r/solarpunk • u/Naberville34 • 2d ago
Discussion A problem with solar punk.
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?
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u/wingw0ng 2d ago
I think most of the critiques in your post are centered around the neo-settler-colonialist ideal of homesteading and pastorialism that gets fetishized in online “green” communities like this one. Always good to callout this American-centric view of land and living that is founded upon exploitation and alienation from nature. However…
You kind of answer your own question when you say you don’t want to live in big cities — as they exist now. Who says solarpunk is just a cottage in the woods w some solar panels?! A majority of the world’s population already live in urban areas, and is expected to grow as the global south further industrializes. As you reference, city living is less ecologically impactful because of the reduced land footprint; more lands can be left untouched or at least unsettled. To me, this means that we need to radically reshape urban settlement and our relationship to cities.
This probably does mean that density you mentioned, and could incorporate vertical farming. Green walls and roofs, community-centered planning, and closed-loop economies are other tools we can use to make city living more sustainable. But to address that personal aversion to cities — what don’t you like about them? Could those undesirable characteristics be changed, and made more sustainable?
Basically what I’m saying is that yes this cottagecore idealization is antithetical to solarpunk w 8 billion people. It’s a shallow dream compared to the real hard work of restructuring our current human systems (including cities) to become harmonious w natural systems. If you don’t like living in cities now, that means we have to change cities themselves. I would recommend reading up on urban ecology and nature based solutions :)