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.
Solarpuk is a reaction to this very mindset.
Yes, we will (and we did) damage the environment but the overall will to mitigate and fix these damages is what makes us hope. Solarpunk authors think it is achievable, Desert’s authors think it is not. We disagree and that’s find, but this is just the 1364th iteration of an ecological dystopia, solarpunk it utopian.
Also note that we DO KNOW about these issues and are concerned about it, we are just SICK of the tone of despair and helplessness that is prevailing. We do not live in Solarpunk 100% of the time, that’s just our 0.5% window into a future that is not crap and that we want to try to build.
You made me think of an analogy: when I started driving my instructor told me not to stare at obstacle. When driving we need to look at where we want to go, because our hands will follow our eyes.
The more we stare at the obstacle the more we tend to go towards it.
I feel like now we are really focusing on climate change but not enough on the alternative. There is no direction, we are trying to change society without changing it.
Solarpunk is a direction, it a way of saying “this is where we want to go”. I don’t know if we will manage to go there, but I know for sure that if we don’t have any direction we are not going anywhere !
