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Honestly the first thing is that a solarpunk life is as can be lived today can never be perfect. That is due to the very simple fact, that our society is not perfect and a good quality life in a material sense depends on it. The key is to make our current world better. So the first thing is to look at your life and look at where you make the world better and where you make it worse and then do more of the former rather then the latter.
In terms of personal impact the big ones are:
- transport, aka less car and planes and more public transport, cycling and walking
- vegan diet or at least less meat
- home heating using less energy with insulation and using a somewhat low carbon heating systems like heat pumps or a better cooling system, with a properly designed or adapted house. Also the smaller the better.
- voting if you can and that includes voting for less bad canidates. That is honestly a big impact with very little actual work
- smart investing, if possible
- Become active in good projects in your community, if only in a very limited way. There are always some social, enviromental and so forth projects going on
- change to a more usefull job, that is 40h of your week, so if you can it can have a massive impact
- reduce, reuse, recycle that is a really usefull thing. Less stuff means less work, reusing and recycling also means less capitalist exploitation, most importantly of you.
- Also really important to transform your life in a way to give you more options. The key is to become economically as independent as possible. The key parts for that are simple living, aka buy less (new) stuff, wealth and different income streams.
It is reall hard to say what is easy, as we just do not know your current lifestyle and resources. If you own your home for example chaning the heating system is relativly easy, but if you rent it might be impossible, but if you live in a flat in a big city, going car free is easy. It all depends and we can not decide for you, but you have to solve that one yourself. Living a good life is not easy, that is unfortuatly the truth.
There are some great ideas in there, but I don't quite think that what you are describing is solarpunk. More like a eco-socialist The list needs more solar and more punk:
More solar ideas:
- Build your own house battery system
- Install solar panels, geothermal heating/cooling
- capture rainwater for plants/animals
- Plant trees. Lots of trees.
- Use small computers to automate plant watering/hydroponics systems *Indoor vertical farming
- run for local government to spread solarpunk ideas and help take action
- Learn to sew, make clothes from repurposed textiles/mend clothes instead of buying new ones
- start a blog/website spreading solarpunk ideas
- create music/art with solarpunk ideas
More punk ideas:
- Seed bombing
- Destroying/vandalizing infrastructure used for fossil fuels
- Destroy/vandalize heavy machinery used for biodiversity destruction (road construction, mining, single-family housing developments)
- join/create an intentional community or eco village
- blockade roads, drastically slowing economic activity
- Blockade private/executive airports
- Pirate software, research papers, textbooks, and help keep information open source
- create music/art spreading solarpunk ideas
There are some great ideas in there, but I don’t quite think that what you are describing is solarpunk. More like a eco-socialist
My thinking was more of a what are things, which have a good impact / easyness ratio. That means a lot of these solutions use our current system to a fairly large extend, as it makes them easier to do. Thats propably, why you get socialist vibes. Also I tried to stay away from "criminal" stuff, as that does carry a fairly high risk and is propably a bad place to start.
Again, if it's bad depends on the personal perspective and context. Both of your ideas are great, the more mainstream ones as well as the more 'criminal' ones. People who currently have kids, for example, might want to opt for a more crime-free style, younger people might feel more angry and want to get active. Usually I am more for the constructive than the destructive, but that might just reflect my relatively comfortable position in life.
This is the kind of thing I was looking for. Practical things that make a difference. Thankyou.