The world’s largest beaver dam is not like human dams. It does not stopper a river, or even a stream or rivulet. Its low half-mile barrier collects small trickles that come off a plateau called the Birch Mountains. Along the margin of this comparatively higher ground, it accommodates itself to a slope of less than two percent. The gathered-up trickles have amounted to a lake, and after the beavers eat the plants that grow in it, they may relocate to another dam and another pond, graze that area, then move on again, in a sort of crop rotation. Other dams in this beaver belt are up to three-quarters the length of the longest dam. These long, low dams may help the beavers adapt to drought.

As far as is known, only one person has ever been to the world’s largest beaver dam. In July 2014, Rob Mark, of Maplewood, New Jersey, 44 years old at the time, reached the dam after a challenging journey. Holding the flag of the Explorers Club, the international organization with headquarters in New York City, he took a photo of himself standing on the dam. The top of the structure was the only solid ground he had encountered for miles. After he got back, a newspaper in Edmonton did a story about him, and he appeared in other newspapers and a travel magazine. His achievement is like the dam in that so far no one has said it isn’t unique.

only-tiktoks:

WaterLight is a portable lantern that can be charged with salt water or urine

Colombian renewable energy start-up E-Dina has developed a cordless light that converts salt water into electricity as a more reliable alternative to solar lamps in off-grid communities.
The portable device, called WaterLight, needs to be filled with 500 millilitres of seawater – or urine in emergency situations – to emit up to 45 days of light.

Acting as a mini power generator, the device can also be used to charge a mobile phone or another small device via its integrated USB port.

WaterLight works 24 hours a day through ionisation, which sees electrolytes in the saline liquid react with magnesium and copper plates on the interior of the lamp to produce electricity.

Although this is a long-established process, E-Dina has developed a way to sustain the chemical reaction over a prolonged period of time so that it can be used to power a light source.

After the salt particles have evaporated, the lamp can be emptied and refilled while the used water can be repurposed for washing or cleaning.

Read more about the WaterLight and the Wayúu people who have been testing the lamp over on Dezeen.

the-lemonaut:

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Characters co-owned w @_magic.stardust_ on IG 😌✨ (a couple more comics abt this on my account already)

I’m not a very positive person, i have a LOT of doomer tendencies. I feel everything like it’s cranked up to the max, and as you can imagine it doesn’t feel great. Every day throws more atrocious things in my face, and i can’t ignore it 🥲

I see other people feeling the same way. We dissociate and numb ourselves by watching, playing, buying stuff. Hateful movements are gaining traction and climate change has its foot in the door

And it’s all happening either way, to some degree. I feel like shit, and i’m sick of that. I might as well have a little bit of hope, otherwise i’ll go bonkers 😭 Do we continue doomering our way through life or ignoring things altogether, or do we choose to hope a little?

That’s why i’m looking into Solarpunk and am thinking of taking any readers (and myself) on a little journey through a better world, and how it might work, through a series of mini-comics I’m posting here. I don’t have all the answers (no one person ever does), and i don’t hold any pretenses that this kind of world is going to be our future. But i often hear “You love critiquing the status quo, but what do you propose instead?” I’d like to find out too. Here’s to something we can hope for, no matter how slim the chances are! Because as I said, i might just lose my mind otherwise ☠️

P.S for new peeps: this is an AU with me and my friend’s OCs, so all characters are genderless and go by they/them. It’s not identical to our world in that regard, but other than this fact we try to keep it more or less realistic 🤙

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I spent a thousand krillion hours on this and the other Solarpunk comics, consider throwing 2$ at me on Buy Me A Coffee to raise my spirits :] I’m not doing well mentally these days, but people’s appreciation helps a lot. Thank you very much!

<3

From Solarpunk is going mainstream. This couple’s $1M Kickstarter proves it

“Any near-future science fiction that does not engage with climate change is fantasy" 
- Sarena Ulibarri

(Source: bbc.com)

alpaca-clouds:

The history of Solarpunk

Originally posted by alpaca-clouds

Okay, I guess this has to be said, because the people will always claim the same wrong thing: No, Solarpunk did not “start out as an aesthetic”. Jesus, where the hell does this claim even come from? Like, honestly, I am asking.

Solarpunk started out as a genre, that yes, did also include design elements, but also literary elements. A vaguely defined literary genre, but a genre never the less.

And I am not even talking about those early books that we today also claim under the Solarpunk umbrella. So, no, I am not talking about Ursula K. LeGuin, even though she definitely was a big influence on the genre.

The actual history of Solarpunk goes something like that: In the late 1990s and early 2000s the term “Ecopunk” was coined, which was used to refer to books that kinda fit into the Cyberpunk genre umbrella, but were more focused on ecological themes. This was less focused on the “high tech, high life” mantra that Solarpunk ended up with, but it was SciFi stories, that were focused on people interacting with the environment. Often set to a backdrop of environmental apocalypse. Now, other than Solarpunk just a bit later, this genre never got that well defined (especially with Solarpunk kinda taking over the role). As such there is only a handful of things that ever officially called themselves Ecopunk.

At the same time, though, the same sort of thought was picked up in the Brazilian science fiction scene, where the idea was further developed. Both artistically, where it got a lot of influence from the Amazofuturism movement, but also as an ideology. In this there were the ideas from Ecopunk as the “scifi in the ecological collaps” in there, but also the idea of “scifi with technology that allows us to live within the changing world/allows us to live more in harmony with nature”.

Now, we do not really know who came up with the idea of naming this “Solarpunk”. From all I can find the earliest mention of the term “Solarpunk” that is still online today is in this article from the Blog Republic of Bees. But given the way the blogger talks about it, it is clear there was some vague definition of the genre before it.

These days it is kinda argued about whether that title originally arose in Brazil or in the Anglosphere. But it seems very likely that the term was coined between 2006 and 2008, coming either out of the Brazilian movement around Ecopunk or out of the English Steampunk movement (specifically the literary branch of the Steampunk genre).

In the following years it was thrown around for a bit (there is an archived Wired article from 2009, that mentions the term once, as well as one other article), but for the moment there was not a lot happening in this regard.

Until 2012, when the Brazilian Solarpunk movement really started to bloom and at the same time in Italy Commando Jugendstil made their appearance. In 2012 in Brazil the anthology “Solarpunk: Histórias ecológicas e fantásticas em um mundo sustentável” was released (that did get an English translation not too long ago) establishing some groundwork for the genre. And Commando Jugendstil, who describe themselves as both a “Communication Project” and an “Art Movement”, started to work on Solarpunk in Italy. Now, Commando Jugendstil is a bit more complicated than just one or the other. As they very much were a big influence on some of the aesthetic concepts, but also were releasing short stories and did some actual punky political action within Italy.

And all of that was happening in 2012, where the term really started to take off.

And only after this, in 2014, Solarpunk became this aesthetic we know today, when a (now defuct) tumblr blog started posting photos, artworks and other aesthetical things under the caption of Solarpunk. Especially as it was the first time the term was widely used within the Anglosphere.

Undoubtedly: This was probably how most people first learned of Solarpunk… But it was not how Solarpunk started. So, please stop spreading that myth.

The reason this bothers me so much is, that it so widely ignores how this movement definitely has its roots within Latin America and specifically Brazil. Instead this myth basically tries to claim Solarpunk as a thing that fully and completely originated within the anglosphere. Which is just is not.

And yes, there was artistic aspects to that early Solarpunk movement, too. But also a literary and political aspectt. That is not something that was put onto a term that was originally an aesthetic - but rather it was something that was there from the very beginning.

Again: There has been an artistic and aesthetic aspect in Solarpunk from the very beginning, yes. But there has been a literary and political aspect in it the entire time, too. And trying to divorce Solarpunk from those things is just wrong and also… kinda misses the point.

So, please. Just stop claiming that entire “it has been an aesthetic first” thing. Solarpunk is a genre of fiction, it is a political movement, just as much as it is an artistic movement. Always has been. And there has always been punk in it. So, please, stop acting as if Solarpunk is just “pretty artistic vibes”. It is not.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk, I guess.

Originally posted by alpaca-clouds

Hi! Admin Jay here! Great overview thanks @alpaca-clouds! Commando Jugendstil are good friends of ours, we love them a lot, solidarity!

Perhaps one day the folks behind this blog will write the history of Solarpunk - as we understand it - because its way weirder than you’d expect! lol

For now tho, for those interested, you can find a (more or less complete) history of Solarpunk media online from 2008-18 at the reference guide we put together.

The first Solarpunk post on Tumblr ever was our ‘The initial equation’ posted by Admin Adam Flynn, June 2012.

Concurring with Alpaca, Solarpunk has always been about more than pretty aesthetics: Check out Adam’s July 2012 essay ’On the Need for New Futures’ republished here with a forward which was written after the IRL/Online Solarpunk meet-up at WeirdShitCon Portland 2012. Post which, many of the other early admins on this blog got added and involved.

It’s worth mentioning that 'Need for New Futures’ ends with a bunch of open political and social questions asking what Solarpunk could become? (as it wasn’t anything at all at the time) the last two being:

• What is the visual aesthetic of Solarpunk?
• Who’s with us?

Solarpunk as it’s known today originates in Brazil!

When ’Need for New Futures’ went online ’Histórias ecológicas’ was yet to be published, but novelist JesseaPerry was aware of it, and said the word 'Solarpunk’ to Adam - and the rest is history.

Subsequently, Solarpunk had parallel development in the Anglosphere and in Brazil with NO contact between the two scenes until after the publication of the Kickstarted translation of Histórias ecológicas in English by Sarena Ulibarri at Worldweavers in 2017. We (folks behind this blog) have had our lives enriched immensely by contact and dialogue with Solarpunks in Brazil since this happened! The Solarpunk movement at large is in great debt to Sarena!

The first self described Solarpunk story in English was “Sunshine State” written by Adam Flynn and Andrew Dana Hudson - also the winner of 2016’s Everything Change: An Anthology of Climate Fiction short story competition.

Sunvault and Wings of Renewal, Biketopia etc all came out in subsequent years.

For some early Solarpunk thinking which clearly demonstrate that its about more than just aesthetics: check out Adam’s massively viral Solarpunk: Notes toward a Manifesto from 2014 and Andrew’s 2015 essay ’On the Politics of Solarpunk’ - also the reference guide.

Many of the early Solarpunk voices were interviewed by VICE a few years ago and we explicitly say Solarpunk is about the end of capitalism lol.

As for me (@thejaymo) you can read my pretty viral 2019 essay: SOLARPUNK – Life in the Future, and this more recent one Solarpunk: A Container for More Fertile Futures which is about what Solarpunk means to me.

Being involved in Solarpunk and its community of - kind, motivated people, who are concerned with the struggles en route to a better world, the solutions to live comfortably without fossil fuels, how to equitably manage scarcity and share abundance, to be kinder to each other and to the planet we share - for the last decade, has been one of the biggest and most meaningful experiences of my life.

Thank you Solarpunks 🙏.

I’ll close with our groupblogs tagline since the beginning:

Solarpunk: At once a vision of the future, a thoughtful provocation, and an achievable lifestyle. In progress…

Who’s with us?

In Idaho, beavers can be something of nuisance, chewing down trees and building dams that flood yards and fields. In the 1930s, officials began trapping beavers near cities and towns and dropping them — sometimes by parachute — into remote areas.

In one such area, Baugh Creek, beavers have visibly altered the landscape, as shown in newly released satellite imagery from NASA. Beavers erected dams that formed ponds and flooded meadows, supporting the growth of grasses and shrubs.

Flooded stretches along Baugh Creek are well guarded against drought and fire. When the Sharps Fire burned through the area in 2018, it left unsinged those parts where beavers had settled.⁠ (picture above)

(Source: e360.yale.edu)

A rendering of a rooftop terrace installed by the Parisian startup Roofscapes.

Paris When It Sizzles: The City of Light Aims to Get Smart on Heat

With its zinc roofs and minimal tree cover, Paris was not built to handle the new era of extreme heat. Now, like other cities worldwide, it is looking at ways to adapt to rising temperatures — planting rooftop terraces, rethinking its pavements, and greening its boulevards.

In many cities, this urban remodeling project is already underway. In New York City, workers and volunteers have planted over a million trees to add shade and clean the air. In Seville, Spain, city planners are using the technology of ancient underground waterways to provide cooling for the city without depending on air‑conditioning. In Freetown, Sierra Leone, officials are creating urban gardens, improving access to clean water, and erecting plexiglass awnings over outdoor markets. In Los Angeles, public works crews are painting streets white to increase reflectivity. In India, they are experimenting with green roofs, which absorb heat and create space to grow food.
But perhaps nowhere in the world do the challenges, as well as the opportunities, loom larger than in Paris, where nearly 80 percent of the buildings have zinc roofs — an affordable, corrosion-resistant and virtually inflammable innovation of the 19th century. But those roofs are, in the 21st century, deadly — heating up to 194 degrees F on a summer day. And because top‑floor garrets were not insulated, that heat is transferred directly into the rooms below.

An intertidal habitat for marine life constructed by the company Living Seawalls

Seawalls are causing intertidal habitats to vanish as ocean levels increase. But eco-entrepreneurs say artificial rockpools and crevices can save wildlife

“Species that inhabit the intertidal zone have evolved to live in that environment,” said Pip Moore, a professor of marine science at Newcastle University. These animals find the world’s rising temperatures very stressful, she says. “Lots of organisms use the natural heterogeneity in the rocky shore to hide away from those stresses – [but] a seawall or even a “riprap” boulder don’t have that complexity of habitat.”

Exactly how badly coastal wildlife is affected by coastal squeeze is not entirely clear, but scientists have found that structures such as Artecology’s Vertipools (above) show a “significantly greater” species richness when compared with a normal seawall after five years. One Bournemouth University team found species of crab, fish and periwinkle living in them that had been absent before.

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