Steampunk —> Cyberpunk —> Solarpunk —> Terrapunk.

Solarpunk

I don't want to waste words demonizing Solarpunk, but it seems necessary. I get it, I used to like Solarpunk - the greenery, preventing climate change, and being pro-tech. But now I believe Solarpunk has its flaws. For the key tenet of Solarpunk is that humans will live in harmony with the earth, and through this vagueness and lack of vision, it was corrupted.

I have never heard the terms human maximization, population expansion, or resource creation in solarpunk - and they are not once mentioned in the original conception. For to live in harmony with the earth is to imply a reduction of growth and resource usage. Even if successful, there is always the sense that climate change is right around the corner, and if one were to use fossil fuels, the whole ecosystem would collapse. Have you ever seen any rocket launches depicted in solarpunk? One might say "but we are happy on earth, we have everything we need!".

Even in the most fantastical depictions of solarpunk, there is always the sense that they are still on earth. Yet, remaining on earth is fundamentally anti-human. Either the population expands, and we create denser buildings (human atomization), or the population declines so we can each have enough space (human minimization). Neither of these are futures I want to live in, for they are both about reducing humans for the betterment of Earth. Being constrained to earth is untenable for expanding humanity - it is stagnation, and stagnation is collapse.

As well, solarpunk is, to use their terms, greenwashed socialism. To create a society as close to utopia without using that word. The solarpunk movement has become anti-capitalist, as recently written here, as well as even briefly hinted at in the original writings. If you believe in capitalism and free markets, you can try to fight this from within, like these downvoted reddit commenters ¹, but I believe it's a lost cause regardless and this next point is why.

Solarpunk is pro-tech, but not enough. There are multiple threads on /r/solarpunk of excited newcomers posting nuclear reactors, but they are almost always told that the companies are greenwashing ² their product, and that uranium is a finite resource. As if solar panel materials...aren't finite? It's absurd. This is another way solarpunk is constrained to Earth - we will need nuclear to sur...

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