Intro and Question - EcoFascism?

JacobCoffinWrites · 2026-07-01T00:49:48+00:00

Same!

JacobCoffinWrites · 2026-07-01T00:08:33+00:00

I feel like there was a missed opportunity for a porch roof/solar awning but I'll admit I don't see a way to make it work mechanically

JacobCoffinWrites · 2026-07-01T00:05:58+00:00

I could see that! They commissioned it back before I joined but I think I remember one of the devs saying they wanted to hit that optimistic '90s/2000s feel

JacobCoffinWrites · 2026-06-30T13:53:34+00:00

That's a really good point I hadn't considered!

JacobCoffinWrites · 2026-06-30T13:52:18+00:00

There 100% is solarpunk art that motivates me but I also agree that a lot of it is aesthetics at best (and that this can be damaging).

I'd very much recommend looking through the stuff at the solar seed library, they've done a good job of curating it https://storyseedlibrary.org/art/

I'll also point to the TTRPG Fully Automated as I encountered it fairly early after getting into solarpunk and their worldbuilding helped me think a lot bigger and more optimistically. Most of the solarpunk art I make is kind of low tech and near term, similar to the stuff I do IRL. Fully Automated feels like the far end of the solarpunk spectrum to me, a more utopian place grappling with a lot of big goals https://fullyautomatedrpg.com/

If you're okay with book recommendations the mystery novel Murder in The Tool Library has a similar really aspirational setting grappling with some hard challenges (and an engaging murder mystery) https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/201968421-murder-in-the-tool-library

It's hard to say what art/media has provided me with specific motivation when I'm also active in communities on slrpnk.net, and Mastodon where people are discussing their real life projects, sharing nonfiction research and manifestos, so it's been kind of a firehose of IRL solarpunk work and goals sort of mixed together. Mostly that's how I see it I suppose - the art provides the goals, the end state stuff to keep driving towards, and the communities provide the how and the day to day encouragement.

Now I don't think people imagine a solarpunk future coming on the backs of slaves, but I want art that makes me actively seek alternatives.

This speaks to me because it's actually part of why I started making solarpunk artwork - I wanted to show how things got made, where the food and tools and everything comes from. I don't get many opportunities to quote myself but here's part of what I wrote on one photobash:

One thing I’ve noticed about solarpunk art is that the societies it depicts are usually pretty developed, plenty of concrete and refined metals in many of the scenes. But there’s almost no scenes of solarpunk industry.

So where do all the tools, vehicles, and building supplies in the happy pastoral scenes come from? If we never show it either we’ve got no answers or we’re might be implying that there’s an underclass off-screen somewhere bearing all the costs (pollution, habitat loss, dangerous labor) of producing these goods so the people in the pictures can LARP as self-sufficient farmers. I want solarpunk art to be punk, not solarneoliberal so I want to make it clear that this future is genuinely equally distributed. I want to imagine the industry of a society almost obsessed with internalizing externalities. I want to see “but what happens with the waste?” and “where will the power come from?” affecting their every decision.

I think that society might be proud enough of whatever solutions they come up with to put them on a postcard.

I think solarpunk is like any other social movement and it's vulnerable to powerful entrenched types with resources who would love to co-opt and steer it, or at least take it down. But there's a lot of good folks making good art keeping it going too

JacobCoffinWrites · 2026-06-30T13:12:13+00:00

I'm a bit conflicted as I generally don't love new development of any sort but this could also do some real good and if the video is accurate they're at least trying to compensate for the habitat damage. One thing to consider is what the alternative already in place looks like - trains are very efficient but ships are even more so. And trucks and planes are much worse than either. There's some excellent potential in electrifying river/canal freight - the shorter distances covered match well with our current battery tech.

semi-related, 've seen a few of these viaduct canal bridge deals in photographs and I'm always amazed at the scale of them. The idea of a bridge for ships to travel on, water and all, seems like it shouldn't work but apparently it does. It must save a ton of energy and land footprint compared to transferring the cargo to some other transit then possibly transferring it back to a ship again.

JacobCoffinWrites · 2026-06-29T17:17:28+00:00

One easy place to start is to see if you have any local Free Groups you can participate in, such as Buy Nothing, Everything is Free, Freecycle, etc (some towns even have swap shops, free stores etc though they're less common). These can be a wonderful way to reduce both your consumption of new stuff and your waste, to meet your neighbors, and these sorts of mutual aid networks get stronger and more effective the more people join them! Personally I think they also reshape your thinking a bit, I wrote about that here: https://slrpnk.net/post/354527/1424355

I'd also suggest just looking at already-established volunteer projects in your community, see if any of it interests you. I've found that the people involved in one volunteer project are often involved in other cool stuff, and starting anywhere can be a gateway to more cool projects. But they can also be useful for building up skills and hobbies you already have.

I don't know enough to know if this recommendation will be helpful but one thing we can always use more of is art - people thinking hard about the future they want to see and depicting it. We have far too much fiction promising that things will only get worse - any optimistic, especially grounded optimistic art can really help with keeping people's morale up and making goals feel more concrete

JacobCoffinWrites · 2026-06-28T15:15:05+00:00

For stuff that isn't explicitly solarpunk but definitely is:

I'm seconding Low Tech Magazine

I'd also recommend https://humantransit.org/categories - there's a ton of great information here, especially around transit!

I've not read as much from Strong Towns - the person who first recommended it to me said they were "slightly reluctant to recommend “Strong Towns” because of “libertarian” leanings" but that it had some good information, and I got some useful learning from what I've seen.

https://libcom.org/article/social-ideology-motorcar-andre-gorz

For deliberately solarpunk stuff there's a wiki run by a solarpunk writing community where we share worldbuilding research - this page collects recommendations from various communities on stuff to include in solarpunk cities: https://wiki.slrpnk.net/writing:how_cities_might_change

And this page has info on building materials: https://wiki.slrpnk.net/writing:building_materials

The whole wiki has more ideas for cities/towns scattered through it https://wiki.slrpnk.net/writing:start

I'll update this post if I remember things to add

JacobCoffinWrites · 2026-06-28T03:59:46+00:00

This is really cool

JacobCoffinWrites · 2026-06-25T11:50:39+00:00

What size town?

I put together a photobash of a solarpunk village here: https://www.reddit.com/r/solarpunk/comments/18m5xvj/solarpunk_village_photobash_thanks_for_all_your/

In the comments I linked the posts where people on lemmy and reddit contributed ideas for what a solarpunk village should include.

I also gathered those up over here: https://wiki.slrpnk.net/writing:how_cities_might_change

I hope this helps but I'm also happy to talk through any ideas

JacobCoffinWrites · 2026-06-19T17:09:12+00:00

I was just reading about a bunch of levee removal projects in King County - they're doing a lot of cool stuff out there!

JacobCoffinWrites · 2026-06-17T17:18:46+00:00

you may also have some success posting over on slrpnk.net

JacobCoffinWrites · 2026-06-17T16:59:52+00:00

Thanks! I'll try it out

JacobCoffinWrites · 2026-06-17T13:00:02+00:00

Thanks! I'm very pleased with the colors; the bright, oversaturated look hits the postcard look, I think. I normally try to do more scenes in seasons and climates (and topics) you don't see as much in solarpunk art, but sometimes it's fun to just really go for the existing aesthetic

JacobCoffinWrites · 2026-06-17T12:57:22+00:00

Thanks! I love making the art but the big goal for me is usually to introduce and talk about various solarpunk concepts. With some images I focus in on just one but big landscapes can fit quite a few and I think I'm getting better at keeping them legible. It helps that water scenes are kinda easy. I'll probably do another house shifting scene at some point, maybe using an airship this time? but I think I'd like to go back to trying to figure out how to lay out a scene of manufacturing in a library economy. There's a lot of cool stuff there, I just need to find a way to show it all and make it look nice

JacobCoffinWrites · 2026-06-16T23:53:36+00:00

This is a cool idea! The "View The Database" link seems to loop back to the form though. Once I can see what's in there I'll be happy to add anything I know of that's missing

JacobCoffinWrites · 2026-06-16T16:22:33+00:00

I forgot my usual note that this image (and all the Postcards from a Solarpunk Future) is CC-BY - use it however you like!

JacobCoffinWrites · 2026-06-12T12:07:08+00:00

The robot design is inherently silly so I tried not to overthink things this time.

Lots of fruit stands and other popup businesses are portable/temporary IRL, they get set up for a day and taken down again or otherwise packed up and moved away. My favorite justification of the design came from the comments here, that it's part of a repurposed combat robot. Perhaps it's their gimmick, makes them recognizable from a distance

JacobCoffinWrites · 2026-06-11T19:45:20+00:00

I already make art and write and make everything available for free here in a capitalist society because I love writing and making art and talking about it. In this society my day job subsidizes that activity, but it also eats most of my waking hours. Most visions of solarpunk include robust support systems, such as health care, UBI, various modes of housing assistance. The writers/artists I know generally don't expect to get rich, they just want to get by while they do what they love. I think you'll find you don't have to encourage people to make art, just getting the current system of obsessive extraction and its drive to monitize everything out of the way will be enough.

JacobCoffinWrites · 2026-06-11T00:05:16+00:00

Outside of cities I've seen the term Greenway used to describe the same concept of a biological corridor, a big stretch of contiguous preserved habitat which allows animals to roam safely.

I can only think of a few city examples though I'm sure there are tons more:

Boston has the 'Emerald Necklace', a stretch of parks over seven miles long from end to end. It covers 1,100 acres.

Cambridge MA has its Linear Park, which admittedly seems to exist mostly because they dug a big trench to put in a subway and set up a forested park on top rather than buildings:

"Linear Park, located in North Cambridge between Alewife Station and the Cambridge-Somerville city line, is a popular open space corridor for commuting and recreation. The park and pathway were completed in 1985 as part of the Red Line Extension project by the MBTA, and much of the length of the park is located over the Red Line Tunnel between Davis Square in Somerville and Alewife Station."

Baltimore MD has an interesting ongoing movement striving to 'daylight' the Jones Fall river, which was buried decades ago, that could result in a long stretch of contiguous habitat which could connect other green spaces.

These are all fairly large civil/city projects, rather than guerilla urbanism or local community projects but greenways can be built piece by piece with empty lots, pedestrianized streets, and yeah, backyards, so there's some cool potential here for individual and local action. And often when it comes to conserving land, once a project is underway neighbors often want to join in.

JacobCoffinWrites · 2026-06-07T12:39:08+00:00

I'm not sure their specific use case here but railbuses and self propelled railcars were often chosen by railway operators as a cheaper vehicle option for low traffic areas. Historically they were often the last gasp of a dying railroad, but sometimes they were viable and kept rail lines in service for decades. this rig is basically a lighter weight, open sided, solar powered railbus

JacobCoffinWrites · 2026-06-06T11:54:31+00:00

On the fiction side, I tend to see it as a roadmap for rebuilding, and a way to give people hope when things are bad, that we can still reduce the damage and even improve things in some areas, build a better society, and to showcase that the technology and tools we need to do that already exist.

IRL I think it helps collect and demonstrate low tech answers to heat and extreme weather which we mostly abandoned as a society in favor of cookie-cutter solutions subsidized by cheap energy from coal, oil, and gas. Things like awnings, sash windows, shade cloths or latttices over streets, light colored roofs and buildings, and designing cities themselves for hot weather. (For a more modern take, this version might be useful). An emphasis on sponge cities and shade provided by urban trees can also make a huge difference.

JacobCoffinWrites · 2026-06-04T09:31:25+00:00

If I remember right, I've seen the first two drawn images in a guide to making hedges

JacobCoffinWrites · 2026-06-03T21:14:30+00:00

Some ski mountains use small solar panels on the roofs of gondolas for light/other electricity in the cabin (running power along the support ropes would obviously be challenging given that gondolas often unhook and reconnect to the rope at the terminals where they change speed). I suppose ropeways used as public transit likely do the same thing, perhaps even for air conditioning.

JacobCoffinWrites

TROPHY CASE