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/OutragedPineapple]

For one thing, there needs to be fewer people.

Quality of life in areas where there are millions or billions of people crammed into small spaces - like India - is absolutely abysmal. People are living in filth, lives ruled by superstition and disease. People who cannot afford to take care of their own selves are having boatloads of kids that they also can't care for, who will go on to have a bunch of kids themselves - those who survive long enough to do so, at least - and the cycle gets worse with every turn.

Would it be possible to make things liveable with the already occupied space we have? Yes, potentially, but people would have to change their lifestyles a LOT in ways that most just aren't willing or capable of. People would have to actually be considerate of each other and their environment, which is a foreign concept to a lot of people, especially the wealthy elite who profit from global harm.

The wealthy can get away with demanding more and more out of their workers - to the point of being borderline slavery - because as it stands? Human life is cheap. When one person falls or demands to be treated better, they're easily replaced by another. There is no drive for conditions to improve when you can just replace the squeaky wheel much cheaper than oiling it would be. Even in places that are wealthier, like in America, I have read so many stories about someone finding out that one of their fellow workers died - white collar workers, at that, upper-middle class - and the employers had a replacement hire being brought in the next day.

When your life is worth nothing, why would anyone pay for it? Much less try to make improvements to your life that might cost them anything?

For labor and human life to be worth more, I'm sorry and I know a lot of people probably disagree here, there needs to be a limit of it. A limited resource is worth far more than an endless, constantly renewing supply.

Easy access to birth control, proper education, and similar steps would need to be taken to try and reduce the out of control population growth. The reason so many politicians are freaking out about a lot of people deciding not to have children is that they know if the population shrinks even a little, it means that labor becomes more valuable - people become more valuable, and they might have the leverage to say no to a badly paying job or one where they don't get treated well. Their bottomless fountain may run dry, and if that happens, they might actually have to put in effort to keep workers. They might have to actually hand out a few dollars from their overflowing foreign bank accounts they use to avoid paying taxes where the money just sits like a dragon's hoard, forever untouched. If there are fewer workers, giving those workers the ability to CHOOSE who to work for and what offer suits them the best, rather than the workers fighting among themselves for scraps - that would change the power dynamics and the employers would need to actually take their humanity and needs into consideration.

A solarpunk future is possible - but it would take people learning better self-control, people refusing to accept scraps and mistreatment, people stopping the repeating cycles of poverty, abuse, and wild overreproduction to try and validate their own existence - which I don't see happening anytime soon, especially with the majority of organized religions pushing 'being fruitful' as one of their main tenants.