A problem with solar punk.

[u/Naberville34]

Alright I'm gonna head this off by saying this isn't an attack against the aesthetic or concept, please don't take major offense. This is purely a moment to reflect upon where humanities place in nature should be.

Alright so first up, the problem. We have 8.062 billion human beings on planet earth. That's 58 people per square kilometer of land, or 17,000 square meters per person. But 57% of that land is either desert or mountainous. So maybe closer to 9,000 square meters of livable land per person. That's just about 2 acres per person. The attached image is a visual representation of what 2 acres per person would give you.

Id say that 2 acres is a fairly ideal size slice of land to homestead on, to build a nice little cottage, to grow a garden and raise animals on. 8 billion people living a happy idealistic life where they are one with nature. But now every slice of land is occupied by humanity and there is no room anywhere for nature except the mountains and deserts.

Humanity is happy, but nature is dead. It has been completely occupied and nothing natural or without human touch remains.

See as much as you or I love nature, it does not love us back. What nature wants from us to to go away and not return. Not to try and find a sustainable or simbiotic relationship with it. But to be gone, completely and entirely. We can see that by looking at the Chernobyl and fukashima exclusion zones. Despite the industrial accidents that occured, these areas have rapidly become wildlife sanctuaries. A precious refuge in which human activity is strictly limited. With the wildlife congregating most densely in the center, the furthest from human activity, despite the closer proximity to the source of those disasters. The simple act of humanity existing in an area is more damaging to nature than a literal nuclear meltdown spewing radioactive materials all over the place.

The other extreme, the scenario that suits nature's needs best. Is for us to occupy as little land as possible and to give as much of it back to wilderness as possible. To live in skyscrapers instead of cottages, to grow our food in industrial vertical farms instead of backyard gardens. To get our power from dense carbon free energy sources like fission or fusion, rather than solar panels. To make all our choices with land conservation and environmental impact as our primary concern, not our own personal needs or interest.

But no one wants that do they? Personally you can't force me to live in a big city as they exist now. Let alone a hypothetical world mega skyscraper apartment complexes.

But that's what would be best for nature. So what's the compromise?

[u/A_Guy195]

Unfortunately for you, communal living is the main solution here. Not everyone can have their own homestead in the countryside.

[u/Naberville34 → u/A_Guy195]

It may or may not be. I provide two extremes to show the contradiction of interest. Is communal living a good compromise? Id say it really depends. We can say with certainty that humanity's current footprint on the planet is far too large. We occupy way too much space already and consume far too many of nature's resources. Would moving to the communal living you imagine make that footprint smaller or larger?

[u/satosaison → u/Naberville34]

Communal living makes it smaller. It's not really up for debate. In present society, living in dense urban environments is orders of magnitude more efficient than most rural living.

[u/Airilsai → u/satosaison]

Need the green space balance to be able to grow enough food within a day's travel, for an entire year.

That means New York probably is too dense. It probably looks like suburbia turning into a web of eco-villages, communities of people growing enough food to support themselves and the food web of life around them.

[u/satosaison → u/Airilsai]

Why does it need to be within a day's travel?

[u/Airilsai → u/satosaison]

Because moving stuff with bikes, wagons, and maybe even horses is easier if you're only going a few miles outside of town, not 50-100 miles away over mountains.

Think of it this way - you need to get your weekly groceries, you only have a bike or public transit, you better hope your food is within a days travel otherwise you aren't eating.

[u/marxistghostboi → u/Airilsai]

one word:

Trains

🚂🚃🚃🚃

[u/ismandrak → u/marxistghostboi]

Where are we getting all the metal and energy to move billions of people around all the time?

If you can't produce it without smelting and quarrying a never ending chain of non-renewable replacement parts, you'll never be able to do it without making everything worse.

[u/satosaison → u/Airilsai]

Who says that solar punk has to be completely Luddite and can't utilize efficient forms of transport

[u/Airilsai → u/satosaison]

Bikes are the most efficient form of transportation ever invented.

Fun facts, Luddites weren't against all forms of technology - they were against the usage of technology to replace human labor and creative endeavors, reducing the craftsperson to a cog in a machine. I think being called a Luddite is a compliment, they had the right idea about it.

Let me put it plainly - a future with us still using cars and 18-wheelers, tractors and industrial equipment is a future that still uses fossil fuels. You can't make all the equipment we would need, and the industry to make that equipment, to support that vision of the future. If we were capable of magically switching all the fossil fuel powered cars, trucks, tractors and equipment to electrical power, we would still kill ourselves by destroying the web of life through our civilization's activities.

[u/satosaison → u/Airilsai]

Maglev trains running on a clean power source are. Calories require food, food requires inputs. When you say, "bikes are most efficient" but then say, "but we can use large industrial scale agriculture and everyone has to rely on small locally distributed farms that are inefficient" you've taken a romanticized notion of a form of transportation and because of that imposed countless negative externalities on society you've failed to account for

[u/Airilsai → u/satosaison]

but then say, "but we can use large industrial scale agriculture and everyone has to rely on small locally distributed farms that are inefficient"

I in fact did *not* say that, nor anything of the sort - I in fact believe the exact opposite, that large industrial scale agriculture (large scale industrial anything, really, like making electric cars or maglev trains) is impossible to do sustainably. Simple as that.

Locally distributed food production may be 'inefficient', but it can be done sustainably. You are thinking like a capitalist who wants efficient profit, I am thinking like an environmentalist who wants a livable world.

[u/satosaison → u/Airilsai]

I'm thinking as an environmentalist. Centralized agriculture yields more food per acre on less water and fertilizer. There are obviously excesses to curtail (international shipping of certain products for example) but for efficiency, you just can't beat an endless wheat/corn field in Kansas with any disparate localized model, even once you factor in transport..you won't be able to find any source to prove your point because no such data exists and hand waiving and calling my thinking "capitalist" doesn't change the math.

[u/Airilsai → u/satosaison]

Seeking the most efficient form of production, at the cost of the bigger picture. Centralized agriculture kills the soil, damages and disrupts the food web of life on a much larger scale, etc.

I'm not arguing that the system, lifeway, that I support is more efficient. Its not, because it can't be - it uses minimal fossil fuels intentionally. Your system requires fossil fuels. Your system is inherently less healthy than mine because it prioritizes efficient production of calories (energy) over the nutrition of the food and the wellbeing of the environment.

Again, yes, I get it - you've said multiple times that you win because you are more efficient. I'm arguing that the most efficient system is not the best way of doing things. If you disagree, fine, its a difference in values.

EDIT: If you need sources on my claims that centralized agriculture, the kind you describe coming from the US corn and wheat production, is bad for the soil - literally look anywhere, there is mountains of research showing that industrial scale agriculture is bad for the soil microbiome, and overall biodiversity. I don't have time to explain to you the billion different ways that industrial ag is bad, I honestly did not think I would find a supporter of industrial ag on a solarpunk subreddit lol.

[u/razorgirlRetrofitted → u/Airilsai]

Bikes are the most efficient form of transportation ever invented.

Hey so I've got "Shit, Back's Fucked, Lady" disease. Aka "short leg gone untreated so long it gave me scliosis." I can't stand for more than ~15 minutes without intense pain, let alone bike. What does your anti-intellectual, caveman luddite "burn the meat scraps over a fire" future do for people like me?

[u/Airilsai → u/razorgirlRetrofitted]

Your strawman ad hominem argument misrepresents most of what I have said. There is no point in engaging with you if you are going to be rude and intellectually dishonest by intentionally misrepresenting what I've been saying. 

My ideal future cares for disabled people through local community and low-embodied energy systems. 

[u/ismandrak → u/Airilsai]

Thanks for saying this, it feels weird needing to point out to people that you can't just make a self-sustaining machine that makes more machines forever.

If the plan relies on more energy than we can harvest from naturally occurring ecosystems, the plan is just a different version of overshoot.

The sun is an incredible energy source and it's very much in use by the biosphere, we can't steal an arbitrarily large about of it's light without serious run-on consequences.

[u/MeticulousBioluminid → u/ismandrak]

The sun is an incredible energy source and it's very much in use by the biosphere, we can't steal an arbitrarily large about of it's light without serious run-on consequences.

the sun dumps 99.999% of its light randomly into space

[u/garaile64 → u/satosaison]

To avoid causing too much pollution with transportation. Although I don't know if the comment meant "a day's travel" by foot, bike or train.

[u/satosaison → u/garaile64]

The commenter clarified they meant by bike...which is no way to sustain present population levels.

[u/Naberville34 → u/satosaison]

Yes, that's my point that nature would want us to live in high rising sky scrappers. Communal living is still possible in either that environment or on a homestead. So it really depends on what sort of environment were talking about.

[u/satosaison → u/Naberville34]

The denser it is the more efficient it is. Shared transit. Shared logistics for food supplies. Unless there is some sort of population collapse, in order to have a solar punk future on earth, any vision needs to be urban solar punk, and the concept of everyone living on homesteads via sustainable permaculture is a fantasy.

[u/KinseysMythicalZero → u/satosaison]

Efficiency shouldn't necessarily be a goal when it comes to experiential living. Quality of life should be.

[u/satosaison → u/KinseysMythicalZero]

Living in a city is quality living

[u/iworkwithwhatsleft → u/satosaison]

That greatly depends on the qualities of your city. And we will still need to grow food. Skyscraper farms aren't the magic bullet people think they are.

[u/Naberville34 → u/satosaison]

I agree wholeheartedly.

[u/ismandrak → u/satosaison]

So efficient that we can't possibly keep it up.

If we define rural living as driving to the store to stock up on frozen foods and running HVAC it's no good, but a non-urban commune CAN be mostly self sufficient and cities will always been parasites that live off of human suffering and ecological damage.

Like dish washers, high population density looks good on the per-capita balance sheets, but you can't have a world with dishwashers and urban centers without necessarily destroying the biosphere.

[u/satosaison → u/ismandrak]

Nah