Solarpunk Presents

In this soft-launch of Solarpunk Presents, the companion podcast to Solarpunk Futures, hosts and Solarpunk Magazine nonfiction editors Ariel Kroon and Christina De La Rocha tackle the question of “Must Solarpunk Should”? This is a dilemma that unconsciously or consciously comes through in a lot of the nonfiction submissions that we receive in our slush pile, and we have Thoughts about it. So many thoughts! Possibly controversial one! But one of the best things about solarpunk is the space that it gives us to explore and think through new paradigms, new systems thinking, new ideas – some of which maybe we don’t necessarily love, but that are part of our world regardless of whether we like it or not. We’re learning and growing with every new day as solarpunks - come join us!

PS: The audio is bumpy in parts. Please excuse the technical hiccups. At the time, Christina had the world's worst internet connection, which made recording bi-continental discussions prone to glitches.

Connect with Solarpunk Presents Podcast on Twitter, Mastodon, or at solarpunkpresents.com.

Support the show on Patreon or make a one-time donation via PayPal.

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Is there anything more solarpunk than public libraries? Serving at the heart of communities, they’re a place where anyone regardless of income, ability, race, class, or gender can go to read books, listen to music, use the internet, learn things, hear story hour, get out of the weather for a while, and ask librarians for information on just about anything, including what organizations to turn to for additional support in your life or endeavor. In Episode 2 of Season 2 of Solarpunk Presents, Christina talks to Don Gardner, a librarian for many years for the Salinas Public Libraries in Monterey County, California. Hear about how people rescued the library after the city council tried to close it down to save money, about what libraries can do for you and your community, and about what you can do for your local library.

Check out Salinas Public Libraries at https://salinaspubliclibrary.org/ and connect with them @salinaslibrary on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, or @salinaspubliclibrary on Instagram and TikTok.

Connect with Solarpunk Presents Podcast on Mastodon @solarpunkpresents@climatejustice.rocks, or at our blog https://solarpunkpresents.com/

Connect with Ariel at her blog and on Mastodon @[email protected]

Connect with Christina at her blog, on Twitter @xtinadlr, and on Mastodon @[email protected]

Support the show on Patreon or make a one-time donation via PayPal.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Why is it easier to imagine a zombie apocalypse than it is a generative, sustainable future? This question drives Joey Ayoub, host of The Fire These Times: in fact, this season of his pod is partially about solarpunk and generative futures. Tune in today to listen to Ariel and Joey discussing imaginative expansion of solarpunk, the “realist” impulse, climate anxiety and grief, and community building in a crisis. Also The Office. Trust us, it’s an important part of this whole conversation.

In this episode, Ariel speaks with Joey Ayoub, host of The Fire These Times podcast and someone who’s been focusing his podcasting and thinking on solarpunk quite a bit in the last while. Joey is a Lebanese writer, researcher, scholar, editor and podcaster currently based in Switzerland since 2020. He is a research associate at the Center for Social Sciences Research and Action and a member of Sustainability Transitions Research Network (STRN), and Degrowth Switzerland, to name just a few organizations he is involved with, and he has been published in more places than I can list here. Join us for this thought-provoking and entertaining conversation.

Links/References:

• SP episode 2.3 on Beirut and the history of Lebanon with JD Harlock
• SP episode 1.4 on climate grief and chaplaincy with Gabrielle Gelderman
• Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher
• A Paradise Built in Hell by Rebecca Solnit

Socials:

Check out The Fire These Times website, as well as Joey’s personal site, and connect with him on Twitter, Instagram, and Mastodon.

Connect with Solarpunk Presents Podcast on Twitter, Mastodon, or at our blog.

Support the show on Patreon or make a one-time donation via PayPal.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What is petroturfing? What is an energy imaginary? If, as Thomas King says, we are all stories, how can we make sense of which stories are leading us to an understanding of things as they are, rather than misrepresenting reality or persuading us to take a biased view? And what can we do when we learn to critically interpret the world around us? What are some concrete actions we can take as regular folks if we decide that we want to push back against this narrative of “ethical oil” and intervene in the reactionary oil culture war?

Dr Jordan Kinder has spent the last decade of his life thinking about these questions, specifically in the context of the Canadian oil industry and Alberta. The result? His new book Petroturfing: Refining Canadian Oil, which covers these topics and more, forthcoming from University of Minnesota Press in spring 2024. Join Ariel and Jordan to learn about the many competing narratives about (and even by!) Canadian oil and gas—including but not limited to being labelled dirty oil, ethical oil, one of the world’s leading polluters, an underdog industry under attack, a Canadian success story, the ball and chain around Canada’s neck as it tries to avert climate catastrophe, and the list goes on...

References:

• Just Powers
• Petrocultures Research Group
• Solarities
• Energy Humanities
• Kinder, Jordan “Mystifying Oil Today” for Heliotrope
• Kinder, Jordan “Tailings, Unconventional: Sedimented Horizons for More Equitable Energy Futures” for Against Catastrophe

Socials:

Connect with Jordan at jbkinder.github.io

Connect with Solarpunk Presents Podcast on Twitter, Mastodon, or at solarpunkpresents.com.

Support the show on Patreon or make a one-time donation via PayPal.

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In this episode, Ariel discusses the topic of ecocriticism with Dr Jenny Kerber, Associate Professor of English at Wilfrid Laurier University.

What is ecocriticism? Why is it important, especially for environmental activists and solarpunks, as a narrative reframing device? Solarpunks work very closely with speculation and imagination and as architects of the narratives by which we live our lives, it helps to have tools like ecocriticism at our disposal.

Join Ariel and Dr. Kerber to think through terms like “wilderness” and “nature” and “the Anthropocene”. How do we hold on to hope, despite critical engagement with the dark side of our environmental narratives?

References:

● A bit more about the WLU Land Acknowledgement

● Dr Kerber’s profile at Wilfrid Laurier U

● “The Trouble with Wilderness” by William Cronon

● Elizabeth May

● Kerber, Jenny. "Tracing One Warm Line: Climate Stories and Silences in Northwest Passage Tourism." Journal of Canadian Studies 55.4 (July 2022): 271-303.

● Timothy Clark, The Cambridge Introduction to Literature and the Environment

● Kate Soper, What is Nature? Culture, Politics and the Non-Human

● David Huebert's Chemical Valley

● Lord Byron's "Darkness"

● Don McKay, Vis à Vis: Field Notes on Poetry and Wilderness

● Amitav Ghosh, The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable

● Nicole Seymour, Bad Environmentalism: Irony and Irreverence in the Ecological Age

● Phoebe Wagner and Brontë Christopher Wieland, Almanac for the Anthropocene: A Compendium of Solarpunk Futures

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