in the area using basic feedstocks and open-source pharmaceutical recipes. This is absolutely crucial for so many people within society who rely on medication, and by extension the extremely fragile global pharmaceutical supply chain.

We have integrated water harvesting, food growing using traditional and hydroponic approaches, and renewable electricity generation into local and regional communities. With maintenance of regional and ‘national’ energy grid infrastructure to share peak loads and support communities who might have temporary issues with their local power generators.

There was a coordinated national shift away from all fossil fuel use, particularly for electricity and transport, with limited use of petrochemicals as needed feedstocks for chemical processes. Coupled with this a halt to all destructive mining practices that are currently causing ecological desecration and destruction of sacred sites. Obviously, there will still be a need for resources to make things. This need can be addressed through a mix of mining waste sites for reclaimable mineral resources from discarded products, right-to-repair legislation making it easier for people to maintain and recycle their tech, ‘closed loop’ planning for the whole product lifecycle including end of life waste products, and shifting the logics at play when deciding what things actually need to be produced and in what form to fulfill which needs.

A key change in moving to a solarpunk world is implementing the principle that anything needed to live a healthy life cannot be sold for a profit or withheld from those who do not have money. This includes housing, food, water, basic clothing, warmth, healthcare, medication, education, electricity. As a result, people are no longer shackled to the need for work in order to avoid dying from lack of basic resources. Work can become something people do because they have a passion for it or because they see a direct benefit to the community of them doing the work.

My vision of a Solarpunk future involves ideally getting rid of capitalism entirely while maintaining markets as neutral tools for trading excess resources and ‘luxury’ goods. To the extent that capitalism still exists through a period of transition to my idealised future, implementation of a Universal Basic Income for all to ensure they can afford what they need to live while empowering workers to resist shitty exploitative employment, as well as at minimum government mandated limits on rent prices and bans on property speculation. This also incorporates a shift from capitalist businesses to factories and businesses run as worker cooperatives that are responsible to the communities they are embedded within. A lot of jobs will probably be filled with different people rotating through on a part time basis to make sure that the shittier jobs that still need to be done and can’t be easily automated don’t get dumped on only the most desperate and also that everyone also gets to spend some time doing more interesting things as well. This does not mean that people cannot specialise, but, borrowing from anarchist ways of thinking, all necessary tasks are shared among the community while also allowing people to focus a decent chunk of their energy on their preferred focus. This also allows people to have a more rounded exposure to different types of jobs and not be stuck in one field through happenstance. It will likely also mean that more people have an appreciation of the value and importance of less glamorous tasks that are necessary for community to function.

Another key change is embedding democratic decision making within local and regional communities so that those who are affected by economic and ‘development’ activities and the potential externalities and pollution resulting from such activities have a direct say in what gets approved and where the benefits flow. As part of this working towards entirely replacing federal and state governments and all their coercive colonial institutions in order to actually build an equitable and respectful system of coordination and governance centring the Indigenous nations whose lands we are illegally occupying.

A truly just society requires doing away entirely with the current carceral ‘justice’ system and the state and federal institutions of policing. I do not have answers for exactly what restorative and nuanced justice systems would look like, for this I defer to those more active in the prison abolition movement who have been working on this for a very long time.

We must also open national borders right the hell up. How dare we deny other people the right to move away from areas that have become inhospitable to them as a result of climate change and/or rising authoritarianism that has been driven by global colonial capitalism and proxy wars? Let refugees move to safer places, welcome them, treat them at least as well as you would treat those you consider ‘citizens’. I can understand the utility of borders for controlling virus outbreaks such as the covid-19 pandemic, but this must be a specific, contextual, and time limited approach.

Development and provision of completely free, renewable powered, public transport. Reduces the need for personal transport vehicles and makes it so those who are not rich are not stuck in whatever area they happen to be living in. This would in turn free up resources to provide more individual transport solutions for those whose mobility or other needs are not adequately met by mainstream public transport options.

The changes required to adapt to destabilisation of climate and the global economy necessitate large scale reworking, retrofitting, and rebuilding the built environment. Aspects of this will be incorporating a range of things into the buildings we live in such as: passive and active thermal regulation, structural improvements to withstand storms and weather extremes, localised energy generation, waste output recycling, water harvesting, micro-scale food growing, improved physical accessibility, increased usable communal space, aesthetic elements and more ornamental greenery to improve mental health. Other elements will be reworking cities and towns to replace a focus on cars with re-incorporating free public space and local food production: be it community farms, residential food gardens, hydroponic tower farms. While this does use up some resources, it helps take some of the strain off food transport networks and also increases local resilience should those transport links be disrupted for any reason. These built environment changes must happen at the same time as massive ecosystem remediation and restoration work to help all the struggling ecosystems we are embedded within cope with the shocks of both climate destabilisation and degradation from our past extractive practices.

Wherever possible we should be rebuilding and/or developing our ability to produce as much of our necessities as possible in our local area. While regional and global travel and trade will no doubt continue and be beneficial, we have to reduce our reliance on easily disrupted and fossil fuel intensive global logistical chains.

Another shift from our current system is the provision of completely free primary, secondary, and tertiary education oriented towards flexible lifelong learning and critical thinking instead of just producing self-regulating and interchangeable workers for industrial and post-industrial capitalism. Alongside changes to education there should be active encouragement for maintaining and developing communication technologies so that people around the world can stay in contact and share their insights and ideas. This goes hand in hand with open-source science and tech development with insights shared freely, coupled with regional and community fabrication hubs (incorporating 3D printers and the like) to make it easier for people to be involved in tech developments and take advantage of improved solutions. This would be particularly beneficial for people living with various types of disabilities as just one example.

So, what is this solarpunk Newcastle/Mulubinba actually like to live in for someone like me?

I live in housing that has been retrofitted or replaced with insulation and other elements to be actually appropriate for the climate conditions.

There is local and flexible manufacturing of medical items and medication, locally available healthcare that actually covers all health needs and is properly tailored to individual circumstances, proper accessible and useful public transportation, There are borrowable vehicles for when public transport doesn’t meet your accessibility needs or when you need to move furniture or something, totally free education at all levels, local repair workshops to fix and upgrade tech and machines to keep things going or recycle their components.

Because of the principle of living necessities being free I am able to split my weekly and monthly time between research, teaching, community jobs, local and regional ecological remediation, personal hobbies, participating in community level democratic meetings, and not have to constantly stress about whether I can afford to live.

I get to take time off some of my commitments when needed or wanted to temporarily focus on others.

The city is accessible by all with free public transport and mixed-use zoning in most parts of town, no-one is frozen out of things due to poverty or disability.

I’m not constantly in a huge rush to meet deadlines set by funding constraints and profitability, which means being able to actually have time to participate properly in community and family.

I’m not constantly dreading what horrible shit the ruling government are doing or about to do because they are actually representatives answerable to local communities rather than an insulated elite.

There is generally a greater variety of people and activities and other stuff all blended together without it all having to be a hectic scramble for survival, along with greater integration and sharing of population and resources between cities and towns and regional areas with an emphasis on sustainability and repairing the environment.

We are still dealing with exacerbated climate destabilisation but hopefully the worst of this is plateauing and starting on a repair trajectory long-term, and ultimately I’m not left feeling alienated from a whole bunch of the city and the people in it as we are all valued parts of a diverse multi-species community that values the needs and insights of people and other beings who are all very different.

Doesn’t that sound like a more inspiring future to live in?

What now Solarpunks???

Given our present and some potential futures, what do we actually do about any of this? How do we try and shift our trajectory from one future to another?

The first steps are talking with other folks so that our future visions are informed by a range of local community perspectives, as well as finding the opportunities to start actually making the current versions of the places we live in more closely resemble the principles that underpin the solarpunk future Newcastle I have briefly sketched out.