#solarpunk action

[solarpunkbiologist]

How to Solarpunk-up your workplace in 3 simple steps.

A guide for the hopeful.

🌞🌻🌞🌍🌏🌎🌞🌻🌞🌍🌏🌎🌞🌻🌞🌍🌏🌎🌞🌻🌞

Step 1:

Build your idea, and get creative. What type of people exist in your workplace? What would lift their spirits? What would be useful? For what do you have space? Are there areas of improvement?

💡: Community garden, give and take cabinet, library, space for art, one man's trash is another man's treasure-bin (for single use items turned reusable i.a. lab equipment or other disposable items), figure out how to lessen energy consumption, ask to adjust the cafeteria food into having plant-based options, or completely plant-based, organize events, etc.

Step 2:

Work out the logistics of your plan. Who do you need to ask permission for? Talk to your coworkers, do they agree with your idea? Do your coworkers want to help you, or add onto your idea? How long will this idea take? Make a plan of action. Figure out if you can add your idea into your work schedule or if it's a volunteer project. If there is no space in your company's building, is there a way you can organize something in a public place or at your own residence?

Step 3:

Create! Make flyers or stickers telling your company and coworkers about your fun new project. Make people enthusiastic. Let people know that anyone can make anything possible as long as they set their mind to it.

And remember:

When you want to change the world, you don't ask for permission.

See also: Ways to Solarpunk-up your neighborhood

[graciliswindowsill]

Commemorating 10 days until autumn/fall equinox in a solarpunk way! Taking 2 hours of train and bus to plant lettuce, couve (kale maybe for you in other places), broccoli, radishes and cilantro/coriander in a communal garden that provide vegetables to a solidarity kitchen. The idea is to provide at least 1 full meal to people around the kitchen that need a meal that day and can't afford one.

Don't know if I already talked about this here. But even though is a Sunday and I come back very tired of this work, at the same time it really give energy back to me to keep doing the work that needs to be done now to make things better someway.

Maybe soon more news about these babies in the ground

[reasonsforhope]

Pictured: Luis Cassiano is the founder of Teto Verde Favela, a nonprofit that teaches favela residents in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, how to build their own green roofs as a way to beat the heat. He's photographed at his house, which has a green roof.

Article

"Cassiano is the founder of Teto Verde Favela, a nonprofit that teaches favela residents how to build their own green roofs as a way to beat the heat without overloading electrical grids or spending money on fans and air conditioners. He came across the concept over a decade ago while researching how to make his own home bearable during a particularly scorching summer in Rio.

A method that's been around for thousands of years and that was perfected in Germany in the 1960s and 1970s, green roofs weren't uncommon in more affluent neighborhoods when Cassiano first heard about them. But in Rio's more than 1,000 low-income favelas, their high cost and heavy weight meant they weren't even considered a possibility.

That is, until Cassiano decided to team up with a civil engineer who was looking at green roofs as part of his doctoral thesis to figure out a way to make them both safe and affordable for favela residents. Over the next 10 years, his nonprofit was born and green roofs started popping up around the Parque Arará community, on everything from homes and day care centers, to bus stops and food trucks.

When Gomes da Silva heard the story of Teto Verde Favela, he decided then and there that he wanted his home to be the group's next project, not just to cool his own home, but to spread the word to his neighbors about how green roofs could benefit their community and others like it.

Pictured: Jessica Tapre repairs a green roof in a bus stop in Benfica, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Relief for a heat island

Like many low-income urban communities, Parque Arará is considered a heat island, an area without greenery that is more likely to suffer from extreme heat. A 2015 study from the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro showed a 36-degree difference in land surface temperatures between the city's warmest neighborhoods and nearby vegetated areas. It also found that land surface temperatures in Rio's heat islands had increased by 3 degrees over the previous decade.

That kind of extreme heat can weigh heavily on human health, causing increased rates of dehydration and heat stroke; exacerbating chronic health conditions, like respiratory disorders; impacting brain function; and, ultimately, leading to death.

But with green roofs, less heat is absorbed than with other low-cost roofing materials common in favelas, such as asbestos tiles and corrugated steel sheets, which conduct extreme heat. The sustainable infrastructure also allows for evapotranspiration, a process in which plant roots absorb water and release it as vapor through their leaves, cooling the air in a similar way as sweating does for humans.

The plant-covered roofs can also dampen noise pollution, improve building energy efficiency, prevent flooding by reducing storm water runoff and ease anxiety.

"Just being able to see the greenery is good for mental health," says Marcelo Kozmhinsky, an agronomic engineer in Recife who specializes in sustainable landscaping. "Green roofs have so many positive effects on overall well-being and can be built to so many different specifications. There really are endless possibilities.""

Pictured: Summer heat has been known to melt water tanks during the summer in Rio, which runs from December to March. Pictured is the water tank at Luis Cassiano's house. He covered the tank with bidim, a lightweight material conducive for plantings that will keep things cool.

A lightweight solution

But the several layers required for traditional green roofs — each with its own purpose, like insulation or drainage — can make them quite heavy.

For favelas like Parque Arará, that can be a problem.

"When the elite build, they plan," says Cassiano. "They already consider putting green roofs on new buildings, and old buildings are built to code. But not in the favela. Everything here is low-cost and goes up any way it can."

Without the oversight of engineers or architects, and made with everything from wood scraps and daub, to bricks and cinder blocks, construction in favelas can't necessarily bear the weight of all the layers of a conventional green roof.

That's where the bidim comes in. Lightweight and conducive to plant growth — the roofs are hydroponic, so no soil is needed — it was the perfect material to make green roofs possible in Parque Arará. (Cassiano reiterates that safety comes first with any green roof he helps build. An engineer or architect is always consulted before Teto Verde Favela starts a project.)

And it was cheap. Because of the bidim and the vinyl sheets used as waterproof screening (as opposed to the traditional asphalt blanket), Cassiano's green roofs cost just 5 Brazilian reais, or $1, per square foot. A conventional green roof can cost as much as 53 Brazilian reais, or $11, for the same amount of space.

"It's about making something that has such important health and social benefits possible for everyone," says Ananda Stroke, an environmental engineering student at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro who volunteers with Teto Verde Favela. "Everyone deserves to have access to green roofs, especially people who live in heat islands. They're the ones who need them the most." ...

It hasn't been long since Cassiano and the volunteers helped put the green roof on his house, but he can already feel the difference. It's similar, says Gomes da Silva, to the green roof-covered moto-taxi stand where he sometimes waits for a ride.

"It used to be unbearable when it was really hot out," he says. "But now it's cool enough that I can relax. Now I can breathe again."

-via NPR, January 25, 2025

[homo-house]

hey uh so I haven't seen anyone talking about this here yet, but

the amazon river, like the biggest river in the fucking world, in the middle of the amazon fucking rainforest, is currently going through its worst drought since the records began 121 years ago

picture from Folha PE

there's a lot going on but I haven't seen much international buzz around this like there was when the forest was on fire (maybe because it's harder to shift the narrative to blame brazil exclusively as if the rest of the world didn't have fault in this) so I wanted to bring this to tumblr's attention

I don't know too many details as I live in the other side of the country and we are suffering from the exact opposite (at least three cyclones this year, honestly have stopped counting - it's unusual for us to get hit by even one - floods, landslides, we have a death toll, people are losing everything to the water), but like, I as a brazilian have literally never seen pictures of the river like this before. every single city in the amazonas state is in a state of emergency as of november 1st.

pictures by Adriano Liziero (ig: geopanoramas)

we are used to seeing images of rio negro and solimões, the two main amazon river affluents, in all their grandiose and beauty and seeing these pictures is really fucking chilling. some of our news outlets are saying the solimões has turned to a sand desert... can you imagine this watery sight turning into a desert in the span of a year?

while down south we are seeing amounts of rain and hailstorms the likes of which our infrastructure is simply not built to deal with, up north people who have built everything around the river are at a loss of what to do.

the houses there that are built to float are just on the ground, people who depend on fishing for a living have to walk kilometers to find any fish that are still alive at all, the biodiversity there is at risk, and on an economic level it's hard to grasp how people from the northern states are getting by at all - the main means of transport for ANYTHING in that region is via the river water. this will impact the region for months to come. it doesnt make a lot of sense to build a lot of roads bc it's just better to use the waterway system, everything is built around or floats on the river after all. and like, the water level is so incomprehensibly low the boats are just STUCK. people are having a hard time getting from one place to another - keep in mind the widest parts of the river are over 10 km apart!!

this shit is really serious and i am trying not to think about it because we have a different kind of problem to worry about down south but it's really terrifying when I stop to think about it. you already know the climate crisis is real and the effects are beyond preventable now (we're past global warming, get used to calling it "global boiling"). we'll be switching strategies to damage control from now on and like, this is what it's come to.

I don't like to be alarmist but it's hard not to be alarmed. I'm sorry that I can't end this post with very clear intructions on how people overseas can help, there really isn't much to do except hope the water level rises soon, maybe pray if you believe in something. in that regard we just have to keep pressing for change at a global level; local conditions only would not, COULD NOT be causing this - the amazon river is a CONTINENTAL body of water, it spans across multiple countries. so my advice is spread the word, let your representatives know that you're worried and you want change towards sustainability, degrowth and reduced carbon emissions, support your local NGOs, maybe join a cause, I don't know? I recommend reading on ecological and feminist economics though

however, I know you can help the affected riverine families by donating to organizations dedicated to helping the region. keep in mind a single US dollar, pound or euro is worth over 5x more in our currency so anything you donate at all will certainly help those affected.

FAS - Sustainable Amazon Fundation

Idesam - Sustainable Developent and Preservation Institute of Amazonas

Greenpeace Brasil - I know Greenpeace isn't the best but they're one of the few options I can think of that have a bridge to the international world and they are helping directly

There are a lot of other smaller/local NGOs but I'm not sure how you could donate to them from overseas, I'll leave some of them here anyway:

Projeto Gari

Caritás Brasileira

If you know any other organizations please link them, I'll be sure to reblog though my reach isn't a lot

thank you so much for reading this to the end, don't feel obligated to share but please do if you can! even if you just read up to here it means a lot to me that someone out there knows

also as an afterthought, I wanted to expand on why I think this hasn't made big news yet: because unlike the case of the 2020 forest fires, other countries have to hold themselves accountable when looking at this situation. while in 2020 it was easier to pretend the fires were all our fault and people were talking about taking the amazon away from us like they wouldn't do much worse. global superpowers have no more forests to speak of so I guess they've been eyeing what latin america still has. so like this bit of the post is just to say if you're thinking of saying anything of the sort, maybe think of what your own country has done to contribute to this instead of blaming brazil exclusively and saying the amazon should be protected by force or whatever

[solar-sunnyside-up]

So I've talked about little libraries and pantries to death but this Lil guy popped up in my area recently and it's blown my mind

So I went to the website on the door and it's basically the same thing as free little library where you can pay for a box from them to get it installed OR Build one yourself

[hope-for-the-planet]

"Despite significant uncertainties, electric cars’ market share is on course to exceed 40% by 2030 as they become increasingly affordable in more markets, new IEA report shows."

From something that was very unusual to see on the road not all that long ago, EVs are becoming a very popular alternative to internal combustion cars--enough so that even people who don't care about the environmental benefits are jumping on the EV train.

EVs require less maintenance, are cheaper to operate, and data on high mileage EVs implies that they will last significantly longer than internal combustion vehicles. All these factors make them very appealing as commercial fleet vehicles as well as private cars.

They're also getting significantly cheaper, even without government incentives. Since EV technology is advancing so quickly, used EVs lose their value more quickly than traditional cars and can be a fantastic bargain.

On the environmental side, switching from an internal combustion car to an EV actually becomes more and more environmentally beneficial as we switch more of our power generation to renewables. We're also rapidly learning how to make EV batteries that last longer and can be constructed with less environmentally impactful materials.

[leafmealoooone]

god i love solarpunk. Shout out to solarpunk.

Sometimes it gets criticism for being just an art aesthetic, and i get that, fair enough, but for me thats the whole point.

I can't always picture a future worth fighting for on my own. It would be so much harder to hope for and work towards a better future without the images others have crafted of what that better world might look like. Sometimes what keeps me going is pretty imaginings of a beautiful, flawed, near-utopia that's mostly just vibes and sunshine and plants growing regardless of whether the conditions are well suited to it, and humans who continue and endure and care for their world and community.

[whereserpentswalk]

The current situation with climate change and how liberals talk about it is like if you had early stages of cancer, where it was still very much treatable, and instead of giving you any treatment all the doctors were talking to you about accepting death, and giving you pamphlets for the terminally ill, and explaining to your loved ones how to put everything in order for when you die. And when you said it was treatable everyone would either act like you were in denial, or explained to you how impractical any treatment was (chemo therapy, don't you know radiation is deadly). And when they talked about the future they'd talk about one where you were dead, despite the fact that it's still 100% treatable, and every day you don't get treatment it gets worse. And eventually when you tell them "fuck you I want to live" they act like you've broken some unspoken rule.

[bitstitchbitch]

I had the opportunity to go to Bernie Sanders’ Fighting Oligarchy tour a few weeks ago, and the thing that has stuck with me was the way Sanders points out all the ways that we have improved at a society. Because even given recent backslides, we have so many more rights for so many more people than we did even twenty years ago.

things are awful in this country. And they are getting worse. But we haven’t lost everything yet. And the overall trend across human history, and even across US American history, is gradual, albeit often painstaking, progress.

we can wring our hands about what we should have done in the past, but that won’t change anything. What will create positive changing is refusing to lose hope and refusing to give in. Maybe we should have built grassroot community movements a decade ago, maybe we could have prevented all this pain and suffering, but we can’t control the past, we can only control the present. And it’s better to start building our movements today than to never build them at all.

Keep fighting. And start learning how to organize. There are people and communities out there in the past and in the present who have done and are doing what we need to do. It’s time to join them.

[thrivingisthegoal]

Hey y'all, there's a great Instagram acct called gogreensavegreen that just released three awesome resources for getting involved in collective action!

I'll include the link, they're going to be updating them and helping them grow, and they're AWESOME. Collective action is huge! Individual action is great for getting motivated, connecting with the earth, understanding resources, and growing passion, but these resources will take you further. I love just scrolling through them.

If you care about this and don't really know where to start THIS is for you. If you feel hopeless about our situation THIS is for you. If you find it hard to find like minded people THIS is for you!

Please boost and spread the word about this. We need as many people taking action as possible, and maybe this will help someone out there find their niche, their calling, their hobby, their action!

[deergravity]

Today I finally culminated a project that has been in the works for a LONG time -- seed bombs!

I started a container compost bin on my balcony during the pandemic to generate the dirt/compost. I researched local, native flowers and pollinator favorites and picked a variety so they would have a chance in any lighting and hopefully produce new blossoms from May-July. Then I waited almost 5 years. Last week I ordered some clay.

Today I gathered my seeds, the powdered clay and a scoop of compost (and let me just say, the compost is SLAMMIN' -- the tea is crazyyy dark, iykyk). Mixed the seeds and clay, then pinches of compost to wet it into balls. Probably should have dried some of the compost out bc it was wet AF so idk if I hit the 1:1 ratio I was aiming for but fuck it we ball!

Literally! I made a few with seeds from a friend's wedding too to see what happens. Those I'll toss into tree beds I think bc they are probably not going to be wildflowers.

This is my local mix:

Mountain Phlox

Early Sunflower

Smooth Blue Aster

Spotted Bee Balm

Golden Alexanders

Wild Bergamont

I'll be sure to post an update once I toss a few into empty lots XD

[lunarpunkwonder]

LunarPunk 🌙

Lunarpunk is Solarpunk for the night dwellers. Similar philosophy and movement but with a darker, bioluminescent, celestial aesthetic. With a focus on Community, Sustainability, Reducing Light Pollution, growing Native Flora and creating a livable and thriving home for the night dwelling Fauna (nocturnal animals, insects, and people too), and obviously, don't forget the Punk.

Lunarpunk is a very new and slowly growing subgenre and community, please continue to add new ideas, add to the conversation of sustainability, do research in your own area about the local flora and fauna, what you can do to help reduce light pollution, even if it's just coming from your home, how to be more energy efficient, how to reduce waste, save money on electricity, see if you can switch your lights to LEDs, speak with your neighbors about switching as well.

Any little bit counts.

[graciliswindowsill]

Commemorating 10 days until autumn/fall equinox in a solarpunk way! Taking 2 hours of train and bus to plant lettuce, couve (kale maybe for you in other places), broccoli, radishes and cilantro/coriander in a communal garden that provide vegetables to a solidarity kitchen. The idea is to provide at least 1 full meal to people around the kitchen that need a meal that day and can't afford one.

Don't know if I already talked about this here. But even though is a Sunday and I come back very tired of this work, at the same time it really give energy back to me to keep doing the work that needs to be done now to make things better someway.

Maybe soon more news about these babies in the ground

[reasonsforhope]

No paywall version here.

"Two and a half years ago, when I was asked to help write the most authoritative report on climate change in the United States, I hesitated...

In the end, I said yes, but reluctantly. Frankly, I was sick of admonishing people about how bad things could get. Scientists have raised the alarm over and over again, and still the temperature rises. Extreme events like heat waves, floods and droughts are becoming more severe and frequent, exactly as we predicted they would. We were proved right. It didn’t seem to matter.

Our report, which was released on Tuesday, contains more dire warnings. There are plenty of new reasons for despair. Thanks to recent scientific advances, we can now link climate change to specific extreme weather disasters, and we have a better understanding of how the feedback loops in the climate system can make warming even worse. We can also now more confidently forecast catastrophic outcomes if global emissions continue on their current trajectory.

But to me, the most surprising new finding in the Fifth National Climate Assessment is this: There has been genuine progress, too.

I’m used to mind-boggling numbers, and there are many of them in this report. Human beings have put about 1.6 trillion tons of carbon in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution — more than the weight of every living thing on Earth combined. But as we wrote the report, I learned other, even more mind-boggling numbers. In the last decade, the cost of wind energy has declined by 70 percent and solar has declined 90 percent. Renewables now make up 80 percent of new electricity generation capacity. Our country’s greenhouse gas emissions are falling, even as our G.D.P. and population grow.

In the report, we were tasked with projecting future climate change. We showed what the United States would look like if the world warms by 2 degrees Celsius. It wasn’t a pretty picture: more heat waves, more uncomfortably hot nights, more downpours, more droughts. If greenhouse emissions continue to rise, we could reach that point in the next couple of decades. If they fall a little, maybe we can stave it off until the middle of the century. But our findings also offered a glimmer of hope: If emissions fall dramatically, as the report suggested they could, we may never reach 2 degrees Celsius at all.

For the first time in my career, I felt something strange: optimism.

And that simple realization was enough to convince me that releasing yet another climate report was worthwhile.

Something has changed in the United States, and not just the climate. State, local and tribal governments all around the country have begun to take action. Some politicians now actually campaign on climate change, instead of ignoring or lying about it. Congress passed federal climate legislation — something I’d long regarded as impossible — in 2022 as we turned in the first draft.

[Note: She's talking about the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Act, which despite the names were the two biggest climate packages passed in US history. And their passage in mid 2022 was a big turning point: that's when, for the first time in decades, a lot of scientists started looking at the numbers - esp the ones that would come from the IRA's funding - and said "Wait, holy shit, we have an actual chance."]

And while the report stresses the urgency of limiting warming to prevent terrible risks, it has a new message, too: We can do this. We now know how to make the dramatic emissions cuts we’d need to limit warming, and it’s very possible to do this in a way that’s sustainable, healthy and fair.

The conversation has moved on, and the role of scientists has changed. We’re not just warning of danger anymore. We’re showing the way to safety.

I was wrong about those previous reports: They did matter, after all. While climate scientists were warning the world of disaster, a small army of scientists, engineers, policymakers and others were getting to work. These first responders have helped move us toward our climate goals. Our warnings did their job.

To limit global warming, we need many more people to get on board... We need to reach those who haven’t yet been moved by our warnings. I’m not talking about the fossil fuel industry here; nor do I particularly care about winning over the small but noisy group of committed climate deniers. But I believe we can reach the many people whose eyes glaze over when they hear yet another dire warning or see another report like the one we just published.

The reason is that now, we have a better story to tell. The evidence is clear: Responding to climate change will not only create a better world for our children and grandchildren, but it will also make the world better for us right now.

Eliminating the sources of greenhouse gas emissions will make our air and water cleaner, our economy stronger and our quality of life better. It could save hundreds of thousands or even millions of lives across the country through air quality benefits alone. Using land more wisely can both limit climate change and protect biodiversity. Climate change most strongly affects communities that get a raw deal in our society: people with low incomes, people of color, children and the elderly. And climate action can be an opportunity to redress legacies of racism, neglect and injustice.

I could still tell you scary stories about a future ravaged by climate change, and they’d be true, at least on the trajectory we’re currently on. But it’s also true that we have a once-in-human-history chance not only to prevent the worst effects but also to make the world better right now. It would be a shame to squander this opportunity. So I don’t just want to talk about the problems anymore. I want to talk about the solutions. Consider this your last warning from me."

-via New York Times. Opinion essay by leading climate scientist Kate Marvel. November 18, 2023.

[bumblebeeappletree]

So a while ago I commissioned @thefruitloop-chan to make a Solarpunk poster for anyone to use! And this beautiful piece was made!

This is a blank for people to put text on, and here’s the two text ones that I put over

Anyone can print them and put them up and around town! Especially since it’s Solarpunk Action Week! Thank you again Squid for making this beautiful artwork! Let’s make a better future together!

[gnome-punk]

Artist credit: