What does a sustainable civilisation look like and how do we get there? A burgeoning movement of #artists and #activists is seeking answers.
by Joe Coroneo-Seaman, January 21, 2022
Excerpt: "The concept of solarpunk originally emerged in the late 2000s, when a handful of artists on the social media platform Tumblr began sharing drawings of futuristic green cities. Over time, the aesthetic and ethos evolved into a more robust vision for the world, and in the process has been embraced by other art forms. There are now published collections of solarpunk literature, subgenres of music, movements within architecture and even tabletop role-playing games [#RPGs].
"At the core of this vision is the idea that humans can coexist in harmony with the rest of nature. A solarpunk world is one where vast swathes of land have been returned to #wilderness, rooftop gardens dot the skylines of high-tech cities and vertical farms provide food to their residents.
"Increasingly, artists and writers in the solarpunk movement also describe a world that is just and safe for #MarginalisedGroups – especially those facing the brunt of the #climate and #ecological crisis today. '#BIPOC [#Black, #Indigenous and #PeopleOfColour] and #QueerPeople are safe in solarpunk futures,' says Brianna Castagnozzi, co-editor-in-chief of Solarpunk Magazine.
"Although it may seem utopian and idealistic, solarpunk attempts to answer real questions being asked more and more often in light of the unfolding climate and ecological crisis. What can be saved? What does a truly #sustainable civilisation look like? How do we get there?
"It may be a big ask, but it’s now clear that the scale of the environmental crises facing humanity demands #TransformationalChanges to the way we live, as well as the way we think. Art has the power to shape our attitudes, so perhaps it’s time – as Nigerian poet #BenOkri said recently – for artists of all kinds to 'dedicate our lives to nothing short of re-dreaming society'."
"The dominant narrative of our time scrolls endlessly toward catastrophe, each headline a confirmation that we’re locked into systems designed to fail, but #solarpunk emerges as something different entirely: a movement blending art, literature, activism, and tangible real-world projects that dares to ask not 'what’s the worst that could happen?' but rather 'what’s the best we can actually build?'
"At its core, solarpunk envisions a world reorganized around #RenewableEnergy, genuine #cooperation, and #SustainableDesign that doesn’t sacrifice beauty or dignity in the process. The key themes include #AntiConsumerism, #CommunityAction, #localism, and what activists call #PrefigurativePolitics, which is essentially the idea that we should live the change we wish to see starting immediately, not someday when conditions magically align.
"The 'punk' in solarpunk carries real weight. The movement is fundamentally #countercultural, resisting both technological determinism and the business-as-usual [#BAU] thinking that’s driving us toward ecological #collapse. Solarpunk centers #decolonial values, #PostCapitalist ideals, and genuine #SelfSufficiency rather than the performative sustainability of #CorporateGreenwashing."
[Thread] So, the book #LimitsToGrowth is back in the news after the projections were updated. I've been doing a lot of reading and thinking about this topic (the preface of the book 1177BC, The Year Civilization Collapsed being the impetus).
My conclusion is that only #Degrowth and implementation of a lot of #SolarPunkSunday ideas (repairing stuff, building community, rewilding) will help us adapt to the coming changes. That's why I started SPS -- to highlight events, ideas and to build connections.
Yes, I am known for "Doomposting," but like with most things, I try and find solutions as well. Yeah, all the #Fascist BS isn't helping -- in fact, it's a symptom of the desperation of the elites to hold onto their #Capitalistic, #Colonial, #hierarchical ways. And, well, we all know where that leads.
We may not be able to fix the climate or all the other things that are going wrong right away, but we can try to adapt, and make sure by doing so, we aren't making the problems worse for all the beings that live here on planet Earth.
I'll be posting some quotes in this thread -- some with commentary, some just by themselves. Do humans have all the answers? Not sure (I know I don't)... But sticking our collective heads in the sand is NOT an option!
Blog post from 2022: What a 50-year-old world model tells us about a way forward today
by Gaya Herrington, 17 May 2022
"My research went viral last summer. I found out via a friend’s text, jokingly accusing me of 'announcing the end of the world.' For several days, headlines on major US news pages declared that my research proved we are on the brink of collapse. A few days later, UK pages touted the same headlines. Then I saw my name popping up in languages I do not know, from Swedish, to Greek, to Chinese, to Sinhala.
"It took me a bit by surprise. My research had been published months earlier, in November 2020. Also, it was a data comparison of a model from a book that was almost half a century old. Apart from the headlines being a simplistic version of my research’ message, they also gave the impression that the possibility of societal collapse suddenly had been revealed. But this warning was a key message of The #LimitsToGrowth (#LtG) book, which the authors Meadows, Meadows, Randers & Behrens, published back in 1972. In LtG, commissioned by the #ClubOfRome, the authors identified society’s relentless pursuit of growth not as the solution to, but the cause of, so many of the #environmental and social crises that plague humanity still today. Their analysis was based on a global model called World3. The authors created different scenarios by varying World3’s underlying assumptions. This scenario analysis helped them study global dynamics between variables including industrial output, resources, pollution, and living standards. In my research, I compared four LtG scenarios against a few decades of empirical data. Details about the scenarios methods and results, can be found in my article in Yale’s Journal of Industrial Ecology. An easier read with the gist of my findings was also published on the Club of Rome website. Here, I’ll just share my conclusions, illustrated by a graph of the variable people might be most concerned with: living standards (Figure 1). This graph is from my upcoming book Five Insights for Avoiding Global Collapse, soon available online under Creative Commons, which contains further research analysis and 2022 data update of my comparison."
The author goes on to explain the graph. I'm focusing on Herrington's scenarios, especially the "SW" scenario in my next post...
Gaya Herrington's chart showing #HumanWelfare and the #LimitsToGrowth, beginning from 1900 to the future (2100).
The graph has 4 lines - SW (yellow), CT (blue), BAU2 (red), and BAU (dark blue). The yellow line dips down slightly, then is pretty even. All the other lines point downward, with BAU being the furthest down (indicating a very bad quality of life for humans).
"Here, I’ll just share my conclusions, illustrated by a graph of the variable people might be most concerned with: living standards (Figure 1). This graph is from my upcoming book Five Insights for Avoiding Global Collapse, soon available online under Creative Commons, which contains further research analysis and 2022 data update of my comparison.
"I found an overall close alignment of empirical data with the scenarios, for now, because they only diverge significantly after 2020. This accuracy decades into the future gives reason to take the #World3 dynamics seriously. If we do that, we unfortunately must conclude that the future holds risks of declines in welfare, among other things, and some of these declines are indeed steep enough to constitute a collapse. The scenario indicated with 'SW' shows no collapse and the highest living standards. However, empirical data aligned least closely to SW.
"I interpret all this as humanity having a now or never opportunity to change direction. Contrary to what my friend texted me, I did not predict the end of the world, just like #LtG didn’t at the time; I noticed #WarningSignals and voiced a call to action. Empirical data are not far from SW yet, and humankind can determine where future data points fall. How? Well, there is one key difference between SW and the other scenarios: in SW, humanity consciously lets go of growth as its goal. Under SW assumptions, society shifts priorities away from industrial output growth towards resource efficiency, #pollution abatement, and #health and #education services. We can do that in the real world too.
"Will we? Before you answer that question in your head, let’s frame it properly. Because this is not about whether we want to avoid collapse; it’s whether we want better. SW represents a redesign of society away from material consumption, around human and #ecological well-being. Yes, that would take a lot of effort. But we’d also be working on healing society, towards a future of thriving. Does that sound to you like something worth putting in work for?"
In other words, and end to #Capitalism and implementation of #Degrowth, with the goal being healthy, educated humans living on a planet that they are actively trying to clean-up!
From "Recalibration of limits to growth: An update of the #World3 model"
by Arjuna Nebel, Alexander Kling, Ruben Willamowski, Tim Schell
First published: 13 November 2023
4.3 Future trends
"So far, the results have mainly been considered in comparison with the empirical data for the recalibration. However, the course of the variables is also interesting in terms of future trends. Here, the model results clearly indicate the imminent end of the exponential growth curve. The excessive consumption of resources by industry and industrial agriculture to feed a growing world population is depleting reserves to the point where the system is no longer sustainable. Pollution lags behind industrial growth and does not peak until the end of the century. Peaks are followed by sharp declines in several characteristics.
"This interconnected collapse, or, as it has been called by Heinberg and Miller (2023), #polycrisis, occurring between 2024 and 2030 is caused by resource depletion, not pollution. The increase in environmental pollution occurs later and with a lower peak (Figure 3).
"However, it is important to note that the connections in the model and the recalibration are only valid for the rising edge, as many of the variables and equations represented in the model are not physical but socio-economic. It is to be expected that the complex socio-economic relationships will be rearranged and reconnected in the event of a collapse. World3 holds the relationships between variables constant. Therefore it is not useful to draw further conclusions from the trajectory after the tipping points. Rather, it is important to recognize that there are large uncertainties about the trajectory from then on, building models for this could be a whole new field of research.
"The fact is that the recalibrated model again shows the possibility of a collapse of our current system. At the same time, the BAU scenario of the 1972 model is shown to be alarmingly consistent with the most recently collected empirical data.
"#Herrington (2021) also concluded in her data comparison that the world is far from a stabilized world scenario where the #overshoot and #collapse mode is brought to a halt. As a society, we have to admit that despite 50 years of knowledge about the dynamics of the collapse of our life support systems, we have failed to initiate a systematic change to prevent this collapse. It is becoming increasingly clear that, despite #technological advances, the change needed to put us on a different trajectory will also require a change in #BeliefSystems, #mindsets, and the way we organize our society (Irwin, 2015; Wamsler & Brink, 2018). [SW model]
"At the point of collapse, the resolution of the model also reaches the limit of further plausible statements. The regional differences in demographic and economic terms are too great to be reduced to simple, highly aggregated variables. To address this problem, a new system dynamics model has been developed on the occasion of #LtG's 50th anniversary which is called Earth for all (Sandrine Dixson-Decleve et al., 2022). It introduces a regional resolution and a measure of social inequality and tension. There is also a greater focus on the causes and effects of the #ClimateCrisis. In #Earth4all, the authors no longer focus on scenarios with sharp declines in the main variables. Instead, the scenario Too little too late describes that the effects of the climate crisis will continue to increase and social tensions will rise, causing the well-being index to decline over time. In another scenario, #GiantLeap, it is shown that these negative developments could also be stopped. The authors then propose various policy changes to achieve this (Sandrine Dixson-Decleve et al., 2022). "