Phoebe Wagner

But Solarpunk has this sort of DIY aspect to it where we think about, OK, how can we take this technology and give it to the people?

And so it helps folks imagine what does it look like to be living with sustainable technology?

How might that be implemented into my community, into my everyday life, into a disaster scenario, a climate disaster scenario?

What does that actually look like?

So solar punk at its heart as part of that sort of punk ethos is anti-capitalist, right?

So you'll oftentimes see depictions that are sort of pushing back against our current economic system, whether that's communities that are on bartering systems, communities that run entirely on mutual aid, or sometimes friction between communities, right?

This isn't meant to be a utopian style of storytelling.

There are still problems here.

So how do two characters or two communities that have different economic systems come together and solve problems?

Oh yeah, I was just talking with my students about Solarpunk and they were asking me about different animes.

So yeah, we've certainly seen this already come up.

Studio Ghibli I think has a great example with some of Miyazaki's work as sort of proto-Solarpunk things that people are feeling inspired by.

And then, yeah, certainly it's coming up in other animes as well and other animation generally.

There's a Chobani yogurt ad that is available on YouTube called Dear Alice that is, I think, a great example of Solar Punk, short of the fact that it's a Chobani yogurt ad, which I think is fascinating as well.

But in terms of other places we're seeing it show up, you know, I see it a lot on social media.

I see it on TikTok.

There's some really great video essays on YouTube that are coming out.

I particularly like Andrewism's video essays on Solarpunk.

So we're really seeing it spread to different mediums, not just sort of short story anthologies where it initially started after being popular on social media.

Yeah, absolutely.