That's just cynical . Elites fear too many people but not the environmental destruction of their own decadent excess. Rein in over consumption, give girls rights, and there is no environmental or overpopulation problem.

The future isn't something that happens to us. It's something we design, together, right now.

🌱 Read the full essay "Compost Modernity! The vision of solarpunk" in Aeon. This is one of the few pieces this year they've opened for comments--so have at it: aeon.co/essays/in-so...

Solarpunk doesn't ask us to deny what we're losing to climate change and ecological breakdown. It asks us to notice what is already germinating in the cracks—the people-powered projects, the rewilding initiatives, the community gardens, the local energy cooperatives.

It IS about:

✅ Democratic control and community flourishing

✅ Technologies that can be maintained by the people who use them

✅ Design as symbiosis, not domination

✅ Mutual aid and solidarity over competition and scarcity

These aren't primitive—they're sophisticated solutions that have sustained communities for centuries.

True solarpunk isn't about:

❌ Corporate-controlled "smart cities" harvesting your data

❌ Greenwashing massive construction projects

❌ Technology as domination

Khasi living root bridges in India—grown rather than built
Ma'dan reed architecture in Iraq—entire villages that rise and fall with water levels
Chinampas in Mexico—raised garden beds that produce abundance with minimal energy
Future Design in Japan—decision-making that considers future generations

Some of the most important "technologies" are ones Western eyes have failed to recognize precisely because they blend seamlessly into ecosystems:

What is solarpunk? Think dirigibles drifting above rooftops covered in solar panels, permaculture gardens feeding neighborhoods, buildings that self-repair using biomimicry and maintenance design, and technologies designed not for profit, but for the flourishing of all life.

Solarpunk—a vision of the future where technology and nature aren't opposing forces, but collaborative partners.

We've been stuck in a false choice: either we embrace technology and sacrifice nature, or we reject modern tools and retreat to some romanticized past. Solarpunk offers a third way.

Many thanks Ed!

It's behind a paywall.

We had all that. But it's more a social thing. Fear of being embarrassed. Fear of being judged. We've always had it but now it is turbocharged.

However, minoritized + indigenous people who have had to deal with colonialism for 500 years have already gone through their own end of their world, but not that of the dominant colonizer. To refashion Gibson's phrase, the apocalypse is already here, it's just not evenly distributed.