Awesome! If you’d like any suggestions for story ideas, let me know what other stories and general themes you like and I’d be happy to see if anything pops to mind.
Cheers! For now, what listed above is what I am most interested in reading up on :)
Also: can I give you a piece of writing advice related to your post above?
Sure, go ahead!
The main geopolitical change is that oil is not going to be anymore a king-maker. I would expect a second Arab Spring (though the Arab world is more than just the Arabian peninsula) with more success. I would expect a lower influence of Russia as well.
Yes, the decline in power of the petrostates would need to be handled well, and would definitely be important in figuring out how the overall landscape looks.
There are two possible flavors of future and really, both are credible, it depends on the stories you want to tell: more integration in supra-national entities or more independent states.
I think perhaps both could work at the same time (which I upon rereading see that you mentioned further down!)? More autonomy to regional entities within countries, but more collaboration on larger issues inside unions such as EU and AU (it would be difficult to avoid centralized power being forced down on local communities though). Maybe instead of seeing the EU moving towards a federal state, maybe we see the US moving towards something like the EU? There are several nations in Europe that would only be mid-sized states in the US, so I always found comparing single European countries to the US makes less sense than comparing the US and EU directly.
Also, do not forget the UN. It could consolidate in a form of government. It already has a de facto minister of trade (WTO), of labor (ILO), of health (WHO), of education (UNESCO). It is a slow process but solving the climate crisis could have given it the political credit it is currently lacking.
Interesting, I never thought of these bodies in that light before. I think the source of the lack of political credit is largely due to the ineffectiveness of the Security Council and the veto vote. I think a big change to this would be paramount for UN to work as some kind of “world government”. And there is a fine line between such an organization being a force for good or a force for evil.
I’ve been doing a worldbuilding exercise for awhile, where I photobash together an image of a solarpunk scene and write some commentary about it. Maybe it’ll help? https://jacobcoffinwrites.wordpress.com/postcards-from-a-solarpunk-future/
Cool, I’m bookmarking this! You seem to have put a lot of thought into this, so it will definitely be an interesting read.
I tend to write with the expectation that things will get worse before they get better. I have a couple reasons for this: 1, I think there are likely some hard times ahead and I want the folks there to have optimistic fiction that makes concrete suggestions for improving things. 2, it’s a useful way to make changes in the setting.
Yeah, I anticipate that this will be the case for me as well. I find it unlikely that we all wake up tomorrow and agree to do everything differently. Too much is at stake for too many people who are well off today. So something big needs to happen that turns a lot of things upside down. And as you say, it is useful as a literary tool: rebuilding from a destroyed state gives a lot of freedom when the new is to be defined, as inertia is taken out of the picture. Not that I don’t hope for the former being possible still…
I tend to be a bit more concerned with day to day life, but I’ve been doing a fair bit of research, so if you find yourself looking for ideas on what a solarpunk apartment building, city street, rural homestead, or other location might look like, feel free to reach out, I’ve got tons of ideas.
The story I have in mind is really something that could be set in a lot of different settings. It is not something that occurs because of the Solarpunk world, but merely inside it. I have a fairly clear picture of what things look like, but would always be interested to see what others have imagined. As I said, I’ve bookmarked your page, so I will make sure to reach out when the details will be chiseled out. I imagine the research for the transition from here to then will take up much time before then.
Thank you, I was looking for this. Helium has important applications in science and medicine, and we cannot afford to use such large quantities for air travel. I’d much rather see development of modern sail ships, possibly in combination with fuel cells.
Wow, this is really cool - thanks for sharing! I’ll take a closer look at this, I am loving the idea. I have just recently started with some traditional TTRPG (DnD), so this is really good timing in that sense as well :)
Nice, thank you! I’ve only read non-fiction by Doctorow so far (Chokepoint Capitalism and The Internet Con) - I think many of the things he advocates for are definitely part of a Solarpunk future, so I imagine his fictional works would be worth a read in that regard. I’ll add it to my reading list, and I’ll make sure to get the humble bundle that I recently saw advertised!
Until your system does anything useful with third party votes or couch-sitting, you go out and vote every time for whatever does the least damage to democracy. But don’t disengage from the political world after the election. Between elections, you work to change the system. Find groups that tries to do this and volunteer. If you really care about it, you will need to dedicate your time to the cause, even though it might seem hopeless and may very well be.
I understand your situation sucks and you are tempted to say “Fuck the status quo” and desperately do something different in hopes that something will somehow change. But you know who do go out and vote, every fucking time? The racist assholes who would love to see Trump and his fascists cronies in power. And if that happens, it is game over. You will never get any chance to change anything, except from after a big traumatic event such as a big war (“civil” or otherwise).
Great read, thank you for that! I’ve written down some of my thoughts. Feel free to point out if I’ve misunderstood you, or if there is something you think I am wrong about.
On 3D-printing
I believe you are onto something in terms of creating more things ourselves on-demand, and I do think local additive manufacturing will be more common in households down the line, and not reserved for hobbyists. I am in the process of selecting a 3D-printer for myself, and in that process I have also begun envisioning many use cases for it. However, I have some concerns over how this will actually play out:
While I am fairly tech savvy, and I have no doubts I can learn what I need to learn in order to design and produce what I need, I wonder what it would take for e.g. my mom to be comfortable with, and get utility from, 3D-printers. We have lived in a specialized society for so long that the vast majority of people are almost exclusively consumers, and do not create anything anymore and even the thought of doing things yourself can be daunting. You mention open source designs and being able to build further upon it, and while I love the idea, I think (for now and at least the short-term) that most people would be fully dependent on a large repository of available designs that can be printed as-is. This smells like yet another area where we would see the emergence of a tech behemoth with a firm monopolistic grip offering a fancy platform with all the bells and whistles, with the ensuing enshittification that is sure to follow: tech lock-in to certain brands and “ecosystems”, limitations to design inspection and modification, algorithmic manipulation to buy/print things we don’t really need, etc. How would we guard ourselves against this and make sure that people would be free to use it to their own benefit, and not end up in the same kind of platform hellscape that we’ve seen for social media platforms, online retailers etc. already?
On-demand printing would certainly reduce overproduction of certain goods, as big retailers wouldn’t need to keep large stocks to ensure availability. In certain industries, this overproduction is massive, and if it could be removed, it would be great. But do we not risk local overproduction? Say that 3D-printing of fabrics becomes viable do to at home, and at a low cost (comparable or lower to those horrible ultrafast fashion brands). What is to stop us from continuing the gross overconsumption that the average consumer engages with today? Especially if the dystopic vision of a tech behemoth running the show presented above comes into fruition. A new dress for every occasion, can’t be seen to wear the same outfit more than once, or else your status takes a hit. Failed prints could also generate a lot of unusable scrap. There would in any case need to be in place robust recycling procedures, preferably local. This would need to account for different materials, plastics, metals (and sorting by alloy), and it would need to handle removal of any contaminants that could affect the quality of the recycled product (dirt or other foreign material that has come from use, this is at least easier with scrap material from a failed print as it should not be dirty).
As you point out, this can’t work for everything. There are quite a lot of goods that require specialty production methods that cannot be replicated at home. I think manufacturing at some levels of complexity higher than what can be achieved with a home printer could probably be handled by community facilities with larger scale equipment and perhaps maintenance and operations staff. But more high-tech things, which my understanding of a solarpunk vision requires, such as photovoltaic panels, wind turbines, batteries and semiconductor components, requires large scale manufacturing. So that won’t disappear, but by their own use of additive manufacturing, their own supply chains could be shortened quite a lot by producing more components in-house. If your assumption that we remove the concern for profit, than there wouldn’t be any barrier to doing this, and I think that would be very beneficial.
Consequences for overproduction
What do you think can be done in regards to overproduction of goods? Should there be consequences for producing more than can be consumed? Do you think capitalism can be tamed in such a way?
I think yes, of course there should be consequences for producing more than can be consumed. The fact that there is none, other than whatever monetary losses they are impacted with from this wastefulness, which obviously is not enough to keep them from doing it, highlights one of the main problems with how capitalism works in our world: the real cost of transactions are seldom accounted for, which results in wastefulness and other poor choices from a sustainability point of view. Large-scale production often yields enormous economies of scale benefits, to the point where the marginal cost of production is barely anything. Doesn’t matter to them if they produce way more than they can sell, because it doesn’t cost them anything anyway. However, with high margins on sales, they might get a huge profit benefit from producing more in case it sells well. Leftovers we just dump in a river somewhere, not our problem anymore.
Can it be tamed however? In principle, more and smarter regulations would help. They would need to be widely agreed upon by several nations, as otherwise corporations could avoid the regulations by flagging out. In practice? I think we’re a long way from this being straight-forward. Corporate interests have way too much to say in politics, especially in the US, and before that problem is solved I think there is a limit to how efficient regulations can be. I also believe that it is difficult to get the required corporation across several countries for the kind of regulation that would be needed. I think EU does some good things here, although they sometimes miss the mark completely for the sake of compromise, and in some areas are chasing the completely wrong types of regulation that are detrimental and not beneficial to our society.
I’ve been using a Merkur Progress for ten years now. The adjustability of the action makes it more versatile, which makes it easier to adjust to different types of blades. I use Astra Superior blades, but also have a stack of Shark blades that I at some point liked, and some Feather blades that are insanely sharp and unforgiving.
Make sure you learn how to lather properly. A good lather makes all the difference, and it also a major factor in making it a lot more enjoyable than the canned Gillette-stuff. I use Proraso for my run-of-the-mill shaves, and have over the years bought a variety of hard soaps as well. My favorite is Marlborough from D.R. Harris.
EDIT: I had one of those starter razors from Mühle in the beginning (Rytmo?). It snapped in two at the neck after I dropped it by accident, after 6 months use. I still have the synthetic hair brush that came with it. Some people go really into brushes, but I’ve been happy with mine.