Your garden example is exactly it. I call this American Solarpunk.
Regular solarpunk is the happy version. Everyone has panels, the cities are green, the fight is over and the good guys won. Nice to look at. Not where we live.
American Solarpunk is the fight .... happening right now. The sun is free. Rain is free. Dirt is free. And every single thing between you and those free things has a toll booth on it. Permits. Inspections. Interconnection agreements. 25-year leases where some investment firm owns the power coming off your own roof. Utility fees you pay even when you make your own electricity. And now they’re pulling the ladder up for farmers too.
It’s not that they’re against solar. They’re against you having it without them. Same reason they’d come for the garden. A tomato plant doesn’t feed a family, but it teaches you that you don’t need them, and that’s the dangerous part.
So the “punk” in solarpunk should mean what it meant in cyberpunk: the people on the ground finding their own way around the system. Buying panels direct from China. Putting them on a pergola instead of the roof so it’s not a “solar install.” Building a battery bank in the garage without asking anyone. Learning to crimp your own wire. Is this the real movement? It’s not a pretty future. It’s a fight.
CounselingTechie@slrpnk.net 1 day ago
You speak the facts. It is not escapism, it is battle. And it is a battle that must be fought with every breath. A battle of teaching, guiding, illuminating. As you said, a single plant will not feed the family, but people finding ways to grow a hundred tomato plants in hidden locations? That will. As you said on the ground and the punk akin to Cyberpunk, a community, built through communication in their own language, their own means, coordinating together with others to make sure everyone survives. Not every single person has to do everything, but a community full of people with their own skillsets? That is what is feared by the powers that be. That is why they fear the internet where people can learn. That is why they tried to make parks out to be dangerous places of drugs and criminals so people could not gather and talk. That is why they try to keep people pressured to hide indoors. Even a bunch of people getting together to have an outside dinner under gazebos and string lights scares them.
Which is good. Scare them. Make them be terrified.