Solarpunk and eco-dreaming - BlogFlock

The Collier Problem: Toward a Definition and Application - NO TECH MAGAZINE

2025-04-15T17:26:42.000Z

A Collier problem occurs whenever a new technology requires the technology it nominally replaces to function due to efficiency limits. Steam ships replaced sailing ships, but without windjammers the steamships could not function. This led to worldwide exports, paradoxically with large sailing vessels often transporting the coal needed by steamships, as they were more economical to operate on long oceanic sea routes.

Read more: Woods, Steven. “The Collier Problem: Toward a Definition and Application.” Image: Unloading coal from a collier on East Beach in the town of Cromer. Norfolk, England. Image taken on 8 March 1912. Public Domain.

SO[L.A.]RPUNK - Solarpunk Magazine

2025-04-14T16:04:10.000Z

On the latest of Demand Utopia: A Solarpunk Podcast, host Justine Norton-Kertson reads a piece they read at a solarpunk reading event in March hosted by Accelerate L.A. The piece imagines what Los Angeles might be like a solarpunk future.

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TRANSCRIPT

Solarpunk Los Angeles
by Justine Norton-Kertson

The air is crisp, carrying the scent of orange blossoms and wild sage. The hum of traffic is gone, replaced by the soft whir of wind turbines and the laughter of people moving freely through shaded streets. Sunlight reflects off windows coated in solar film, harvesting energy for the neighborhood. Above, a canopy of flowering vines climbs the walls of skyscrapers, cooling the city with leaves that shimmer like green fire in the golden hour.

Los Angeles has transformed. Not through the will of corporations, not through the empty promises of politicians, but through the hands of its people.

The LA River flows again, its banks lined with food forests and solar-lit walkways. Once a sterile concrete trench, it is now the city’s heartbeat, guiding the water, the people, and the future. Bridges, once clogged with smog and steel, are alive with foot traffic, solar rail cars, and murals that tell the story of reclamation. Coyotes and bobcats weave through green corridors that connect park to park, mountain to sea, wild to wild. Monarch butterflies dance over rooftops where gardens overflow with tomatoes, avocados, and spirals of bean vines climbing toward the sun.

The freeways? They no longer belong to cars. Where exhaust once choked the skyline, rolling gardens and bike highways now stretch across the city, shaded by solar canopies that power the homes beneath them. The forgotten corners—empty parking lots, abandoned malls, neglected lots—have been reborn as gathering spaces, community hubs, libraries, and maker spaces where anyone can learn, create, and thrive.

Hollywood, once the playground of the elite, has become something new. A storytelling commons, where the tools of creation are shared, and the stories of the people rise above the static. Open-source VR, holographic theaters, and solar-powered amphitheaters give every voice a stage.

And at night, the city glows—not from neon, but from fiber-optic trees, algae-powered lanterns, and reflective surfaces catching the moonlight. People gather in open courtyards, where the air is filled with music and ideas, and the heat of the day fades into cool breezes from the Pacific.

This Los Angeles—our Los Angeles—is abundant because we’ve reclaimed it. This is a city built for us. Not for the billionaires, not for the landlords, not for the corporations that once drained it dry. This is a city where no one is priced out, no one is disposable, and no one is left behind. Where land is held in trust, energy is shared, and water is sacred.

But make no mistake—this future did not arrive easily. We built it from the ashes of the old. It was fought for. Brick by brick, law by law, vision by vision. It was made by organizers, by artists, by scientists, by dreamers, by those who refused to let the old world choke the new one before it could bloom. We reached down into pavement cracks, planted seeds in abandoned lots, defied those who told us nothing could change. We remembered the truth that cities belong to people—not corporations, not developers, not politicians who barter our dreams away piece by piece.

This is Solarpunk Los Angeles. Not a fantasy, but a blueprint. Not a distant dream, but a revolution already growing in the cracks of the pavement, already taking root in the minds of those who dare to believe in something better.

Tonight is a new beginning.

When you leave here, carry this vision home. Nurture it. Water it with conversations, actions, demands. Tell this story, again and again, until Los Angeles becomes the city we dreamed together tonight.

The future begins in the stories we tell.
The stories we live.
The stories we refuse to surrender.

So, Los Angeles, as you step into the night, let this vision burn bright in your heart:

A city reclaimed.
A city alive.
A city made possible, by you.

This is Solarpunk.
This is our future.

Let’s go build it—together.

How to Prepare (Not Prep) for Uncertain Times… and Build a Better World in the Process - Susan Kaye Quinn

2025-04-09T21:43:58.000Z

The world is absolutely crazy right now, and yes, it’s Trump’s fault:

There’s a lot of very understandable free-floating stress (punctuated by moments of terror and glorious protests), but the response I’m seeing is often a reflexive turn toward rugged individualism—Quick! I need to learn how to grow my own food!—a pulling away from community rather than leaning into it.

Not only is that more of a panic response than a logical well-thought-out plan for food security, it’s also a missed opportunity to lay the foundations of a better world.

I can hear you thinking, “Sue, what the actual fuck? I can barely get through the day. I’m trying to survive, here — I don’t have spoons to do extra work to build a better world!”

And this is where you’re in luck! Because building a better world means better, not “extra work that doesn’t actually help me.”

So many endless narratives in our society are built around getting us to engage in “extra work” that only marginally helps you and actively destroys the community bonds and human infrastructure that could actually make your life better.

Share on Bluesky and Mastodon

About That Garden

Go ahead and build a garden! But also: if you buy a farm share, especially from local organic regenerative farmers, you’re doing more than making sure you know your farmer by name (which could come in handy if there’s a real problem with food). You’re doing a bunch of different things at once to build a better world: keeping your money in the local economy, supporting someone who’s literally rebuilding the soil we all depend upon for life, anchoring a small business that literally feeds the community, and creating food resilience for you, your farmer, and your community. Corporate ag does not give a single solitary fuck about you—even if you ignore all the environmental harms they do, they have proven they will jack up prices in a crisis and keep them high, regardless of whether costs are actually higher.

My farmer, Art, hasn’t raised prices in three years—because he knows his customers by name and he wants to keep them. He might be forced to do so in the future, but you know what Art’s pretty much guaranteed never to do? Profiteer off the people buying his farm share.

SIDEBAR: FARM SHARE for those who don’t know what farm share is, it is not the same as a Farmer’s Market (although the same farmers may participate in both). Farm share is like buying a share of the harvest, usually ahead of time, basically “investing” in the farm for the season. It helps the farmer to know he’ll have a certain number of people buying his harvest. Whether the harvest is plentiful or slim, you get a portion. It helps stabilize their risk. Not every farm share practices organic, regenerative agriculture so look for that. A hidden benefit that you don’t realize until you start getting farm share produce is that it’s literally farm-to-table which means it tastes better and it lasts way longer — my farm share produce easily lasts twice as long as grocery store produce because it hasn’t been transported all over the country, burning carbon and aging along the way. All farm shares operate differently, some require prepay but not all, so check out the options you have: Find a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture)/ Farm Share near you

My farmer, Art, on the off-season, talking to kids in environmental science classes. Go Art!

SIDEBAR: FOOD BANK I’ve been doing farm share for years precisely because it works to build a more resilient community, and it’s been exciting to see Art’s family-run business grow. Every week during farm season (about 6 months of the year), I pick up my farm share and take some fraction directly to the food pantry. I recently told Art this, and he was very pleased, saying most people wait until the produce has aged before taking the excess to the food pantry, and this was better. I agree! This year, I signed up for a double share just so I’d have extra to take to the food bank (because I knew this summer would have even more hungry people and that was before Trump cut funds to food pantries, screwing both farmers and food pantries). I realize not everyone can do this, but if you can, it’s a great way to level out food access. I strongly believe access to nutritious food is a human right.

Community Gardens

Not everyone has access to farm shares (or can afford them, although check for low-income options—I have a friend who bartered a share for other services), and community gardens are a fantastic option. There are likely many community gardens in your area, even if you live in an urban area, so don’t assume! If not, you can effectively start your own community garden with your neighbors by just coordinating what you plant in your backyards. Or volunteer to harvest food they’re already growing! I have a couple friends with neighbors who have fruit trees that they can’t keep up with, and so they (individually or in groups) coordinate to harvest the fruit, sharing it with the owner and themselves and the food bank. This brings me joy just knowing this happens in the world!

Look for other local food systems: local dairies, local bakeries, food co-ops in particular, which you can find in the farm share directory and which often will have bulk foods so you can cut down on plastic usage.

These things all build a better world: a system where we can feed ourselves without depending on corporations, one that uses less pesticides and other harmful farming practices, one that often literally builds community by coming together to grow and share food (and distribute it widely so everyone has access). You’ll understand your community food resources much better and likely discover a whole network of food systems outside of traditional agriculture that will be more resilient in hard times because the resources are all in the hands of people who actually care about their neighbors and not a soulless corporation.

Look around, see what’s already happening in your community: generally a really good first option before assuming you have to do everything yourself or start something new. This is especially true for food systems. But it’s also a lot less work than learning how to grow tomatoes! (But feel free to do that as well.) The impracticality of feeding yourself quickly becomes apparent: we’re more powerful when we work together, it’s just that that’s been hijacked by a corporate capitalist system that’s busy eating its own tail right now.

If you want resilience in the face of uncertainty, building a stronger local food community is 10/10 a great move.

CAVEATS: I might still plant some garden veggies. I really like having my herb pots, so that will happen for sure. And growing things connects you to the soil, to living things, to cycles of nature. There are so many great things about growing stuff, please do not take any of this as saying “don’t grow a garden!” But if you’re considering it as a panic response to insecurity, there are many other places to put that energy, which actually extends way beyond food.

So let’s talk about the Buyerarchy of Needs.

Changing the Way You Buy Things

Reducing the amount you buy on Amazon and shopping more local (especially with food) is an outstanding start, but this brilliant graphic (created by Sarah Lazarovic, environmentalist, writer and artist), the Buyerarchy of Needs opens up the possibilities much further… straight into a solarpunk future, at least when I look at it:

See on Lazarovic’s Instagram, with links to much more of her work

The Buyerarchy of Needs works really well on its own, which is why I wanted to share the original graphic first, without my commentary. It immediately evokes the idea that there’s a mountain of other possibilities that could satisfy our material needs—and even making us question what those needs really are—that it’s probably the inverse of how we are doing things right now. When I first saw this, my brain lit up like crazy because it encapsulated something I’d been working for years to articulate in my own mind and on social media and in my solarpunk stories… that if we were truly going to get to a just and sustainable world, if we really wanted to decarbonize everything, then we would have to radically change what we thought was “acceptable” in meeting the real and material needs people have for things like clothing, household goods, and more. A rejection of consumerism, of hoarding and acquiring, of simply accumulating things and more things, was a start but not anywhere near enough: we need to stop making new things. We need to repair the stuff we already have.

The Buyerarchy of Needs paints a picture of what that looks like.

So I added my interpretation of what each layer of the buyerarchy represents:

Share on Mastodon and Bluesky

Before I dive into all those lists, this gets at the heart of it:

The reason the Buyerarchy of Needs is radical is because it says “there are alternatives to buying cheap shit from Target to get your needs met”—not all of your needs, sure, but way more than you think. And there’s really nothing cheaper than free, which is what most of the pyramid is.

A complaint I hear a lot about sustainable goods—things that are manufactured with less pollution or fair-labor practices—is that people can’t afford it. That’s only for “the rich.” So first (as I emphasize in my post about solar), the cost of something is only partially reflected in the money you pay—you also pay in pollution in your lungs and in your water and in your soil and in a destabilized climate and all the destruction that brings. But second, if you shift the way you consume, you will actually spend a whole lot less on new things because you’re simply buying fewer new things—you’re borrowing and thrifting, you’re swapping and repairing, so when you do buy something new… you can afford to spend more on something that’s not also dumping toxins in the water and using slave labor. And all that is before the tariff insanity not only jacks the prices up and all around like crazy, it will simply make some goods unavailable at any price because it has shut down countless small businesses.

But you, with the Buyerarchy of Needs as your guide, are insulated from some of the insanity because you’ve…

Ok, not really, but I couldn’t resist.

But as you implement these other ways of buying—as you increasingly opt out of the capitalist insanity, support local businesses, keep the money in your community, and reduce the amount of extraction and pollution required to get your needs met—you are building a better world.

Just like the library, you’re prefiguring a solarpunk future today.

And the more people use these alternative systems, the better they’ll get, the easier they’ll be able to use, etc. But even right away, they make you more resilient. Maybe not untariffable but it’s a strategy for surviving the madness.

Buyerarchy of Needs: Sue’s Expansion Pack

USE WHAT YOU HAVE: repair, reuse, upcycle
BORROW: BuyNothing, friends, neighbors
SWAP: clothing swaps, seed/tool libraries
THRIFT: BuyNothing, craigslist, thrift stores, free stores
MAKE: craft, garden, create
BUY: local, non-corp, co-op, farm share

I’ll expand a little on each of these.

USE WHAT YOU HAVE: this seems obvious but it’s pretty revolutionary, once you start here first with “do I literally have something already that will do the job?” A trivial example: I have these hair ties I bought a long time ago, a pack of like 30, and I rarely use them. They sit in my drawer. I recently was folding zines and needed something to secure several stacks of 25. My immediate thought was: rubber bands! But I don’t have any rubber bands. I mean, I have 3 that I’ve saved from the asparagus, but I quickly ran out. I didn’t want buy rubber bands, especially for such short term usage. Then I realized: hey, the hair ties are perfect! Done. Prior Sue would have probably picked up a bag of rubber bands the next time she was at the Target (which I avoid now, whenever possible). Today Sue is very pleased with her hair-banded solarpunk zines. It’s a small thing, but it’s the shift in mindset that’s important. And it’s not even “frugality” which for some people has negative connotations: it was literally just easier and better to use something I already had.

Repair: repair also seems obvious but can be revolutionary, especially when you start buying things with an eye toward repairability. I recently bought a Framework laptop specifically because it is modular and repairable — I’m not only getting a laptop that will allow me to replace/repair the keyboard (which is always the first thing to go), I’m supporting a company that’s trying to reduce e-waste by building repairability into their product. The internet is a treasure trove of repair videos. You might not have the skills, but someone out there does: repair doesn’t have to mean you. Maybe you hire someone to do the repairs. Maybe you acquire new skills. Maybe you vow to buy from people who build more sturdy stuff in the future. Maybe you buy someone else’s broken thing and fix it up. Repair kiosks and Repair Cafes are becoming a thing. I’ve started a pile of mending. Visible mending is becoming cool. You’ll see the repair revolution everywhere once you start to look.
Reuse/upcycle: reuse is pretty obvious, but it also can mean investing in things that will stand up to reuse better. Or repurposing things. Or supporting the artists/craftspeople who are using their skills to reuse and upcycle all kinds of goods. One of my favorite places to shop now is craft fairs because there is so much creativity out there, and I want to support that! I adored Not a Pot — a young woman who took all kinds of thrift store finds (like ceramic dishes or teapots) and drilled holes in the bottom to make them into planters. Creative, keeping stuff out of landfills, and supports a young person trying to build a better world.

BORROW: one of the casualties of a disconnected world is we’re less likely to go borrow an egg from our neighbors. We can start to normalize that again by being the first to reach out (you may need to return it in the form of baked goods!). But we can also use the technology we have to re-imagine borrowing and sharing. I’m a regular user of my local BuyNothing group (yes, it’s on Facebook but it also has an app — I’m off FB now, but I do keep using it specifically for the BuyNothing group; we cannot let the perfect be the enemy of the good). If you’re not familiar, BuyNothing (or Gifting With Integrity — search for both in your area, there’s usually only one) is an online free exchange market. See more below in “SWAP” but one of my first encounters on BuyNothing was actually a borrow — someone needed a pop-up shade canopy for an event and needed to borrow one for the weekend. I had one that had been around since the early days of the pandemic. It was great to have it get some use! I see borrow requests get fulfilled all the time in the group, which serves a local geographic area, so you get a chance to meet your neighbors and you’re minimizing the carbon cost of transport. Win all around!

SWAP: I haven’t used this category as much as I should, and I want to explore more! But I absolutely love the idea of clothing swaps and seed swaps, which are specific events, as well as any kind of library economy, like tool libraries, either at the literal library or set up in someone’s front yard. One of my absolute favorite concepts is the craft-reuse idea, embodied by my local Creative Reuse shop, which takes in craft donations and resells them cheaper than new, which funds the operation and employs folks as well. These kinds of things fly way under the radar—just today I had someone on Mastodon tell me they didn’t think there were any CSA/farm shares in Britain! (Spoiler alert: there are many)

This is the biggest hurdle: we think something doesn’t exist because we haven’t seen it. When the truth is there are all kinds of alternate systems to the one you hate already in existence, often right in your backyard. We’ve been trained by capitalism to think there is only one way of getting our material needs met—by the latest shiny thing that corporations have manufactured while polluting the earth and spending a ton of money on targeted advertising to sell to you. But I guaranteed you, friends, it’s not as cool as the gloves I found at the craft fair that I love so much, I got some for my daughter (this is a BUY category item: local, non-corporate, and kind of falls in the MAKE category as well because it’s hand-crafted):

You can get these by request from Clotho & Frigg (I love their pocket familiars as well!)

THRIFT: I’ve watched with excitement as thrifting has become more normalized, especially as people search for more ethical clothing choices and a way to opt out of fast fashion. I’ve also personally worked toward finding more ethical clothing manufacturers, especially when I’m buying gifts for the kids (although I’ve gotten them thrifted stuff too, including a recent foray into using ThredUp, the online thrift shop that works great for me because plus sizes are hard to find in regular thrift stores). But BuyNothing is really a form of thrifting, as is any free store, the normal thrifting stores in your local area, and anyplace where you’re buying/acquiring used goods: this is key. The world is awash in goods that have already been manufactured, their carbon costs are already spent, but they’re simply in the wrong place—one person no longer has use for them but another would find it exactly what they need. I’ve thought a lot about distribution systems, how we actually move goods, not just the first time, but all the times after that. Imagine a circular economy where goods get used as many times as possible, until their functionality is spent, and then they get either recycled or upcycled. Only as a last resort would we bury something in the ground (and please, never ever burn it—we have enough crap in the air that we’re breathing into our lungs and it’s killing us). Craigslist, Ebay, Facebook Marketplace, BuyNothing, thrift stores (online and off), free stores, clothing swaps can also be seen in this category: all of these are ways to match people with stuff to people who need stuff. And the more we use these systems, the more we encourage them to improve, get more efficient with transport, easier to use, etc.

Start by thinking of the lifecycle of a thing: how much goes into manufacturing it and then the hurdles to getting the most usage out of that carbon burnt to produce it. Even just picturing that lifecycle can help change your mindset: you might be less inclined to buy something new, more inclined to look for alternatives, more likely to clean out the basement and get goods flowing back into the system, where it can be put to use. This isn’t easy, it takes time, and I get that there are limits on all of it.

And yet, this is the beginning of change. And change happens more easily when our old ways are disrupted. Use the disruption of this time as an opportunity to change your habits of consumption.

MAKE: this is by far my most favorite category. I’m a creative person and an engineer, I love to make things, even if most of those things are made with words, I have a deep appreciation for any human-made art. Solarpunk culture is conjoined with DIY culture and maker spaces and arts and crafts of all kinds. How much better is a homemade gift? My friend Jen made this resistance hat for me and it is already one of my treasured things (she shared the pattern if you want to make your own):

I shop at craft fairs and art fairs more often than malls (I never go to the mall tbh). Crafting hobbies can be a whole expensive thing of their own which just means it’s another opportunity to find ways to reuse materials and supplies, ways to network with your local crafters (building community!), ways to have your creations embody the Buyerarchy of Needs and circular economy ideas as well (look for a creative reuse shop near you). Creating is one of those many-benefits things: it’s fundamentally a life-giving act to create, so it benefits the person doing the making; it benefits the person on the receiving end (if it’s a gift) because there’s not a better way to say you care than with the gift of your time; if you’re purchasing someone else’s arts/crafts/hand-made items, you’re likely supporting a small local business, keeping money in your economy and helping build a world where someone can make a living with their art. I’ve long said you have to support the art you want to see in the world (with your dollars), but when you expand that to include crafters making all kinds of items that you might otherwise buy a cheaply manufactured version from Target, you’re starting to see the power of changing your mindset.

And while hand-crafted things may well cost more than their cheap corporate cousins, when you’re saving money by thrifting or swapping or borrowing, you can start to afford to invest in quality items, things that support artisans and local stores.

BUY: I have a whole hierarchy-within-the-hierarchy when it comes to buying things. Because you will have to buy new things (although Trump seems determined to crash the economy by making every new thing more expensive, so much so that even used things like cars are already rising in price). Buying new is another opportunity to find alternatives to the corporate asshattery that is destroying the world.

BUYING HIERARCHY:

Can I buy it from a craft/art fair? Technically “new” but borderline with the MAKE category.
Can I buy it from a local store? This reduces transport costs. For food, it’s the farm share.
Can I buy it from a non-corporate store? My favorite bakeries and food stores are co-ops (find co-ops here). My favorite coffee shop has only two stores. You likely pass small businesses all the time on the way to the Target (I keep picking on Target because they scrubbed their “DEI” so fuck them) Buying online from non-corporate stores also works, but I try to avoid shipping when possible because of carbon costs. Non-corporate stores are also less likely to jerk you around with pricing. While egg prices were soaring at every corporate grocery store, my food co-op could keep prices low because they had relationships with local suppliers.
Can I get it sustainable/fair-trade? There’s no question that sustainably-made goods will cost more. They’re building in the cost that normally gets externalized into pollution that we later breathe into our lungs. But buying sustainable/fair-trade doesn’t just feel good, these companies are often the trailblazers that are creating new manufacturing processes or distribution systems, or even whole economic systems for the people doing the labor. That extra cost is literally helping to fund a sustainable future by growing the industries that lead the way.
Can I buy it direct? If I can’t find what I need anywhere else but Amazon… I will still try to buy it elsewhere. I’ll use Amazon as a (shitty) search engine, see who the manufacturer is, then see if they have an online store. My most recent score on this was a riser for my book display table for in-person events where I will be selling my books. Not something that’s easy to find used (although a good example of something that rarely gets used and I should make sure gets cycled back out into the world when I’m done with it). I found what I needed on Amazon, but the manufacturer also had it on their website store, plus the selection there was much better! Now, the website was clunky, but the cost was 30% less (including shipping), so I actually saved money not buying it on Amazon. And I would never have known if I hadn’t gone looking.
Sometimes convenience trumps everything and you buy from the corporate overlords. Do not beat yourself up about this. If you try even half the things in this post you are radically undermining the system that wants you to mindlessly buy buy buy whatever they’re rolling out next and never question whether it makes your life worse or not.

None of this is about personal austerity or personal morality: it is entirely about disrupting a system that’s killing us. Which is why there are no absolutes. I still buy from Amazon (sometimes). I still send stuff to the landfill (if I must). I buy cheap plastic shit from China (if I absolutely can’t avoid it). This isn’t about perfection, this is about change.

If you start to engage with this idea and try some of these things out, I think you’ll quickly find there are huge benefits to engaging in marketplaces that aren’t soulless corporations out to destroy you and everything you love. That building communities builds resilience. That thrifting and swapping is fun but also makes you less vulnerable to the whims of some demented billionaire who’s decided overnight to tariff everything, including flightless birds.

I started out talking about gardens—how our reflex in this capitalistic hellscape and time of uncertainty is to turn to “self sufficiency” or some fantasy of being independent of the chaos in the world. This is understandable but the exact opposite of what we need to do: which is to lean into community building, understanding where food and other goods come from, seek out and find the circular economy already humming along in our backyard, and build resilience together.

You won’t solve the world’s problems by changing your mindset about consumption.

But you can use the chaos as an opportunity to build something better, right where you are.

SOLAR: How to Get Started and Why You Should - Susan Kaye Quinn

2025-04-04T19:57:53.000Z

I put solar on my roof three years ago, and since then, I’ve helped plenty of solar-curious friends figure out the options—there are plenty (and you don’t need a PhD in Environmental Engineering to figure them out).

Solar on Sue’s roof

GET SOLAR TO SAVE THE PLANET

People immediately want to know if solar will save them money, or how long it will take to pay itself back, and I will definitely get to that (and how Trump is going after tax credits), but I need you to understand: nothing in our world prices in the cost of destroying the ecosphere we depend upon for life. There are massive changes that need to be made at every level of our culture—what we eat, how we shop, how things are made, how energy is harvested. Our entire global system is massively unsustainable.

That which is unsustainable will not sustain.

We’re seeing the breakdown already.

We’ll get to the details on solar costs, and I do realize that money-costs are important, but I really hope you’ll consider that the “cost” of how we heat/cool our homes and power our lives is only partially paid by dollars we send to the electric company and mostly paid by pollution we breathe into our lungs and the climate disasters that can strike any one of us at any time.

Just being real about what’s at stake here.

GET SOLAR TO LITERALLY TAKE POWER FROM THE UTILITY COMPANY

Aka, Part 2: Sue the Radical. I cannot overemphasize how radical it is to have a power generator on your roof that harvests free clean energy whenever the sun shines. Most people have no idea how much the power companies do not want you to have solar and any indications otherwise are entirely the laws (passed by Democrats) that have forced them to accept distributed power generation as a fact they have to work around. Which they do—they take that money you send them every month and use it for climate disinformation campaigns (you should absolutely contact your state reps and tell them to pass legislation to stop that). Having solar means directly defunding fossil fuel propaganda. It’s a fantastic bonus.

(I won’t be telling you the goal is to go off-grid because the goal should be to have a community system of green energy that’s resilient for everyone, and the grid plays a key part of that. I will tell you the utility company does not need to be in charge of that. Microgrids are a huge climate solution but we will have to fight a lot to get there and everyone who gets solar moves us one step closer.)

GET SOLAR FOR CLIMATE RESILIENCE

If you can afford a home battery, I highly recommend it, but even without a home battery, having solar gives you power whenever the sun shines. This gets knocks as a disadvantage of solar, but there is no other energy source that automatically replenishes the next day when the sun rises. Grids go out, especially in climate disasters. Gas stations run out of gas, especially in climate disasters. The time when you need power the most is when the highly tenuous system of digging fossil fuels out of the ground, refining them, and transporting them long distances will fail. Your gas backup generator runs as long as you have gas. The solar on your roof runs as long as the sun still rises in the morning. It’s intrinsically more reliable.

Having a backup home battery covers mostly short outages—which are mostly inconveniences, unless you have some critical home medical equipment or it happens to be really fucking cold or really fucking hot, which will definitely happen more often in the years ahead. Even a gas furnace needs electricity to run, but AC will increasingly be not optional for many people. The world is just getting hotter, remember?

If you have an EV, you can (with some effort, for some EVs) connect that to your home heating/cooling system for backup power during longer outages.

For reference, my 13 kWh home battery will hold me for about 24 hours (without heating/cooling). If there’s an outage during a heat event, the solar will power the AC and the battery will hold me overnight. But if there’s an extended outage in the winter due to the polar vortex dropping the temperature to extreme negatives, that home battery won’t last long (and solar is less in the winter, plus there’s likely storm clouds). For that, my 77 kWh Hyundai Ioniq 6 battery hooked up directly to my heat pump (with backup gas furnace) will heat/cool me for days. The Ioniq is one of the few EVs on the market with V2L (Vehicle-to-Load also called bidirectional charging) that lets you basically plug an extension cord into your car and use it as a massive backup power generator. So when you’re shopping for an EV, keep in mind you may want to use it for backup power, so that’s a valuable feature to have (Hyundai EVs are really fantastic for range/charging as well as having V2L; if the Chevy Bolt gets re-released, I’ve heard it will have V2L, but who knows in this crazy environment with Trump attacking everything EV).

IF YOU LIVE IN AN APARTMENT: COMMUNITY SOLAR

People automatically assume if you live in an apartment or condo, you can’t get access to solar.

First, don’t underestimate the power of working together — you could simply ask your landlord whether they would consider getting solar. Or put a petition together and circulate it among the tenants. A climate resilient future is one where we’ve got better-functioning communities, and there’s nothing like a community project to pull people together and give them a reason to get to know one another. And if it fails — if you circulate your petition, ask the landlord, and it goes nowhere — you’ll still have made those connections. You will also become known as the “person who knows about solar” (ask me how I know) and you’ll have broken the silence about climate change and climate disaster resilience, which is a key part of empowering change. But also… the next time there’s a power outage or, worse, a legit disaster strikes close to home, people will remember that you tried to get everyone to go in on solar. And they just might be more open to that now that climate change is on their doorstep.

But, increasingly, community solar is also an option.

Community solar is like farm share, but with a solar field instead of a farm field: basically you “buy in” with a share of the solar farm and you get a portion of the green energy generated. These are fantastic and part of the “microgrid” concept where you communally fund solar, put the panels where they’re best suited to go, and then use it to power the community. These are popping up all over, and the best part is that it doesn’t cost any more than you’re already paying for electricity (in fact you will save money): you’re just paying to be part of the solar farm instead of sending money to the power company. And unlike some “energy credit” systems (or often the “green energy provider” that’s an option through your power company) where you’re just shifting credits around and not really generating new solar energy by installing new solar panels in the community, community solar is the real deal: you’re helping fund new solar energy farms in your local area.

Find out if you have community solar available in your area on Energy Sage. (just enter your zip code and see what community solar farms are available to join)

I don’t get any money or affiliate links or whatever to recommend Energy Sage — they were recommended by the Sierra Club and other environmental organizations and they’re filling a need for a simple portal to help connect people with community solar and solar installers. In a world where it’s hard to know what to trust online, I trust Energy Sage and refer people there often as a first step to getting started with solar.

IF YOU LIVE IN A HOUSE: ROOFTOP SOLAR

There are two important questions to ask before you get too far down the road with solar:

How old is your roof? Generally, you want to install solar on a roof that’s less than 10 years old. If your roof is older, it’s probably best to wait until you replace the roof, and plan for solar then: it’s the ideal time. But you can work with a roof that’s under 10 years. Solar actually protects your roof: you’ll be putting it on the sunny side, which is where most roofs degrade fastest, and today’s solar panels are guaranteed to withstand hail, winds, etc — literally hurricane grade levels are available for y’all in the Southern US.
Is your house shaded a lot? I’m not talking one or two trees, but if you live deep in the forest, you might have a hard time getting sun onto your solar panels. Generally, you’ll only put solar on your south (and maybe west) facing portions of your roofs, but roofs be crazy — mine is broken up by all kinds of fancy architectural things that were Tetris for the solar installers. But they made it work! The only thing you really gotta have is sun.

Note that I didn’t say “oh if you live in a certain latitude, forget it!” The sun literally falls on every part of the Earth. See that red star on the Solar Irradiance map? That’s where I live. Almost in the “do you even have sun there?” category. And yet my solar panels make 75% of my annual energy usage (including 2 EVs, heat pump, induction cooktop): in summer, my solar powers my AC; in spring/fall, I’m sending energy back to the grid; it’s only in winter that most of my energy comes from the utility.

MY PEOPLE: if you are anywhere in any of those reddish areas, get ye some solar! I can’t even imagine how much power you can make. But for the rest of us orange & yellow zoners, trust me when I say you absolutely can make a bunch of power with solar panels where you live. I will say that being covered in snow reduces solar panel effectiveness to zero — but I’ve also found that snow doesn’t last on the panels either. They heat and clear off long before the rest of the roof.

GETTING ESTIMATES FOR ROOFTOP SOLAR

I’ll cover how to pay for the solar in the next section, but first you gotta figure out how much we’re talking about. Roughly, we’re talking $15-$30,000, depending on all kinds of things, including whether you get a home battery. Prices are dropping all the time, every house is unique, and it really depends on how many panels you get (I recommend getting as many as fit on your roof).

Getting solar is like remodeling your kitchen: it’s a big project, costly, you’ll probably take out a loan for it, but in the end, you’ll have a lovely kitchen and you’ll get back some of the cost when you sell your home. In the case of solar, you’ll save on your electric bill and the value of your house goes up, so you’ll recoup much of that when you sell. In either case, you would definitely want to get a couple estimates from trusted contractors to do the work.

This is where I once again recommend Energy Sage:

They have tons of information but they will also connect you with installers. These folks will either take the image of your house off Google Maps or come fly a drone over your house (my installer did both), and use their fancy layout software to place panels on your roof and give you an estimate of how much it will cost (panels, inverter, home battery if you’re getting that, installation, electrical work to connect everything), how much power it will make (based on your location on the irradiance map, varying over the year), and usually will have financing deals as well.

Early on, there were a lot of scammers out there, taking advantage of well-meaning people who didn’t know how to get started. There are still scammers, but that’s what Energy Sage helps with — I won’t say they perfectly vet every installer, but they do have some minimum requirements. And you gotta use your common sense — if someone’s hard core selling you, or wants to sign you up for things you don’t understand, that’s a red flag.

Be warned, it is true that electricians are in super high demand and it may take time to get estimates and installation done: my project took about 10 months but that was during supply chain problems in 2021-2022. Then again, we now have an insane clown in the White House imposing tariffs on penguins and crashing the stock market, so you know… plan ahead. Might take a while to fight through the nonsense. But I’d also grab that 30% clean energy tax credit before Trump gets around to eliminating it.

NOTE TO DIYers: It is absolutely possible to DIY your own solar… if you are a professional electrician. And willing/able to navigate the permitting and physically willing to climb on your own roof. Even then, you’ll need help (most likely). I do know DIYers and they’re amazing, so I’m not gonna say it’s not possible. You will definitely save money because a lot of the cost is in installation and electrical work. But it is some major work with high levels of expertise and some physical risks, and most folks are better off paying experts to do it.

NOTE ON CO-OPS: I highly recommend you check out Solar United Neighbors and get on their mailing list–they do advocacy and also run solar co-ops, which means they organize a bunch of people in a local area that are interested in getting solar and vet installers and negotiate lower prices. It’s hella cool and I’m bummed they weren’t running a co-op when I wanted to get my solar. Otherwise, I would have totally been in.

IMPORTANT NOTE ON ESTIMATES: when you’re getting estimates, tell the installers whether you want a home battery for backup, and whether you get a battery or not, you want to be able to operate on solar during an outage. Regulations vary by state and even municipality, but in general, you should be able to set up a system where you can disconnect from the grid during an outage and operate solely on solar (this is for safety reasons, so you’re not sending power to the grid while they’re trying to fix it). My Tesla home battery (I know I know, I hate him too, but it was the only option in the supply chain crunch; now I would 100% get a GM home battery system that you can plug your EV into) is integrated with the inverter (the thing that converts the solar DC to AC power your house uses—everyone will have an inverter as part of the package), and the battery/inverter has the ability to automatically disconnect from the grid and run on battery/solar during an outage. It also manages the minute-to-minute fluctuations of energy between solar, grid, (battery optional) and your home.

One more tiny sidebar: When I had the electrical work done for the solar, I also had them set up a circuit box so I could have a “fast” (really medium slow) charger in my garage for my EV. I wish I had also done the wiring for my induction cooktop that I got later. It’s always better to get all electrical work done at the same time, if you can (see: shortage of electricians).

HOW TO PAY FOR ROOFTOP SOLAR

Beyond the non-monetary benefits of a cleaner world, defunding fossil fuel propaganda, and climate resilience, solar has monetary cost considerations most people don’t think about:

reduced electric and gas bills: If you get a heat pump and run it off your solar, most of your heating/cooling energy needs could be covered by free energy from the sun. And that includes gasoline bills too, if you have EVs.
proofing against rate increases: solar panels last for 30+ years (some are 45 years old and going strong with only minimal losses in efficiency). Do you think perhaps energy prices might have some volatility over that time? My power company is raising rates this summer. Most people try to calculate a return-on-investment of their solar panels based on today’s energy prices, but those are guaranteed to be too low. Energy prices go up and down but mostly up — especially as climate change continues wreck havoc on the world. Meanwhile, you will be sitting pretty in your solar house with guaranteed power coming in whenever the sun rises. Whatever payback time you calculate based on current energy rates (let’s say 5 years), you’re essentially saying “and I get free energy after that for 25+ years during the hellscape climate change that will be happening during that time.” And that’s a hell of a deal.
your house value will increase with solar: this is a hard one to put a number on, and real estate markets are volatile and going to get worse with climate change, but I feel very comfortable saying that a house that already has solar installed is one people will pay more for. Not only do they avoid all the hassle you’re going through right now to install it, they get all the benefits, and those go way beyond the reduction in their electric bill. Those non-monetary benefits above? They will have a monetary value when you sell your house. Zillow says solar homes sell for about 4% more — which can easily cover the cost of your system. This is one reason I tell people not to worry about whether they will be moving—if you move, you actually will get paid back sooner on your investment in solar.
tax credits, SRECs, net metering: the main incentive out there for solar came through Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (which was criminally unappreciated), which gives 30% tax credits on solar installation (the whole thing). But my state also has SRECs, a complicated mostly-shenanigan system that sells my solar credits to fossil fuel companies wanting offsets, but it does put about $100 a quarter in my checking account (I donate it to Go Sun to help low-income folks get solar because fuck the fossil fuel industry). And then there’s net metering, which is when you send solar power back to the grid and the power company has to give you credits which you can spend later (basically you can use the grid like a giant battery, which is how the grid actually functions anyway). Make sure your state has net metering because Republicans are trying to kill that too. Upshot: there are lots of smaller benefits, and tax credits are not small—get those while you can.

THE THREE WAYS TO PAY

1 – Pay Up Front or Take Out A Loan (Recommended): the kitchen remodel analogy works well here — you would likely pay up front for that or maybe take out a home-improvement loan. Different folks will have access to different kinds of credit, but secondary loans through your mortgage company are common. Solar installers also pair with financing companies, so they’ll usually offer you some kind of financing as well, so you can compare financing deals on your estimates as well as the work itself. (You do not have to take their financing to get them to do the work — we paid up front for ours, but I realize not everyone can do that).

2 – Leasing (Not Recommended but it’s an option): this is where a company installs the solar panels for no money up front and then leases them to you, sort of like a car, except they get the car back and they’re not gonna come repossess your panels. It’s more like leasing your phone from the phone company: you don’t have to pay up front for that $500 phone or whatever but then you pay monthly forever. It’s a good deal for the phone company, bad deal for you, but takes advantage of people who don’t have access to capital or financing but want the thing, in this case, solar. This has the added disadvantage of encumbering future owners of your house with this solar leasing arrangement, which they may not like. I might pay more for a solar house but not so much for one with a leasing agreement. No one would lease a kitchen remodel and expect the next owner to keep making the payments, but that’s somehow the situation with solar leasing. They are getting power out of it, so it’s a complicated thing. Which is why I don’t say it’s recommended, but it’s better than option #3.

3 – Purchase Power Agreements (Not Recommended): this is where a company with a lot of capital wants to install solar on your roof and then sell the power back to you at “a lower rate” GTFO WITH THAT. Sorry, I have strong feelings about this option as you may have noticed from the entirety of this blog post. This is companies snatching up the free tax credits and also locking you into a perpetual Netflix-for-energy situation where you will pay forever at the rates they choose. Only they’re getting the energy for free. It’s like the power company only worse. Often it is the power company actually being worse. So yeah. I don’t recommend this.

There could be variations on these themes where the fine print is better or worse — be careful, read the fine print, and reach out if you’ve got questions. In the comments is great (if you’re willing) because then other people can benefit from the discussion.

SIDEBAR FOR LOW-INCOME FOLKS: There were some really great programs for low-income folks to get 100% rebates on some solar programs under Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, but I pretty much expect that to all go away. However, if you’re in a blue state, you may still have some programs available. Be careful of the fine print, it might be leasing not ownership, but maybe that’s acceptable. Hopefully the info I’m providing here will help, but feel free to reach out if you need help navigating and I can try to parse it.

That’s it. Whew that’s a wall-o-text and one I’ve been wanting to write up for a long time. Thanks to everyone who asked along the way for help navigating their solar questions—that helped to fill out my knowledge about how this works in different situations.

UPSHOT: solar is very do-able for a lot of people, way more than think so. More importantly, it’s necessary if we’re to have any chance with this runaway climate change the idiots in charge are trying to super-charge with things like drilling for oil we don’t need in national parks that we desperately do.

I do lots of different things to try to work for a better world — my solarpunk stories, of course, but I do a lot of activism and advocacy, and a big part of that has been simply doing it myself so I gain first-hand experience and can help others do the same.

As I told the young activists who came to my house for a film shoot: “I don’t tell stories about climate change; I tell stories about how we have to change.”

And that’s the crux: all of this is change, and that can be hard, especially when we’re not sure about the details or have people we trust to show the way. I try hard to be someone people can trust to show the way, to help them get started. That’s all most folks need.

BONUS CONTENT

PennEnvironment came to my house and filmed all my clean energy stuff and let me talk about my solarpunk books! Check out their cool video.

PennEnvironment Clean Energy video (YouTube, PennEnvironment page)

Me in front of my new native garden holding the solarpunk anthology Metamorphosis with my story in it

DEI, Education, & a Solarpunk Future - Solarpunk Magazine

2025-03-25T15:05:05.000Z

Authoritarian regimes always make moves early on to control education, and it only took two months from inauguration day for Trump to issue an executive order calling for The U.S. Department of Education (DOE) to be gutted. The department has only existed since the 1970s, so it’s possible to make a convincing case, on the surface at least, that our education system will get along just fine without it.

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But scratch the surface and we discover something more sinister lurking beneath the surface. This isn’t just about “returning education to the states.” From building charter schools to what textbooks are used, from hiring and firing to curriculum development, classroom content, and standardized testing, the vast majority of educational functions and decisions are still made at the state and local level. Indeed, private textbook companies probably have more influence over what gets taught to students than the U.S. DOE does. Then why is the current administration going to such lengths to kneecap the DOE?

On our latest episode of Demand Utopia: A Solarpunk Podcast, we look at the current attacks on the department, and examine how white supremacy and right wing hatred of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs is driving the movement to eliminate the Department of Education.

Then, we take time to imagine a better world and what a solarpunk education system might look like.

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The Compressed Book Edition - LOW←TECH MAGAZINE English

2025-03-20T00:00:00.000Z

Image: The Compressed Book Edition. Image by Marie Verdeil and Hugo Lopez.

The Compressed Edition is available in our bookshop as a paperback and hardcover.

In 2018, Low-tech Magazine launched a low-energy website that runs on solar power. To reduce energy use and make the content accessible for readers with old computers and slow internet connections, we opted for a back-to-basics web design, optimising image and file sizes, as well as using a static site generator instead of a database-driven content management system. In 2019, we also launched a book edition of Low-tech Magazine, which consists of three volumes with articles and one volume with comments.

The Compressed Book Edition

While a book looks and feels more low-tech than a website, it has an environmental footprint as well. Industrial book publishing and distribution involves wood harvesting, pulp and paper production, printing, ink-making, and lots of shipping throughout the supply chain. Even if the wood for paper production is harvested sustainably, which is rarely the case, all these processes require energy and produce carbon emissions.

To address these issues, and to keep practicing what we preach, Low-tech Magazine has now made a “compressed edition” of the chronological book series. Inspired by the image compression on our website, we squeezed the article catalog of three volumes into just one book. Consequently, we reduced the paper consumption and carbon emissions by almost a factor of three. The compressed edition contains 84 articles and over 700 images on slightly more than 600 pages.

We did this by switching to a smaller font size (similar to the one used in the comments book), by downsizing most images, and by opting for a two-column layout. I rewrote some articles, especially older ones, resulting not only in fewer pages but also in better articles. Laia Comellas and Marie Verdeil collaborated on the design of the compressed edition.

Image: The original, "uncompressed" book series. Image by Marie Verdeil and Hugo Lopez.

Books or Website?

Ever since the launch of the book collection, readers have asked what is most sustainable: reading Low-tech Magazine online or on paper? While it’s a relevant question, comparing the carbon emissions of books and websites is complex and somewhat pointless. There are so many variables influencing this calculation that you could tilt the result toward your preferred answer.

Comparing the carbon emissions of books and websites is complex and somewhat pointless.

A crucial factor is the time spent reading. If you only read a few articles, reading online likely has a lower carbon footprint. But, if you read all articles, and maybe even go back to them regularly afterward, the difference between online and offline reading becomes smaller. For the books, all carbon emissions occur before the reading process starts. In contrast, the more time you spend on the website, the higher the carbon emissions. ¹

There’s another difference between online and offline reading: Unlike a website, a book can be read by more than one person without raising its carbon emissions — for example, when it’s available in a library. ² Books usually have very long lifetimes, between 25 and 500 years. ³ Therefore, they can be read by dozens of people. That is especially the case for hardcover books, which take a bit more resources to produce than paperbacks but are more resistant to abuse.

Carbon Emissions & Energy Use

To estimate the carbon emissions of Low-tech Magazine’s books, I used a study of a 320-page hardcover book weighing 0.75 kg. ³ According to the researchers, the complete production process of the book has a carbon footprint of between 2 and 3 kg of CO2-equivalents, depending on what happens when the book is discarded after 25 years (landfill or recycling).

The three “uncompressed” paperback books together weigh 2,531 grams, which corresponds to an estimated carbon footprint of between 6.7 and 10.1 kg CO2-equivalents. For the compressed edition, at 929 grams, the carbon footprint comes down to between 2.48 and 3.70 kg of CO2-equivalents. These numbers are surprisingly high compared to the carbon footprint of Low-tech Magazine’s web server, which we calculated to be 9 kg CO2-equivalents per year. ⁴ Although our web server runs on solar power, these carbon emissions result from producing the solar panel, the battery, the solar charge controller, and the printed circuit boards, measured across their estimated lifetime.

However, the book does not require any infrastructure to be read, while the carbon footprint of our web server is only one part of the total footprint of the website. Readers of the website need a computer to access it, and the resulting energy use and carbon emissions of powering and manufacturing that device should also be included. Assuming 60 hours to read all the articles, a laptop power use of 25-50 watts, and the average power grid carbon intensity in Europe (300g/kWh), the power use of the laptop would add between 0.45 and 0.90 kg of carbon emissions for reading content online.

Image: The Compressed Book Edition (hardcover). Image by Marie Verdeil and Hugo Lopez.

To this should be added the energy that was required to manufacture the laptop and the power grid (of which in both cases only a part can be attributed to reading Low-tech Magazine). Because life cycle analyses show that the energy used for manufacturing a laptop surpasses its operational energy use, we can — conservatively — double this result to between 0.90 kg and 1.8 kg of CO2-equivalents. ⁵ Because our website uses very little energy, almost the complete carbon footprint of Low-tech Magazine is due to the devices of our readers.

The book needs to be read by at least two to three people before its environmental footprint becomes smaller than the one caused by reading all Low-tech Magazine articles online.

Nevertheless, this carbon footprint is still lower than the 3 kg of CO2-equivalents for the compressed book edition. Although this is a very rough estimate, it seems to suggest that this book needs to be read by at least two to three people before its environmental footprint becomes smaller than the one caused by reading all Low-tech Magazine articles online. Of course, we have set the bar very high for ourselves because of our light-weight website. Compared to the old blog, which was much more carbon-intensive than the solar-powered website, the compressed book edition — and perhaps even the uncompressed book edition — would be the more sustainable option even if it is read only by one person.

How Many Trees Have We Cut Down?

The environmental footprint of books does not only show in carbon emissions. Books are made from paper, and paper is — nowadays — almost exclusively made from dead trees. With close to 10,000 Low-tech Magazine books sold, an uncomfortable question pops up: how many trees did I kill? That is not an easy question to answer, because the only reference I could find says that “one tree can produce 25 books” ⁶, without specifying what size of tree or type of book these numbers refer to.

Nevertheless, if this estimation is valid, the Low-tech Magazine books would be responsible for chopping down roughly 400 unspecified trees. Whether or not these trees were replaced by other trees, I have no way of knowing. However, by reducing the page number from 1,700 to a little over 600 pages, at least the Compressed Edition attempts to limit this resource use.

Compressing the content — an editorial and design choice — produces a larger reduction in resource use than printing on recycled paper could ever do.

Low-tech Magazine’s “tree consumption” could be further reduced by printing on recycled paper, and we would probably do so if our book distributor and printer — Lulu — would offer that option. However, printing on recycled paper is not a panacea. Paper can only be recycled a couple of times before it needs to be incinerated or landfilled.

Partly because of this, and partly because of economic growth, there is not enough recycled paper available to print the ever-increasing number of books that are published each year. If Low-tech Magazine prints on recycled paper, it means that someone else won’t. Moreover, printing on recycled paper often increases the carbon emissions of paper production. ³ Compressing the content — an editorial and design choice — produces a larger reduction in resource use than printing on recycled paper could ever do.

How Many Books are Thrown Away?

The carbon footprint and wood consumption of an individual book only tell a part of the story. Most environmental damage in the book industry is done by overproduction. A very large number of printed books are not sold but discarded before anyone can read them. Overproduction occurs in two ways. First, most books that come on the market fail commercially, which is a consequence of the business strategies of book publishers. ⁷ Large publishers invest in a massive number of titles in the hope that one will become a bestseller.

Image: The Compressed Book Edition (hardcover). Image by Marie Verdeil and Hugo Lopez.

Second, higher print runs significantly lower the printing costs per copy, and thus encourage overproduction. To give an example, printing 100 copies of a 600-page book costs 7,3 euros per copy, while printing 1,000 copies costs only 4,30 euros per copy. ⁸ As a result, it can be more profitable to print more books and discard the unsold copies. Even books that are in demand can be thrown away. For example, unsold copies at events are usually destroyed rather than sent back to publishers because it’s cheaper. ⁹

A less wasteful approach is printing on demand, in which a copy only gets printed once it is bought. In this case, there is no waste unless a book is printed badly. However, the energy use and carbon emissions per printed copy are probably higher, with the printing equipment taking a larger share in the total resource use. The printing costs are much higher, too (around 15 euros per copy for a 600-page book). ¹⁰ Almost all Low-tech Magazine books are printed on demand, but we can only do this because we have our own direct sales channel (the website). If books are sold through Amazon or in bookstores, print-on-demand results in a very high sales price or a very low profit for the book publisher.

Other Low-tech Magazine Books

The launch of the compressed edition does not mean that the “uncompressed” books will no longer be for sale. They will be redesigned in the next months, reflecting the same changes in articles (shorter and better) but printed with a larger font, larger images, and a one-column layout. Their carbon footprint will decrease compared to the earlier volumes but in a less spectacular way. Nevertheless, while those uncompressed books remain the most comfortable option for reading Low-tech Magazine, we expect a significant part of potential buyers to opt for the more compact edition, as it provides the most bang for the buck.

Obviously, “compressing” the books also addresses printing costs, which have skyrocketed in the last few years. Higher printing costs result in a higher sales price and a lower profit, or both. The compressed edition allows us to roughly halve the sales price for the whole archive while maintaining two-thirds of the profit. For the redesigned uncompressed editions, a more modest reduction in the page number will allow us to keep the current sales price but restore the profit per copy to pre-pandemic levels — important for the survival of the magazine. After all, people buy books for the content they contain, not for their weight on paper.

Ebooks and Thematic Books

The Compressed Edition is part of an ongoing research project into the sustainability of Low-tech Magazine’s publishing operations. Apart from the solar-powered website, we have introduced ebooks (2024), and these are perhaps the most sustainable option to read Low-tech Magazine. We also started the publication of a thematic books series (2023), aimed at people who are only interested in certain topics and themes of Low-tech Magazine. The ebooks and thematic books are made in collaboration with Marie Verdeil.

That is mainly because of the energy use of the end-use devices that people use to access the website. Surprisingly, the number of website visitors has no influence on the power use of our web server. That is likely due to the fact that it is a very lightweight, static website. For “normal”, dynamic websites, the energy use is closely related to the number of visitors. ↩︎
Low-tech Magazine’s books are available in several libraries. See: https://search.worldcat.org. If it is not available in your local library, you can file an acquisition request there. ↩︎
Wells, Jean‐Robert, et al. “Carbon footprint assessment of a paperback book: Can planned integration of deinked market pulp be detrimental to climate?.” Journal of Industrial Ecology 16.2 (2012): 212-222. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
See: “How sustainable is a solar powered website?”, in this volume. ↩︎
There’s also the power use of the router. However, while the grid-powered router uses 240 Wh of electricity per day, it is shared by all website visitors (and by the author). Even on a calm day (around 2,000 unique visitors), extra energy use due to the router is only 0.12 watt-hour per visitor. That is much lower than the energy use of the laptop, even during a relatively short visit. ↩︎
https://publishyourpurpose.com/blog/environmental-impact-book-publishing/ ↩︎
Biel, Joe. People’s Guide to Publishing: Building a Successful, Sustainable, Meaningful Book Business From the Ground Up. Microcosm Publishing, 2018. ↩︎
Based on the prices of expresta.eu ↩︎
Bookstores need to prove that they destroyed the books by ripping off the covers and sending them to the publisher. Source: personal communication with book sellers at events. ↩︎
Book cost calculator, Lulu. https://www.lulu.com/pricing ↩︎

Aging with Dignity in a Solarpunk Future - Solarpunk Magazine

2025-03-18T16:08:58.000Z

The latest episode of Demand Utopia: A Solarpunk Podcast is live, and this week we’re talking about the demonization of social security and attempts to privatize what is one of the most successful, public, collective social programs in the U.S. We also delve into a discussion of what the consequences are likely to be if such attempts are successful.

Then, we pivot to a place of hope with a thought experiment imagining what aging and elder care might look like in a solarpunk future where community and interdependence are valued above profit and power.

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You can listen to this latest episodes and others as well right here on our website. You can also subscribe to our podcast through your favorite podcast platforms.

Solarpunk Magazine Issue #20 and Latest Podcast Episode - Solarpunk Magazine

2025-03-12T15:24:51.000Z

Issue #20 is now available. If you’re not a subscriber to Solarpunk Magazine, then you can click here to get a copy of Issue #20 featuring:

cover art by Marnelli Abian
editorial and interior art by our co-editor-in-chief, Brianna Castagnozzi

short stories
“What We Used to Be” by Hannah Greer
“Atha’s Daughters” by Len Klapdorpoems

poems
“Incantation for the Planthroposcene” by Diane Perazzo
“Martian Gardeners Paring Memories of Old Earth” by Arthur H. Manners

nonfiction
“My Simple Plan” by E.E. King
“Lunarpunk Design: Bioluminescence and Lighting the Future Naturally” by Justine Norton-Kertson

New Podcast Episodes

The latest episode of Demand Utopia: A Solarpunk Podcast is now available. The episode is titled “Resisting Dystopia is Building Utopia,” and develops a solarpunk response to recent threats of expulsion, arrest, and deportation of student protesters in the United States. You can listen on our website by clicking the button below. You can also subscribe and listen via most other podcast platforms.

Listen Here

New Podcast Episode: Solarpunk vs. Imperialism Pt. 2 - Solarpunk Magazine

2025-03-04T14:14:33.662Z

This week on Demand Utopia: A Solarpunk Podcast, part 2 of our episode on Trump’s big imperialist push is now available to listen to right from our website, or on whatever podcast platform you use. In this episode we explore the solarpunk response to imperialism and look at real life examples of the struggle to end the empire’s global exploitation.

Listen Now

Also, next week on Tuesday March 11 we drop Issue #20 of Solarpunk Magazine. Keep your eyes out for it!

Summary of changes for February 2025 - Hundred Rabbits

2025-03-02T00:08:55.701Z

Hey everyone!

This is the list of all the changes we've done to our projects during the month of February.

Summary Of Changes

100r.co, added Dinghy gelcoat, Week 10, Week 11, and Week 12 of the Victoria to Sitka logbook. Updated solar with new pictures and corrected information (this page used to be called solar tips).
Nebu, released a spreadsheet editor.
Grimgrains, added a new recipe: Stovetop zaatar pizza.
Store, added maritime flag stickers for sale.
Rabbit Waves, added a new page: Emergency Bag. Updated Morse Code with Flags page with animations, released a printable zine(see how to fold a zine).

On February 14th, we celebrated our 9th year living aboard our beloved Pino. Read a short text by Devine, which expands on what it means to truly be a generalist.

Despite the weather being less-than-ideal, we were able to install our replacement solar panels, and revisit our notes on solar installations.

Devine completed Nebu, a spritesheet editor as well as a desktop calendar, alongside many other little desktop utilities. Nebu is just over 8.3 kB, a bit less than a blank excel file.

In times of increasing climate and political instability, it is a good time to get together with your community and make plans for emergencies. Consider reading Tokyo Bosai about disaster preparedness, this elaborate document deals with disasters that occur specifically in Japan, but many of the recommendations are useful regardless. We released a new page on {rabbit waves} with suggestions on what to pack in an Emergency Bag. Remember, every emergency bag is different, and what is essential varies per person.

We also put together a print-it-yourself zine, which combines useful information about Morse Code and Signal Flags. If you have printed the zine and don't know how to fold it, see Rek's illustrated instructions. Speaking of signal flags, we printed stickers of Rek's ICS flag drawings.

The nice weather finally arrived this week and we were able to redo Teapot's gelcoat. This was our first time working with gelcoat, our friends Rik & Kay, who lent us their workspace, were very patient and generous teachers. We will continue the project later when the gelcoat has cured.

Book Club: This month we are reading The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt.

Solarpunk vs. Imperialism: New Podcast Episode - Solarpunk Magazine

2025-02-24T14:31:27.172Z

This week, in the first of a two part episode of Demand Utopia: A Solarpunk Podcast, we look at the brazen imperialist moves Trump has made so far in his first month back in the White House, and we discuss his actions within the historical context of U.S. imperialism specifically, and western imperialism in general. Next week in part 2, we’ll dive into the solarpunk response to imperialism and look at real life examples of the struggle to end the empire’s global exploitation.Show more

The episode is now available to the public and you can listen right here.

Doing Nothing Will Lose You Everything - Susan Kaye Quinn

2025-02-23T18:21:26.931Z

Folks like to blame the internet for everything, and I’m the first to say Technofeudalists, tech companies, and especially tech billionaires are a real and present danger, but we didn’t get to this stage of society breakdown overnight or even in the last eight years. Neoliberalism and cowboy conservatism have corrupted the culture for decades before the internet. “Greed is Good” is from the 80s. Cowboy rugged individualism reaches back to the 50s (HCRs newsletter today is very good/terrifying). The nuclear family and suburbanism destroyed community values long before the internet… but the internet also has been weaponized to accelerate the fracturing and isolation.

My kids were raised in the internet era and while a lot of those kids suffer, I’ve never seen a more empathetic generation (on average) or one more determined to stick to their small friend groups. Because they see the horrors all too clearly. (And apparently some are getting seduced into the Andrew Tate misogyny tarpits).

I’ve long said it’s the OLDER people who fucked up the internet. It’s your grandpa sharing fascist memes for the LOLz. It’s the incels weaponizing it. The J6 traitors were fucking dentists and car dealership owners in their 30s and 40s.

But even for them, it’s largely all been a game. They’ve LARP’d their way into putting the fascists back in power and now they’re gonna find out how badly they fucked up. This is not me wishful thinking. This is simply what’s happening as the evil MFers that let them live their hyper masculinity power fantasies are let loose to destroy all the things they take for granted.

As Rebecca Solnit says (Hope in the Dark), “capitalism is an ongoing disaster anticapitalism alleviates, like a mother cleaning up after her child’s messes”. The world doesn’t fall apart, in general, because we’ve built systems of safety nets in the government (paid with taxes, run by bureaucrats, strengthened by laws and democracy) and outside the government (usually women doing all the reproductive and care work, inside and outside family). But right now, the government is being dismantled (everything from science, to health, to the weather predictions to social security) and women and people of color are being shoved out of the workplace/public, an attempt to make them a subservient underclass again (good luck with that shit).

But we are the very people that keep things from falling apart. You take those people out of power and empower the destructive broken men, and you will break things. Apparently at tremendous speed, which will just make it more sharply obvious what’s actually happening. There’s a reckoning coming where people who have benefited from and taken for granted all that invisible labor and protections and infrastructure find out what happens when it’s all ripped away.

Maybe this is when they finally figure out how the world really works.

Or maybe they’ll make excuses for why none of this is their fault, why there’s some scapegoat to blame, and they’ll double down on suffering. Some will certainly do that.

I don’t think most people want to live this way.

The real reckoning will be when/if they figure out it there’s a better way to live. And demand it.

Because in the end, that’s all it really takes.

America, you will only keep the democracy you fight for. You have to decide you actually value the Rule of Law, that your power fantasies aren’t as important as having planes that land safely, water that isn’t polluted, weather predictions that keep you safe from the hurricane, and a thousand other things those educated, dedicated public servants have been quietly working on until you set loose an unelected billionaire with a chainsaw to dismember the country.

You can choose better. Today. Right this minute. Grow up, take responsibility for getting it wrong, and work to unfuck the country.

As for me, I’ve been here fighting the rising fascism in our country all along. I will continue to do so. This weekend in particular I’m doing the longer-term work of editing stories that tell of a better world, one where we’re working together to survive the climate crisis that’s barreling toward us, now faster because fascism and the climate crisis amplify each other. This week, I will continue work on my novel holding up ways that we can renegotiate our relationships with nature and with each other. I’ll keep podcasting about things like Library Economies and Third Spaces, holding up alternatives that already exist in our midst, those anti-capitalist models that already show a better way, already here today, we just have to support them.

We just have to choose better. It’s really that simple.

And now I’m heading off to a local bakery to pick up bread because I like to support local businesses. Then I’ll stop at the grocery co-op in town because supporting cooperative businesses as well as producers of organic, local foods is how we get to a more sustainable world. Later I’ll video chat with my kids in our weekly family chat, then re-read The Serviceberry, Robin Wall Kimmerer’s ode to a gifting economy, both in practicality and in mindset. For other anchors in this chaotic time, I read Rebecca Solnit’s soul-restoring new newsletter, Meditations in an Emergency, and listen to Future Mending’s podcast about how to build a better world.

That better world isn’t a fantasy, but it won’t happen with zero effort on our part, especially with Trump decapitating the military and illegally seizing power and declaring himself king.

Choose better, America. And do it today, right now, before it gets worse.

Because it will get so much worse.

New Demand Utopia Podcast Episodes! - Solarpunk Magazine

2025-02-21T15:46:27.056Z

We’ve relaunched our podcast with the first episode in since April 2024, and after a few days of early access for our Patreon subscribers, the first new episode, “Moving Forward,” is now available for the general public.

In this first new episode of Demand Utopia: A Solarpunk Podcast, host Justine Norton-Kertson surveys the current political climate here in the U.S., imagines a better future, and discusses the Renewable Ravenswood project in Queens, NY, and the Pansy Collective’s mutual aid work in Asheville, NC as examples of real life, grassroots victories that illustrate the power of local communities coming together to build a better world.

Click here to listen to our latest podcast episode!

We plan on having the next episode available for the general public this coming Monday!

Microplastics: Reduce Your Exposure - Susan Kaye Quinn

2025-02-15T01:06:27.592Z

If you’ve been paying attention at all, you’ve seen articles with increasingly horrifying information about how much our world is swimming in pollution, PFAS, chemicals of all kinds, and in particular, microplastics (and nanoplastics). We now have a plastic spoon’s worth in our brains and that’s up 50% in the last eight years, rising with increasing plastic in the environment: “On average, microplastic levels were about 50% higher in brain samples from 2024 than in 2016 samples.”

There’s zero chance this is good for us—it’s just a matter of how bad and how fast it will become much worse.

“nearly 60% of about 250 people who were undergoing heart surgery had micro- or nanoplastics in a main artery. Those who did were 4.5 times more likely to experience a heart attack, a stroke or death…”

I literally wrote a story about the future of microplastics and you should probably go read that right now (it’s free): https://reckoning.press/its-in-the-blood/

How to Reduce Your Exposure

This blog post isn’t to get you to read my fiction, however (although you should!)—it’s to collect up all my strategies for reducing your exposure to plastics because I’ve been posting about this fairly frequently and it’s just easier to have it all in one place.

Isn’t It Pointless? Microplastics Are Everywhere!

I see folks taking a *shrug* what can you do?? approach to microplastics and I’m begging you not to do that. I swear, it’s some kind of modern mental glitch that we hear about something bad and assume that absolutely nothing can be done about it… and 1) that’s 100% false and 2) exactly what the fossil fuel companies would like you to think.

IMPORTANT: It’s not your imagination that plastic is fucking everywhere… and there’s a very simple reason: it’s what the fossil fuel industry has been tirelessly trying to make happen, convincing every company to shove more plastic into everything. And they’re planning to INCREASE the amount of plastics in our lives MORE (because they fear reduced fossil fuel usage due to solar and EVs) with plans to *triple* plastics use by 2050.

Triple.

Not content with destroying the Earth with greenhouse gasses, these MFers want to fill our brains with microplastics too. The mental gymnastics required to do this shit when you presumably have a brain of your own that you would prefer not to be filled with microplastics is just astonishing. Then again, maybe the microplastics have already colonized Fossil Fuel CEOs brains… but that’s really too generous.

It’s just greed that’s made their brains malfunction.

What You Can Do To Reduce the Threat of Plastics

First of all, just understand that this is a real thing that’s crazy dangerous and we should be reducing all pollution everywhere, but microplastics and pesticides and the chemical soup of our lives is a real thing that is having adverse health effects across the planet.

So vote/advocate for reducing plastics everywhere you can.

Meanwhile, take some defensive actions to reduce your exposure.

(The science is unclear on a lot of this. I’d like to say “research is ongoing” but Republicans in America are trying super hard to kill all science research, especially anything related to health, so who knows if we’ll get more good science on this. For now, it’s not clear how much of these microplastics accumulate in the body, or where, or what the impact of that is—the body has some natural mechanisms to clear out foreign materials, but not an infinite amount. And it’s certainly not designed to live in a microplastic soup. But it is possible that there are some clearance mechanisms, so if you reduce your exposure, you could reduce the amount in your body over time. If not, then it’s an even better idea to reduce exposure because this stuff might be accumulating.)

Here’s my personal list of things that I’ve done (or am trying to do). References below for you to peruse and come up with your own strategies. I’m not the microplastics police (I wish!). I’m just trying to give you some simple defensive measures. They’re not zero cost but then neither is accumulating microplastics in your blood. For sure, the best is to reduce how much new plastic we make each year, but even if that went to zero overnight, there is still a ton of plastic in the world that will be circulating for decades.

filter your water
don’t store anything in plastic (use glass or metal containers)
take food out of to-go containers as soon as you get home and eat off plates (better yet, cook at home)
dust with microfiber and vacuum regularly with HEPA filter vacuums (microplastics shed from furniture and carpet; reducing the amount of dust in the house will reduce your accidental ingestion)
cut open tea bags and use a stainless steel infuser (tea bags have glue and plastics infused in the bags) — even better, get organic loose-leaf tea
don’t use single-use plastic anything that you can avoid, but especially drinks/water
don’t use plastic cups/plates
use cloth reusable grocery bags (use reusable produce bags)
shop at the food co-op where you can use muslin bags for bulk foods to reduce plastic-packaging
avoid plastic packaging whenever possible: use powder detergents, shampoo bars, refillable glass sprayers and dispensers for liquids and lotions.
get your produce from a farm share that doesn’t use plastic containers/bags
take produce out of plastic bags (wash off pesticides even if organic) and store in fridge in paper or non-plastic containers
get rid of your black plastic utensils and use bamboo or stainless steel utensils and cutting boards
probably best to use plastic cutting boards for meat for safety reasons (or better, don’t eat or reduce meat/seafood consumption—microplastics accumulate the further you go up the food chain, so meat has more microplastics than veggies)
bring your own cup for to-go coffee/tea
for the love of your body, never reheat anything in plastic in the microwave
avoid takeout wrappers for food (I literally take the food out of the wrapper and use a paper napkin—it’s basically PFAS and sheds microplastics into your food)—better yet, reduce how much you eat out
monitor indoor air quality, use air purifiers (put a HEPA-quality filter on your furnace), open the windows regularly
reduce the amount of processed food you eat (processing introduces microplastics along with additives, preservatives, things that aren’t actually food)
buy clothes with fewer synthetic fibers/plastics
keep reusable stainless steel utensils and straws in your car/bag for eating on the go

If I think of any more, or someone offers up a brilliant suggestion I haven’t thought of, I’ll add it to the list. We can help each other out with our strategies because, for sure, the fossil fuel industry is barreling ahead (and sabotaging the global plastics treaty folks are trying to create), so you need to do what you can to protect yourself.

I would love for the world to wake up and stop dumping poison literally into our bodies, but that’s not happening any time soon, and even if it did, the amount of poisons already out there is a lot. That’s not a reason to throw up your hands and give up: it’s a reason to implement some small changes, one at a time, to reduce your exposure. It took me years to come up with that list. I’m sure I’ll be adding more to it going forward. Don’t make yourself crazy with it, just keep making small changes and you’ll be surprised how automatic some of this stuff becomes.

Stay safe, my friends.

References:

https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/03/health/plastics-inside-human-brain-wellness/index.html

https://www.ecowatch.com/avoid-microplastics-at-home-2655282616.html

https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news/2024/11/top-5-ways-reduce-your-microplastic-exposure

https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2024/02/427161/h

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2024/05/13/plastics-food-water-safety-contamination

Summary of changes for January 2025 - Hundred Rabbits

2025-02-02T01:27:13.068Z

Hey everyone!

This is the list of all the changes we've done to our projects during the month of January.

Summary Of Changes

100r.co, added a new page: tote. Added Week 8 and Week 9 of the Victoria to Sitka logbook.
Tote, released the project on itch.io.
Grimgrains, added a new recipe: chocolate turtles.
Left, added an option to collapse the nav bar on the left.
Orca, added community links.

Devine spent time improving the html5 Uxn emulator, and thanks to their hard work it is now possible to play Niju, Donsol, and Oquonie directly in the browser on itch.io, the same goes for projects like Noodle and Tote.

It's been a long time coming, but Oquonie is now playable on Playdate. Rek spent the last week converting the 2-bit assets for Oquonie to 1-bit, because some of the characters and tiles were too difficult to read, now all of the assets work perfectly on monochromatic screens. As an amazing plus, Devine got the music and sounds working perfectly, just like in the original iOS version.

From January 19-25th, we both participated in Goblin Week, an event in which you make goblins every day for a week(whatever that means to you). See the goblin series made by Rek(viewable here in higher rez also) and the one made by Devine(Mastodon).

Pino has earned two new replacement solar panels this month! We have not installed them yet, it is still too cold outside in Victoria (we are expecting snow this week).

We share photos often in our monthly updates, and so Devine spent time building our very own custom photo feed named Days. It is possible to follow the feed with RSS.

Book Club: This month we are reading How do You Live? by Genzaburo Yoshino and Middlemarch by George Eliot.

January ’25 Newsletter: New Podcast and Imagine 2200 Winners - Solarpunk Magazine

2025-01-24T17:06:27.532Z

In our January 2025 newsletter, we bring you updates on our latest issue, our podcast relaunch, and the latest winning stories from Grist‘s Imagine 2200 short story competition.

Solarpunk Magazine Issue #19 Now Available

Issue #19 published on Tuesday January 14, and features work by Demetri Kissel, Nadine Aurora Tabing, Devan Barlow, Brianna Castagnozzi, and Justine Norton-Kertson.

Click here to get your copy of Solarpunk Magazine Issue #19

Radical Hope and Resistance in the
Age of Climate Disaster

Our newly rebranded podcast, Demand Utopia: A Solarpunk Podcast launches on Monday January 27, 2025 and you can listen right here! No need to panic. The RSS feed is the same, the webpage has the same URL. No need to resubscribe on your favorite podcast provider. We changed the name up a bit, but all those nitty gritty details have stayed the same.

Demand Utopia: A Solarpunk Podcast envisions a world where humanity thrives in harmony with nature, equity and justice guide our communities, and creativity fuels solutions to our shared challenges. By imagining brighter futures and confronting current crises with resilience, we aim to cultivate hope and empower individuals to co-create a sustainable, inclusive, and thriving planet.

Listen to our podcast

The goal of the podcast is to inspire hope and action by exploring solarpunk ideas, sharing grassroots solutions, and amplifying the voices of change-makers who challenge dystopian realities. Through critical analysis, meaningful conversations, and creative storytelling, we provide listeners with the tools and inspiration to build a more just, equitable, and sustainable world while nurturing optimism in the face of adversity.

Join host Justine Norton-Kertson along with a slate of occasional guests as they discuss topics related to the current state of the world and how we can work together to create solarpunk solutions and build utopia right now in the age of climate disaster.

Imagine 2200 Announces Latest Competition Winners

The winners of the Imagine 2200 Climate Fiction contest just dropped, and they’re so good! This captivating collection, from our partners at Grist, feature stories that spark hope and illuminate creative solutions to climate challenges.

Read the new stories today!

This year’s winning stories include writers and characters from the bustling metropolis of Lagos, Nigeria, to the snowy landscape of Buffalo, New York, to a multi-generational household in the Caribbean. These stories remind us that the best climate fiction reflects the richness of human experience.

The Story You Tell Matters - Susan Kaye Quinn

2025-01-11T16:31:11.942Z

Dammit. My kid had to evacuate from the Palisades fire at 2am last night. They’ve been on red flag watch all week at the edge of the fire and the drop in winds I guess backdrafted the fire toward their apartment. They’re safe in a hotel but my god I hate this.

They say everyone will eventually have first-hand experience with climate disaster and I guess it’s our turn.

Watching Canadian fire bombers scoop water from the ocean near my kid’s apt has me sobbing.

@dinameetsworld
My jaw is still on the floor. First time in my 33 years of living seeing this happen in front of my eyes! #palisadesfire #palisade #palisade #santamonicafire #losangeles #losangelesfire #eatonfire #sunsetfire #fypシ #viral #losangelescalifornia #newes
♬ Danger Zone (From “Top Gun” Original Soundtrack) – Kenny Loggins

There are endless stories, as there always are, of people coming out of the woodwork to help in the disaster. And then the media scares up a story about a lone looter or some guy running around with a propane torch trying to light more fires and it just reminds me how the media and often the authorities (not in this case, California government is doing excellent work) are the worst part of this — they, especially the media, try to reinforce “society is breaking down!!” narratives when it’s only a few people, probably stressed out of their minds or having other mental health issues, that react that way.

Everyone, and I mean everyone is mobilizing to help.

And that is the world we could have.

Meanwhile, it also emphasizes how important your networks are. I have family in the area where my kiddo can go, but even my niece lost power for a while and had to decamp to her parents’ house. But I have friends in the area, I have a network of support, I know I could find my kid a place to stay if needed. And they’re resilient enough (and with resources) that they can just take themselves to a hotel at 2am when necessary.

Our networks really are our resiliency and the more we tend to them, the stronger they get.

Just wanted to report in from the climate front lines a bit and confirm: whatever community-building and connection-making you’re doing is important. Do more of that. Double down on it.

We are what will get us through the times ahead. We instinctively know this is true. Don’t believe the bullshit narratives that say otherwise.

The solarpunk narratives/values that I try to put out in the world, the ones that reinforce community and connection as vital, is important. The stories we tell each other—about who we are, about what is possible—matter.

We need narratives that push back against the ones that insist we will descend into chaos under stress when the opposite is true.

We need to tell that story—the story of how we survive.

It seems crazy to recommit to writing my hopeful climate-fiction novel while waiting to hear if my kid’s apartment will be consumed by the climate-driven catastrophe ravaging Los Angeles, but I think that’s exactly the right thing to do. As I’ve said many times, I am not, after all, telling stories about climate change: I’m telling stories about how we have to change.

Stay safe, friends.

Backup Power for Air Filters + Water - Susan Kaye Quinn

2025-01-10T18:56:10.325Z

Learning From Climate Disasters

You absolutely should get the Watch Duty app if you or anyone you love is in a wildfire zone. I paid for the annual fee upgrade because I want to support their important work, plus you get to watch the firefighting airplanes buzz around.

I try to learn something out of every climate disaster (sadly, there’s no end of supply of those), but this fire in LA is particularly rough because my kid is like 1/2 mile from the evacuation zone (they’re safe and now that the fire’s maybe being contained, I’m less freaked out).

I grew up in CA and I’m very cognizant of wildfire threats to not just burning down your house or forcing you to flee, but toxifying the air for weeks or longer.

Relevant posts:

In addition to my battery backup and air filter posts above, I learned a couple new things out of the climate-driven LA fire disaster:

1 – Air Purifiers in Wildfire-induced Power Outages: I got my kids small Jackeries+portable solar for Christmas, enough to basically have backup power for laptops/wifi/phones… but I didn’t even think about air purifiers. I’d sent my kid out to California with a full complement of wildfire stuff (air purifier with particle counter and smoke filter, mini air purifier for the car, N95 masks), but there are/were 200,000+ people without power due to the fires and the air quality is toxic. It’s not a good mix.

So I ran the math for that… (look away if you’re math-phobic!)

Jackery 300 has 293 Wh backup power
Jackery has optional 40 W mini portable solar panels, which generate 40 Wh per hour of full sun
Aroeve air purifier draws 34 W which means it uses 34 Wh per hour; in 24 hours that’s 408 Wh
400 Wh (40 Wh solar x 10 hrs) + 293 Wh (Jackery 300 backup power) = 693 Wh for the first 24 hrs

TL;DR: the Jackery alone won’t run the air purifier for 24 hrs, but the addition of portable solar means you can easily run the air purifier and have backup power for phones/laptop/wifi for the first 24 hrs, and every day you have at least 10 hours of sun, you can run the air purifier for another 24 hours.

2 — Backup Water is a Very Good Idea: My kid is under a boil water alert right now. From Hurricane Helene, I learned that your water supply could be wiped out by a flood that leaves your house just fine but takes out the water processing plant or the pipes that run to your house. So we got a couple 5 gal Primo water jugs to keep in our basement plus a small hand pump to dispense the water. Not enough to hold us for substantial water disruption, but enough to get us started plus we then have jugs for hauling water, which is what my friend in NC desperately needed. She would drive to people who still had water and fill up then drive home.

What I just learned in the CA wildfires is that ash can fall into your water treatment plant and kill off the stuff that’s cleaning the water and now the chlorine treatment isn’t working, hence the boil water alert. Also the firefighters are using all the water, so water pressure is super low, and that makes it hard for the water purification systems to work properly. I had no idea this could happen, but I’m now sending my kid the hand water pump and telling them they need to get a 5 gal water jug to have on hand. Probably not gonna work for this fire because they’re already in the water shortage, but maybe — and it definitely will work for next time.

Because there will be a next time. And that’s the most important lesson: do these things before the emergency. I mean, just TRY getting an air purifier in SoCal right now. It can seem like extra expense or something you’ll never use, but unfortunately… that’s not likely to be true. And if it is, fine. You can educate other people who will need it. Or have emergency supplies to help your neighbors. We’re in this fucking nightmare together, after all.

Which is why I’m putting this in a blog post—to have for future use but also to make it easy to share. So please make your own plans for the climate disasters that are going to continue to roll out like clock-work (and my god actually get worse, which I really don’t want to think about, but it’s true). But also start telling your friends, share posts like this, talk about it. Help build community resilience through education and then pressure your local officials to get ready for stuff like this. There’s a lot more to know and to learn and I’ll share along the way. But we each gotta take responsibility for building community-level resilience as well as taking care of our loved ones.

Stay safe out there, friends.

Investing in Better Social Media - Susan Kaye Quinn

2025-01-10T00:36:03.229Z

We all know social media has changed us: in the best case, it lets us connect with people we would never meet and stay in touch with those we already have.

But the dark side is fully manifesting and so we need to evolve. I’ve been giving conscious thought for years to the question of HOW? How do we escape the evils while keeping the good parts?

The answer I’ve found is to be flexible and creative — to reach out to do zoom teas with that friend you miss or the one you want to know better; to form small online groups to have that closer, more frequent interaction that allows more closeness; to join social networks without algorithms so you have to actually make those connections yourself, selectively, consciously, over time.

In short, it requires effort to keep in touch in ways that aren’t “check in on FB and see if Zuckerberg will allow me to talk to my friends today”—because if you go with the easy path the billionaires have laid down for you, then you’re going to pay the price they exact, what every price they want, whenever they want it.

Maybe that extra effort means you go for quality over quantity. Maybe it makes you really think about why you’re connecting at all, what you’re looking for, what you have to offer, what the whole point of it all is.

But here’s the thing: that extra effort has really paid off for me. I’ve traveled to meet online friends in person. I’ve had them come to my city to visit. I’ve set up digital spaces that are much more cozy where we can really talk. Zoom teas are amazing for deepening a friendship.

Sue’s Ioniq 6 EV charging at an Electrify America station as Sue Walks the Earth.

That effort has changed how I view connections in a major way.

Connecting online is GREAT, but there are many ways to do it—billionaire-owned social media like Meta and Twitter aren’t the only way and they have tarnished what was really good about it in their pursuit of ever-more-power-and-riches.

So yes, we’re in transition. And sure, it’s going to take some effort to do this in a way that works for you, as you figure out what price you’re willing to pay to keep the connections you want. I’d personally rather pay the price of more investment of my time to have better connections, better friendships, rather than pay by being a digital prole for the billionaires, supplying them with content and eyeballs for ads and attention for their hate-mongering.

I’m finding, across the board, in everything from social media to fighting the climate crisis, that a better world doesn’t just happen by default. It’s not the easiest or cheapest option: it takes effort and expense, either in money or time, but that’s how you build something better.

The payoff is you get a life that’s better… and you’ve opted out of the steady degradation and enshittification circus happening all around you.

Keep working for a better world, friends. We all deserve it.

Sue

Good friends and good coffee while Sue Walks the Earth.

Meeting a good online friend for the first time in person!

(This is the kind of post is what I used to mini-blog on Facebook, but I’m slowly pulling all those old posts over, as I invest some time to literally reclaim my words from the billionaire content machine. You can subscribe on the sidebar to get these posts in your email inbox, if you like. More ways to follow me below.)

Bluesky & Mastodon are more “short form” social media posts — I’m very active on both:

Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/susankayequinn.bsky.social

Mastodon https://wandering.shop/@susankayequinn

BRIGHT GREEN FUTURES podcast/substack where I talk about solarpunk and fighting the climate crisis: https://brightgreenfutures.substack.com/podcast

My author newsletter, for when I have new fiction out: https://www.subscribepage.com/SKQStories_of_Singularity

For periodic writerly info: Sue’s Writers List: https://landing.mailerlite.com/webforms/landing/v1i8c3

For Writers on the Moon updates: https://landing.mailerlite.com/webforms/landing/g0c5i2

Email sue@twistedspacepub.com

More on me leaving FB here: https://susankayequinn.com/2024/11/on-leaving-facebook.html

Summary of changes for December 2024 - Hundred Rabbits

2025-01-01T17:41:38.358Z

Hey everyone!

This is the list of all the changes we've done to our projects during the month of December.

Summary Of Changes

100r.co, updated the documentation for our various projects.
Left, added support for unicode input(Mastodon).
Rabbit Waves, added a page on Air to Ground Signals.
December Adventure, collected Devine's code experiments.

Before diving into the ins and outs of the past year, we'd like to begin by sending our very warmest thanks to everyone who generously hosted us, drove us to the hardware store, invited us out for fries to cheer us up, fixed typos in the books, improved the documentation, lent us power-tools, donated to the studio, spent hours to show us how to fix broken things and corrected us when we were wrong.

During the first few weeks of the year, we were busy with planning our upcoming sail north to Alaska, during which a DDoS attack took down many of our repositories and precipitated our decentralizing of the project source files. Mirroring our projects across multiple forges and diversifying the means in which they were available became necessary.

In preparation for the heavy weather up north, we strengthened the chainplates and replaced a few experienced halyards. In fact, our most vivid memories of the early spring was of the blisters we made splicing dyneema. We've also built ourselves a gimballed stove with space for an open pantry allowing us to store more fresh vegetables by doing away with the oven.

Our summer was spent exploring the Northern Canada and Alaskan coastline to test the recent boat projects, a sort of shakedown if you will, in preparation for plans we may divulge in a future update. During our transit, we began writing down notes on various forms of analog communication which have now mostly fallen into obscurity. These notes later became an integral part of the Rabbit Waves project, created with the hope of sparking an interest in these valuable but vanishing skillsets.

Through it all, we continued improving the Uxn ecosystem documentation and toolchain, which has played a central role in our work now for four years! We've also explored other enticing avenues where small robust virtual machines could be used for knowledge preservation, namely Conway's Fractran, which all came together into the Shining Sand talk given at the the year's end.

We're looking cautiously forward to the challenges that awaits us all in 2025. Approaching these adversarial forces with collective tactical preparedness and clarity is more important than ever, and we shall all rise to the occasion!

We had a lot of really good wildlife moments this year, and so the last drawing of 2024 is of a half-mooning seal.

Book Club: This month we are reading The Secret History by Donna Tartt. Our favorite book this year was West with the Night by Beryl Markham, see all of the other books we read in 2024.

Solarpunk and eco-dreaming - BlogFlock

The Collier Problem: Toward a Definition and Application - NO TECH MAGAZINE

SO[L.A.]RPUNK - Solarpunk Magazine

TRANSCRIPT

How to Prepare (Not Prep) for Uncertain Times… and Build a Better World in the Process - Susan Kaye Quinn

About That Garden

Community Gardens

Changing the Way You Buy Things

Buyerarchy of Needs: Sue’s Expansion Pack

SOLAR: How to Get Started and Why You Should - Susan Kaye Quinn

GET SOLAR TO SAVE THE PLANET

GET SOLAR TO LITERALLY TAKE POWER FROM THE UTILITY COMPANY

GET SOLAR FOR CLIMATE RESILIENCE

IF YOU LIVE IN AN APARTMENT: COMMUNITY SOLAR

IF YOU LIVE IN A HOUSE: ROOFTOP SOLAR

GETTING ESTIMATES FOR ROOFTOP SOLAR

HOW TO PAY FOR ROOFTOP SOLAR

THE THREE WAYS TO PAY

BONUS CONTENT

DEI, Education, & a Solarpunk Future - Solarpunk Magazine

The Compressed Book Edition - LOW←TECH MAGAZINE English

The Compressed Book Edition

Books or Website?

Carbon Emissions & Energy Use

How Many Trees Have We Cut Down?

How Many Books are Thrown Away?

Other Low-tech Magazine Books

Ebooks and Thematic Books

Aging with Dignity in a Solarpunk Future - Solarpunk Magazine

Solarpunk Magazine Issue #20 and Latest Podcast Episode - Solarpunk Magazine

New Podcast Episodes

New Podcast Episode: Solarpunk vs. Imperialism Pt. 2 - Solarpunk Magazine

Summary of changes for February 2025 - Hundred Rabbits

Summary Of Changes

Solarpunk vs. Imperialism: New Podcast Episode - Solarpunk Magazine

Doing Nothing Will Lose You Everything - Susan Kaye Quinn

New Demand Utopia Podcast Episodes! - Solarpunk Magazine

Microplastics: Reduce Your Exposure - Susan Kaye Quinn

How to Reduce Your Exposure

Isn’t It Pointless? Microplastics Are Everywhere!

What You Can Do To Reduce the Threat of Plastics

Summary of changes for January 2025 - Hundred Rabbits

Summary Of Changes

January ’25 Newsletter: New Podcast and Imagine 2200 Winners - Solarpunk Magazine

Solarpunk Magazine Issue #19 Now Available

Radical Hope and Resistance in the Age of Climate Disaster

Imagine 2200 Announces Latest Competition Winners

The Story You Tell Matters - Susan Kaye Quinn

Backup Power for Air Filters + Water - Susan Kaye Quinn

Learning From Climate Disasters

Investing in Better Social Media - Susan Kaye Quinn

Summary of changes for December 2024 - Hundred Rabbits

Summary Of Changes

Radical Hope and Resistance in the
Age of Climate Disaster