It would be instructive to get the answer to the question: Why did a solarpunk future of clean-energy abundance fail to arrive after the oil shock of the 1970s? The answer was and is, of course, lack of political will.

Now, whilst these SolarPunk pages do not explicitly take a political stance, it can still be interesting if not useful to pose some political questions – if indeed, it’s all about political will…

And one inherently political question is: How much stuff is there actually? Especially as we are supposed to live in a system of supply and demand: What happens when there is an abundance of supply?

So, in a short guide to SolarPunk, we suggested that “greentech, walkable cities, sprawling plant life and an abundance of sunshine are frequent sights when it comes to the solarpunk aesthetic”.

Looking at Solarpunk and the new technological optimism and a core commitment to clean energy abundance, we can also say that Solarpunk “posits a world of solar-energy abundance” but insists on the messy politics involved in the transition – and not a static utopia. Which adds up to a ‘political’ vision.

A very specific political vision worth considering is contained in a new book just out: Radical Abundance: How to Win a Green Democratic Future:

“It is producing more of what we need and less of what we don’t; more free time, more biodiversity, more services owned by those who use them. Understanding that we cannot wait for political change under liberal democracies, we have the chance to experiment with exciting communal ways of creating radical abundance now, before it is too late.“

We don’t have to agree with it, but there are some ideas to have a debate about when it comes to what sort of future we want.

This is a review from Sheffield: We live in a world where we have too much of what we don’t need and too little of what we do – but it doesn’t have to be this way | Now Then Sheffield

And this is a video discussion from the NEF: Radical abundance: how to build an alternative to capitalism | New Economics Foundation

Enjoy the read and the watch!

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