Solarpunk’s envisioning of a future that we’d like to live in isn’t just about providing a vision for us to aim for, it’s also about changing cultural norms in the present so that we can actually get to that future. Solarpunk storytelling is in no small part about normalizing the things we want to support and develop, such as sustainability, wild and productive gardens, social justice, and cohesive, supportive communities. On the flip side, solarpunk strives to make taboo or erase completely the attitudes and entire industries that are anti-human and anti-planet; we’re thinking about racism, homophobia, transphobia, sexism, misogyny, fossil fuels, petrochemical pesticides, overly industrialized agriculture, etc. But, aside from storytelling, how do we change the norms of the cultures that we’re living in at all, much less to be more in line with a solarpunk ethos? Is there a secret sauce that works every time? And if we knew the answer, would we be even having this conversation in the first place? Tune in as we discuss.

In this episode, Brianna Castagnozzi, one of the editors-in-chief of Solarpunk Magazine, is here to give up the solarpunk artist’s eye view on solarpunk art and AI; a very different take than the solarpunk hacker’s view given to us by John Threat in season three episode seven. As much as I (Christina) was convinced by John’s advice not to stick your head in the sand but to master the tools of your capitalist overlords, Bri has equally compelling points about not joining into an activity that exploits the work of artists without their consent and without compensating them.

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This week, Ariel chats with Paul Heersink, cartographer and Program Manager for the Roads and Addresses program at ESRI Canada. Formerly, he was Production Manager of the Community Maps Program: an initiative that is aiming to build a seamless topographic basemap of Canada using contributor data, and the Roads and Addresses program aims to do the same with community-sourced data, building a navigable map of Canada with the most up-to-date information provided by those who know it best.

Paul also personally maintains and updates a map of the sunken battleships (and other naval vessels) that were downed during World War Two. Paul’s map combines two of his interests - cartography and WWII history and, though it started as a passion project outside of work, Paul has been approached by numerous organizations since publishing his data that are very interested in using it to support salvaging and reclamation efforts. The ships have been called “ticking ecological time bombs” as they are carrying crude oil, munitions, and other toxic materials that can leach into the water around them as the hulls degrade. That said, some also contain traditional treasure! Join us for a discussion about the details.

Between September 15 to 24, 2023, you can go be a part of renowned hacktivist, writer/director, and creative futurist John Threat’s Zukunft Garden—a solarpunk future garden—that’s part of Vision2030’s Earth Edition festival at CalArts, in Santa Clarita, near Los Angeles. Join us for this episode, where John talks to Christina about this social art installation, what it means and can signify for participants, and the inspiration behind it. They discuss John's background as a hacker, an activist, a cyberpunk and, most recently, a solarpunk dedicated to thinking outside of the systems of this world.

Stay tuned also for what John has to say about what solarpunk can do with AI art and why we should be engaging with AI technology, rather than ignoring it outright - as John points out, corporations will still be using AI, and it's incumbent on solarpunks to know thy enemy ... or at least, to be able to know enough about new technologies to decide whether or not to use them as tools for community support and envisioning better futures, rather than taking advantage of others.

What is petroturfing? What is an energy imaginary? How can we make sense of which stories are leading us to an understanding of things as they are, rather than misrepresenting reality or persuading us to take a biased view? And what can we do when we learn to critically interpret the world around us? What are some concrete actions we can take as regular folks if we decide that we want to push back against this narrative of “ethical oil” and intervene in the reactionary oil culture war?

Dr Jordan Kinder has spent the last decade of his life thinking about these questions, specifically in the context of the Canadian oil industry and Alberta. The result? His new book Petroturfing: Refining Canadian Oil, which covers these topics and more, forthcoming from University of Minnesota Press in spring 2024. Join Ariel and Jordan to learn about the many competing narratives about (and even by!) Canadian oil and gas—including but not limited to being labelled dirty oil, ethical oil, one of the world’s leading polluters, an underdog industry under attack, a Canadian success story, the ball and chain around Canada’s neck as it tries to avert climate catastrophe, and the list goes on…

Birdwatchers. They’re both easy to envy (They know so much!) and laugh at (What nerds!). Yet birdwatching is one of the easiest and cheapest ways to connect with nature. Yes, as we discuss with Cin-Ty Lee, professor of geology at Rice University in Texas and author of the Field Guide to North American Flycatchers: Empidonax and Pewees, you could go buy all the books and gear and then book trips all over the world to start checking off boxes on your life list. Or you could just sit and watch out the window at whatever birds are out there where you live. All birds are interesting!

And, as Christina and Prof. Lee discuss in this episode, watching them is habit-forming in a way that makes people of all political stripes want to start protecting their habitats. This doesn’t need to mean lying down in front of tractors. Instead, it could mean working to improve small patches of nature within cities and in your own backyard to make them better for birds and the plants and insects the birds need to thrive. Before you know it, you’ll be heading up neighborhood or citywide initiatives to better the spaces around you for the sake of the birds.

Why is it easier to imagine a zombie apocalypse than it is a generative, sustainable future? This question drives Joey Ayoub, host of The Fire These Times: in fact, this season of his pod is partially about solarpunk and generative futures. Tune in today to listen to Ariel and Joey discussing imaginative expansion of solarpunk, the “realist” impulse, climate anxiety and grief, and community building in a crisis. Also The Office. Trust us, it’s an important part of this whole conversation.

In this episode, Ariel speaks with Joey Ayoub, host of The Fire These Times podcast and someone who’s been focusing his podcasting and thinking on solarpunk quite a bit in the last while. Joey is a Lebanese writer, researcher, scholar, editor and podcaster currently based in Switzerland since 2020. He is a research associate at the Center for Social Sciences Research and Action and a member of Sustainability Transitions Research Network (STRN), and Degrowth Switzerland, to name just a few organizations he is involved with, and he has been published in more places than I can list here. Join us for this thought-provoking and entertaining conversation.

Conquering climate change for our survival and that of much of the rest of the biosphere calls for more than attaining net zero emissions of greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere. We also need to actively remove much of the 140 extra parts per million of carbon dioxide currently up there in the atmosphere thanks to our burning of fossil fuels and destruction of so much of Earth’s biosphere. Both attaining net zero and going beyond it will take carbon capture and storage. This means capturing carbon dioxide from power plants and other point sources and from our agricultural activities before it gets into the atmosphere, as well as capturing carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere. Then, we need to store that carbon somewhere safely away from the atmosphere for at least a few thousand years.

Join us for this episode of Solarpunk Presents, in which Christina talks to Dr. Mike Bickle, professor emeritus at the Earth Sciences Department at the University of Cambridge. We’ll be discussing what methods for carbon capture and storage are the most promising (and the most likely for us to engage in), what some of the dangers are, what it would take to deploy carbon capture and storage at the scale required, and how long it might take us to bring an end to the global warming we’ve created.

Ariel and Christina open Season 3 with a chat about what solarpunk, or, at least this solarpunk podcast, is setting out to achieve… according to how Ariel sees it. With her occasionally curmudgeonly devil’s advocacy, Christina provides the nuance we need as we push through topics, including the definition of solarpunk in a time of slippery postmodern language (that, in true solarpunk fashion, changes according to cultural context and locale), the Anthropocene and its multiple issues, mix-tape metaphors, Ursula K LeGuin’s Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, aesthetics (of course), infrastructure as resistance, and a liiiiittle bit of academic theory.

Join us!