Reading his complaint I was thinking, combustion engines will still be around, after all I see people driving steam powered antique autos almost every summer. But that doesn’t mean we should stay dependent on old, damaging tech for basic tasks

I try to maintain a balance. I try to accept that a lot of the problems in the world are beyond my reach, to keep informed and to help in the small ways I can, and to draw motivation from it, but without throwing myself into despair. It’s hard and I’ll admit I err on the side of ignorance these days.

Mostly I focus on solarpunk fiction projects (I think we need to be able to imagine better futures and that fiction gives us roadmaps and chances to explore these possibilities safely), project research, and ways to help at the level where I can effect things.

I help fix things for people so they don’t have to buy new, I help organize and give stuff away at my local swap shop and on the free groups online, I try to help with local land conservation. And I take the small victories where I can get them. If I fix something or find some ewaste electronics for a neighbor and save them spending $60 on Amazon, the world isn’t changed but Amazon didn’t get that money and maybe my neighbor won’t reach for it as their first choice next time. If we conserve a hundred acres of forest it’s not stopping any of the big impending climate disasters, but some habitat is preserved, and perhaps some of the routes animals follow as they roam won’t get as fragmented as they would otherwise. And I imagine better worlds and try to show them to others.

Yeah I started reading up on it more once I got thinking about it. Looks like AC was easier in the past, which is probably why we’re standardized on it for local grids

Am I missing something? Isn’t this why we use AC power over long distances?

Thank you!

Yeah cars will sometimes deliver personal injury right through the front wall of your house.

This is a really cool use of white rot fungus! I hadn’t read about this particular one being used for mycoremediation before but it makes sense - others (like oyster mushrooms) are capable of breaking down all sorts of long-chain polymers. It turns out the toolkits they’ve developed for breaking down stuff like tree lignin are versatile enough for lots of other stuff like dioxins. OSB (made from wood and glue) probably offers an interesting mix of materials for it to work through.

Edit: I added this to the writing community’s worldbuilding wiki page on solarpunk building materials.

Thank you! I am quite pleased with it, especially the colors overall. The original plan would have included a solarpunk adventuring party done in a sort of '60s pulp adventure style, but this was always kinda my fallback. It looks out on a location in the campaign, in the (fictional) dis-incorporating town of Comity, NH and shows sort of the overall status of the place (overgrown).

At the very least I can guarantee it doesn’t include any AI art. I’ve seen other writers get called out in a huge drama storm when it turned out their cover artist had deceptively used some generative image nonsense and TBH that’s mostly put me off relying on other artists (unless I can be really sure of their process). The first one I hired has a portfolio going back over a decade and a really consistent style, and was outspoken against AI. A lot of the new people I looked at had much newer and less consistent galleries and I learned I’m bad at telling whether someone I’m talking to on bsky is a bot or scammer so best to avoid it altogether. Andrew from the dev team reached out to some artists on the story seed library but by that point half our budget was still missing and I was thoroughly burned out on the idea of working with someone else so I just made the thing myself. Maybe we’ll commission another cover someday but right now I’d rather put the remaining art budget towards an editor and kick this thing out the door.

Most of my writing time has been split between editing the TTRPG campaign (or, mostly accepting changes from our editor), drafting the solarpunk gamebook, and adding to the solarpunk worldbuilding resource wiki.

In the campaign, we made it through section 4 and into section 5, which is all about the region where most of the campaign takes place. I think we’re about 60% through final edits. Also I finished the cover for it!

We originally tried to hire an excellent artist to paint a pulp adventure style cover but after several months of uncertainty they finally had to drop out for life-happened reasons. I looked around for another artist, got overwhelmed trying to vet various online artists to make sure they were real people who weren’t using AI, and gave up and made it myself. (Losing half our art budget as a down payment which hasn’t been refunded didn’t exactly make things easier when looking for a new artist.) The final cover is a mix of a photobash and freehand painting which I then painted over in Artrage, because I like their oil paint and pallet knife tools the best.

The gamebook has been interesting, I’ve built out the first main hub area, and am trying to get a sense for the big main branches this area will lead into. I’m essentially trying to write four or five versions of the same story, and need them to all feel like a satisfying mystery story, so we’ll see. It may be a bit too big to take on but I really want it to work.

I’ve added bits and pieces to many of the pages in the wiki, a new page on solarpunk work inspired by a conversation on mastodon, and I’m looking at reworking the page on deconstruction and house shifting to add more information and improve the layout.

Maybe they could make a mode where the electric vehicle UFO noise they make so you can hear them coming gets louder when you accelerate

This is interesting! Reminds me a little of Gemini (the web alternative, not google’s AI nonsense). The 3d environment is interesting

While checking on the status of legislation for my own state I found this website which seems to be tracking progress for all of them: https://pluginsolarguide.com/

Yeah trees are great wherever they’ll fit, and in my region you pretty much have to work not to have land return to forest. But there are a bunch of regions where shade cloths or latticework are the traditional answer to shading streets for climate/biosphere reasons. Plus people get all freaked out about tree roots messing with building foundations and underground infrastructure so not all pedestrianized streets may be suitable depending on what’s below them.

(Apologies if your second paragraph wasn’t about trees)

For sure! In that case I think it’s worth asking what will this parking lot be in fifty or 100 years, especially if we transition away from cars. Is it suitably located to host some kind of park, marketplace, sports field, or other open space, or will adding a bunch of gantries of solar panels entrench it as car infrastructure by also making it part of the energy infrastructure? Many cities need to improve density and affordable housing, and parking lots are generally a good bit of land to repurpose as they’re already negligible as habitat and generally located conveniently. (This is probably less important in exurban areas and around industry).

If we could pick suitable lots and exclude ones that make more sense as housing etc up front, this kind of installation could last a really long time and provide additional benefits. I’m actually interested to see how viable a similar arrangement would be over pedestrianized streets which get a lot of sun exposure, similar to the ones they put over canals or the shade cloths etc already used in many cities.

Takes more infrastructure to set panels up up high over a parking lot full of drivers than in an empty field so that delays the solar transition a bit - you likely want as few new posts/pylons in a parking lot as possible but the whole rig still has to survive some idiot in a F-650 plowing into a post without toppling and crushing a bunch of cars and shoppers. I suspect high winds might be more of an issue but I’m not a civil engineer. Throwing them in a field is a bit quicker.

Maintenance is more of an issue too - the elevation adds some accessibility challenges. Plus, do you close the parking lot whenever people are working up there to minimize the liability/risk someone gets brained by a wrench? Parking lot operators are skittish enough of falling tree limbs that they often remove any trees from the property.

TBH I’m happy with any new solar and it’s certainly an improvement over parking lots as they stand now, plus it puts them close to the places using them which is great. But I also think expedience has a real value at this transition point.

If you’re using a chainsaw make sure you’re wearing chainsaw chaps, a face shield, gloves etc. The chaps especially can save your legs and your life when the saw kicks back (and it will at some point) - especially if you’re out in the sticks and alone.

Same! I always ask them if that’s what they’d do if given the chance and so far the answer is always “well no, (not me) but…” and then it veers towards whatever stereotype they’re leaning on for their understanding of human nature instead of their own experiences with others. (I grew up in a very white, conservative region so it’s usually unexplored or overt racism though they’ll sometimes point to specific poor white neighbors as their example).

It’s such a bleak, alienating mindset dressed up as realism and it’s so external - it’s almost always based on this pervasive flood of rants and examples they got from media. And it acts like work gives us our purpose in life for which we should all be grateful, like a rich guy’s landscaping whims is as close as you’ll get to a higher calling.

I don’t doubt there are a few people who would genuinely do nothing if given the chance, at least for a while - people need time to recover - but most of us have so much we want to do beyond what we’re able to find the time for.

The community chores category is really interesting! Do you remember what kinds of work would fall into that? Or have any in mind?

Thank you! That’s a really good example and I’d be happy to add an entry to the list for this work!

I’d actually meant to include volunteer tour guides, such as in ship museums. I was thinking of WW2-era battleships and submarines I’ve been able to visit at local events but it sounds like you were working on even older vessels? One of the guides told me about their maintenance crews and it really did sound like a cool experience though I live a bit too far away.

I’ll add an entry for both, feel free to send links to any organization you’d like included or I can point it to this comment.

I completely agree! I have much the same sentiment in the section “The work people take on despite the conditions and poor pay”