I'm unemployed, I don't have a job, and I live with my parents. I don't know how to help, I am willing to do anything.

What would a realistic political strategy for solarpunk actually look like?

I’ve always liked solarpunk, both as an aesthetic and as a broader vision for society: greener and denser cities, gardens and solar integrated into buildings, clean public transportation, restored rivers, abundant renewable energy, and public spaces that are actually pleasant to spend time in—not urban heat-island deathtraps surrounded by freeways and crappy stroads.

The problem is that solarpunk often remains an aesthetic rather than a political vision. It gives us a pretty compelling picture of where we could go to meaningfully address climate change, but it is much less clear about how we get there, especially in the United States.

So, I wanted to throw out a possible political framework and see what other people think.

My basic argument is that a solarpunk strategy would need three main elements:

1. Make carbon pollution cost money, and make carbon-reducing activities financially rewarding.
   
2. Use carbon-tax revenue to build a cleaner, more abundant society.
   
3. Shift almost all growth into dense, walkable cities and towns where low-carbon lifestyles are practical rather than burdensome.

I’m sure there are holes in this, but here is my thinking.

# Start with a carbon tax

To me, the most straightforward starting point is a carbon tax.

Fossil fuels are artificially cheap because many of their actual costs are pushed onto everyone else. The price of gasoline does not include the full costs of climate change, air pollution, wildfire risk, flooding, public-health damage, road deaths, and land-use patterns built around mandatory driving.

Even a relatively small tax per ton of carbon would begin changing those incentives. Fossil fuels would gradually become less attractive, while solar, wind, geothermal, nuclear, batteries, transit, rail, and building electrification would become more competitive.

The tax could increase gradually over time, giving households and businesses time to adjust. Part of the revenue should be returned directly to lower- and middle-income households to ensure the policy is not regressive, via upgrades to local infrastructure and targeted subsidies (e.g., solar panel installations on roofs in low-income communities).

The rest could help pay for the transition itself:

* Solar panels, batteries, and grid upgrades
* High-speed rail, regional rail, and urban transit
* Affordable housing near jobs and transportation
* Building electrification
* Water recycling, conservation, and desalination projects at scale
* Climate adaptation
* Parks, trees, wetlands, and ecological restoration

This seems more durable to me than relying entirely on a scattered collection of temporary subsidies and tax credits that can disappear after the next election.

A carbon tax would do two things at once: create a consistent funding source and gradually make the economics of cleaner alternatives more favorable. Letting market economics do the work of shifting to low or no-carbon lifestyles would make things so much easier - as we're seeing in Pakistan with the extremely rapid uptake of solar and battery installation there.

# Build an enormous amount of clean energy

The next part would be producing far more clean electricity than we do today, up to 2-4 times current power production.

That means solar on rooftops, warehouses, schools, public buildings, canals, and appropriate utility-scale sites. It also means wind, geothermal, hydropower, nuclear (where it makes sense), and a huge amount of storage.

We would also need much more transmission. A larger and better-connected grid would allow regions to share power across time zones and weather conditions. Solar from the Southwest could move east later in the day, while wind, hydro, geothermal, nuclear, and storage could support the system when solar production drops. A more resilient and flexible grid would unlock the potential of renewables

The goal, at least in my mind, should be abundant and almost free electricity. Once clean power is plentiful, electrifying transportation, buildings, industry, and improving water systems becomes much easier.

This is also one place where the aesthetic can become real. Solar does not have to mean panels hidden behind fences in the desert. It can mean shaded sidewalks, transit stations, courtyards, schools, plazas, and public gathering areas.

That said, I’m skeptical that every parking lot should simply be covered with solar canopies. In many high-demand areas, a higher and better use might be to replace the parking lot with housing, shops, trees, public space, and rooftop solar.

# Densification may be the most important part

Clean electricity alone will not create a solarpunk society. Our land-use patterns also have to change.

Most American development is built around low density, mandatory driving, large parking lots, detached housing, highway expansion, and the continued loss of farmland and natural areas.

In much of the country, it is illegal to build anything other than detached houses on large lots. Apartments, townhouses, mixed-use buildings, accessory dwelling units, and small neighborhood businesses are either prohibited or extremely difficult to build.

A solarpunk future would require shifting a much larger share of population growth into dense, walkable cities, towns, and suburban centers.

That does not mean everyone has to live in Manhattan. It could mean apartments over shops, townhouses, courtyard buildings, mid-rise neighborhoods, denser small-town centers, and more housing around rail stations and major bus routes.

Density makes a lower-carbon lifestyle much easier to implement. Transit works better when more people live near it. Stores and restaurants become viable within walking distance. Schools, libraries, parks, clinics, water systems, and public infrastructure can serve more people at a lower per-capita cost.

Electric cars are useful, especially in the near term, but replacing every gasoline car with an electric one still leaves us with congestion, sprawl, parking lots, tire pollution, road deaths, and massive road-maintenance costs.

The longer-term goal should be to reduce the number of trips that require a car.

That requires much more housing in high-demand cities such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, DC, New York, Chicago, Seattle, and Boston. It also requires denser centers in suburbs and smaller cities, especially around transit or around downtown nodes.

Urban growth boundaries should also be used to help preserve farmland, forests, and open space while directing more development into existing communities.

One challenge is how to promote urban living without making the argument sound like the government is trying to force everyone into an apartment. I think one easy solution is to provide subsidized housing or grants for seniors and parents in areas with lots of amenities (schools, community centers, libraries, parks, stores, hospitals, etc). What do you think?

# Make the future visible

The politics of solarpunk becomes much easier when people can see and benefit from its practices rather than an abstract ideology.

A solar-powered school that serves as a cooling center and charging station during an outage is a better argument than another climate report. So is a restored creek, a shaded pedestrian street, a reliable high-speed train between two major cities, a lower electric bill, or a new affordable mixed-use neighborhood next to transit.

Cities and states could start creating these examples now to move in that direction:

* Convert dead malls and parking lots into mixed-use neighborhoods
* Build more housing and public space around transit
* Install solar on buildings, schools, warehouses, and public facilities
* Electrify buses and invest in regional rail
* Build high-speed rail between major regions
* Create protected bike networks and longer-distance trails
* Restore streams, wetlands, forests, and damaged landscapes
* Plant more trees and expand urban parks
* Build pedestrian streets, plazas, and gathering spaces
* Use batteries and microgrids to keep essential services running during disasters
* Massively upzone and empower housing development in dense areas (e.g., SB79 in California, but nationwide)

The goal would be to make the future visible enough that it stops sounding like science fiction and that people believe in it.

Paris is one example I keep returning to. Streets that were once dominated by cars now have bike lanes, trees, public space, and room for people. Obviously, not every city can copy Paris, but it shows that large changes in transportation and public space can happen relatively quickly if people can see and use their benefits.

# Build a coalition around the benefits

A solarpunk coalition would have to be much broader than environmental groups, planners, and hippies.

Renters could benefit from more housing, and homeowners could benefit from lower utility bills. Unions could benefit from jobs in construction, manufacturing, operations, and maintenance.

Transit riders would benefit from better service. Drivers or industries that have to drive (e.g., night-shift workers, fire trucks/ambulances) could benefit from fewer people being forced onto congested roads. Industries/manufacturing could benefit from lower power costs, and businesses would be more viable with more customers living within walking distance.

The transition becomes easier to defend when the benefits are broad, visible, and hard to take away. That could mean using carbon-tax revenue for household solar projects that use union jobs, housing projects, public transportation, public infrastructure investments, and locally owned energy projects. Communities hosting transmission lines or power generation should also receive a meaningful share of the financial benefits, incentivizing additional renewable uptake.

# Make it possible to build things

One major problem is that the United States has made it almost impossible to build anything.

Housing, rail, transmission, solar projects, wind projects, and even bike lanes can become trapped in years of reviews, lawsuits, overlapping agency requirements, and local opposition.

Environmental review should continue protecting ecosystems and vulnerable communities, but it should not take a decade to build apartments on a parking lot, electrify a railroad, or connect renewable power to the grid.

A solarpunk political movement would have to care about implementation. Supporting clean energy, transit, and housing in theory is not enough. We also need public agencies, permitting systems, financing programs, skilled workers, and construction capacity that can actually deliver projects.

Recent transit-oriented housing reforms, such as California’s SB 79, are one example of the kind of structural change that may be necessary.

# My rough political strategy

So, my tentative political framework would be:

* Put a gradually increasing price on carbon, using the funds for clean energy, housing, transit, water systems, climate infrastructure, and enviromental restoration/preservation.
* Legalize far more housing in cities and near transit. Make urban life cheaper, greener, and more attractive. Protect farmland, forests, and natural areas outside those cities as a tradeoff.
* Build visible projects that improve everyday life and give more people a direct stake in the transition, including large pork projects such as a national high-speed rail effort.

The political pitch to voters would be fairly straightforward: lower bills, abundant clean energy, more affordable housing, easier transportation, greener cities, restored ecosystems, greater resilience, and a better quality of life.

Solarpunk gives us the vision and aesthetic, and my argument is that carbon pricing, clean-energy investment, and widespread urban densification could provide a political framework for getting there.

What am I missing? Do you agree?

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What are some politics that you think the green party should consider regarding the life of the elderly, including retirement and nursing homes... Also considering the population control that is usually mentioned in one of the key ways of preserving the environment and ofcourse slowing down the global warming (there would be an older population after lower birth rates)

climate change how can WE make an impact.
If we don’t make one soon WE will ALL be gone rich or poor, good or bad no circumstances.

This article details how scientific studies and models simply cannot keep up with the pace of accelerating climate change - but the scientists, and especially the IPCC, keep basing their advice on this outdated, academic information leading them to understate risks. This has led to potentially genocidal consequences for the poorest and most vulnerable in the firing line of a developing super El Niño - in the absence of any real awareness of the danger, nothing like enough funding has been targetted at these people.

This problem needs urgent resolution because the success of climate action depends on an understanding of the severity of the problem. This piece has been sent direct to IPCC leads and more than 100 scientists. The emails of leading scientists and the IPCC leads are easy to find - the recommended direct action is to contact these people and demand they find ways to get their advice and warnings up-to-date.

10-acre agrivoltaic facility in Central Florida. This plan completely bypasses low-margin wholesale commodities and focuses strictly on high-margin retail capture.

1. The Core Profit Strategy

• The Power: Stop trying to sell cheap wholesale power to the utility. Instead, locate the project adjacent to a high-load commercial facility (like a cold-storage warehouse or manufacturing plant) and sell them the power directly via a behind-the-meter Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) at $0.11/kWh.
• The Crop: Drop biochar. Solar-dry, mill, and bag the Azolla as Premium Branded Organic Nitrogen Fertilizer targeted directly at Florida’s massive commercial nursery and landscaping market for $1,000/ton.
• The Poultry: Bypass bulk poultry processors. Raise high-end heritage ducks on the trenches and sell directly to premium restaurants and boutique distributors at a $15 net profit per bird.

2. The Capital Setup (10-Acre Scale)

3. Annual Earnings & Cash Flow

Gross Revenue: $384,000

• Electricity Sales: $264,000 (2,400,000 kWh × $0.11/kWh commercial retail rate)
• Premium Fertilizer: $60,000 (60 dry tons × $1,000/ton retail bagged)
• Premium Poultry: $60,000 (4,000 ducks rotated annually × $15 net profit)

Operating Expenses (OpEx): -$150,000

• Includes automated system monitoring, localized contract labor for harvesting/bagging, liability insurance, and a maintenance sinking fund.

Net Annual Income: $234,000

4. The Financial Timeline (The ROI)

• Net Investment: $1,610,000
• Net Annual Profit: $234,000
• Payback Period: 6.8 Years

Why This Works

By keeping the layout down to a realistic 1.5 MW on 10 acres, you drastically cut your upfront CapEx. By shifting 100% of your outputs into premium retail channels ($0.11 power, $1,000 fertilizer, $15 ducks), you protect the business from commodity price crashes.

After year 7, the system is fully paid off and clears nearly a quarter-million dollars in pure annual profit for the remaining 15–20 year lifespan of the solar panels.

If I were to fly London to Sydney I'd pollute 240 times more emissions than a train London to Milan.

However, I implicitly pay more carbon prices on the London to Milan trip as the EU's electricity grid has a carbon price. This is absurd, ruins innovation, unjust, and frankly bonkers.

Now, the EU does have a carbon price on aviation within the EU/UK/EFTA but this is also done badly as it doesn't include non-CO2 emissions such as NOx or contrails.

How do we get this to change? How do we challenge the vested interests of the wealthiest who enjoy being about to pollute cost-free?

Given Europe's place as central hub for tourism not including aviation is a way of enabling one sector to not be accountable for its emissions. My region talks about "sustainable tourism" which is just greenwashing as they advertise the region in the US and Asia to boost tourism.

What's more getting this implemented could create meaningful change whether via biochar offsets or alternative fuels.

Carbon pricing is widely regarded as the single most impactful climate mitigation policy

https://citizensclimatelobby.org/get-loud-take-action/price-carbon/

https://citizensclimatelobby.org/join

Since fresh water is becoming a bigger issue, why don’t more countries use water desalination plants around the country to pump more water in. If we have rising sea water we should never have a lack of water.

I've read a lot about azolla, I think many people still have no idea what it is. It's an aquatic fern that grows without nitrogen fertilization, and absorbs nitrogen from the air.

I want to see if we can figure out a way to turn an area of land in a highly biologically productive area into a powerhouse of carbon sequestration by leveraging this. I genuinely believe, after years of studying and being concerned about climate change, that scaling up production of azolla in the southern USA is one of our best options. By synergizing it with solar power, we can create a system that generates an abundance of electricity and biomass.

You shade the azolla ponds with solar panels in certain biologically productive areas that never receive cold winters. Year round you harvest the azolla and also have a few ducks which help the cycle.

The only way to create a climate change solution that's realistically practical, it must have a return on investment. Thankfully, this project would actually be pretty cheap, and could pay for itself by selling electricity, duck eggs/meat, and azolla biochar or animal feed.

There is still much of the Southern USA which is very unproductive land in ideal climate conditions where this would be feasible. Somewhere around Ocala, FL would be one of the best areas.

I’m looking for people in the Utah area that are interested in tracking any approved mining/drilling projects in the newly slashed areas of bears ears and escalante national monuments. I think that since our politicians don’t consider their constituents demands they won’t be surprised when people organize to protect these lands.

Hi everyone,

I am looking for students from Germany, Austria, and Italy to take part in a short academic survey on climate change reporting.

The survey takes about 5 to 7 minutes. It is anonymous and GDPR-compliant.

Participation would really help me reach enough students for this research.

Survey links:

english: Climate Change in the News

italian: Il cambiamento climatico nelle notizie

german: Klimawandel in den Nachrichten

Thank you so much for your support! Comment once done and I will fill out yours as well!

Tree plantation, technological development, population control, meetings and conferences among nations, or something else these may help, but they are not the real solution; at best, they offer temporary relief. What do you think the real solution could be?

Hi everyone,

I’ve just finished a PhD in solar physics (focusing on the Sun as a star, not engineering) in a major UK London university and previously completed an MSc in Astrophysics and a BSc in Physics with Astrophysics in London. While my studies have been in physics and astrophysics, what I’ve developed is a passion for working with information and transforming it into something more useful. Over the years, I’ve built strong coding and problem-solving skills and feel ready to take on new problems that require me to learn new methods.

I love learning new methods and applying them in innovative ways. For example, I taught myself Bayesian inference to apply it in solar physics, where it’s rarely used. In that sense, I see myself more as a methodologist.

Now, I’m deeply concerned about climate change and want to move my career toward making an impact in this fight. I’m looking for a role where I can make skills I have developed to contribute meaningfully. I’ve considered working in an ethical cooperative bank, seeing as many physics graduates end up working in finance (which I absolutely despise and see as one of the core roots of this crisis we're facing, so if I ever were to go into it it'd have to be an ethical bank that only invests in renewable energy, environmental regeneration, etc...), though I’m not sure if that’s the most impactful path. I will be based in Spain, so remote work or roles in Spain/UK (remote only) would be ideal.

So, my question is: Where could my specific skillset (data analysis, coding, ML, and problem-solving) be most valuable in the climate space?