Solarpunk is innately about hope for a better future, but Desert is rather about the impossibility to save the world from climate change and the opportunities for anarchy that arise after the world’s end. It’s not as if Desert is devoid of hope, but rather it sees hope and possibilities within the end of the world. In that respect, there is some overlap with solarpunk, but I can’t help but think the nihilism doesn’t jive well with the solarpunk ethos.
First of all I disagree about the impossibility to win against climate change. We already have basicly all the tools for a good life for everybody on the planet, which is mostly enviromentally friendly. The big answer to a lot of these problems is degrowth and some green growth. We can already see some rather large degrowth moves in more labour rights and the rather large fight against raising the pension age in France. Less work means less damage. As for going green, we do invest a lot in green technology and fossil fuels consumption is going down in large parts of the world. Even more we see a clear trend in lower populations over the coming years, so global growth is slowing. China might have a massive economic crisis, so the biggest growth source in terms of emissions might very well come to a halt. Just to be clear this is not fast enough by a wide margin, but this idea of complete collapse of the current system seems extremly unlikely to me. Countries can take a lot of hitting, before they collapse and humans can adapt surprisingly quickly. We just went trhou Covid to show that and many wars show similar developments. If you would tell the world that fossil fuels would no longer be available in a year, I am pretty sure the Americas and Europe as well as some other places would survive this somewhat well. Obviously with some big changes, but they would be recognisable to the outside world. Many poor countries would also do okay.
What is true is that conflict is rising in the world. China is growing in strength and is able to challenge the US, there is a large war in Europe, food prices cause instability, demographic trends enable workers to fight against capital more and more, climate change causes shortages in many countries and so much more. That creates possibilities, which should be seized. But this is not total collapse and that is honestly good news. Societies need some organization, which currently is provided by the state. Just removing the state, without replacing it with another form of organization, which can be anarchist, will just cause society to collapse. This would be a complete disaster. Just because something sucks, does not mean the opposite is better.
I agree and resonate a lot of what you’ve written except for the first part on winning climate change. I think the IPCC reports are pretty clear that we’ve already lost. Even if somehow we achieve world revolution, we will still end up in an apocalyptic 1.5C scenario. There’s nothing to debate: a 1.5C scenario is already inevitable and it will be pretty bad. What isn’t inevitable is a 2.0C or higher scenario. That’s where we come in: solarpunks and anarchists alike have to struggle for reaching a 1.5C world and things like degrowth and just transition.
The world as we know it will end, but that doesn’t need to mean mass death and devastation. That’s where I depart from Desert because it seems to say that the mass death and devastation will create new avenues for freedom. Cool I guess, but I rather save as much people as I can.
