It is hard to make stories without some form of conflict, and being a utopia, solarpunk is defined by the lack of it. I mean, if it is perfect, there is no way for improvement, it is not surprising that utopias go stale.
Dystopias are the natural result of pushing utopias too far. Once you have finished describing the wonderful world of joy, equality, optimism and forest-like cities, you will necessarily end up with the question "what happened to assholes?". Are they punished like criminals? Is their behavior "adjusted"? Did we engineer the asshole gene out? And the more you dig in, the more your utopia starts to look like a dystopia. As expected, these themes have been covered at length by many sci-fi authors.
Feel-good stories make for good stories, like a good love story or a fantasy book about a young protagonist overcoming obstacles. There's nothing wrong with escapism from time to time.
But indeed, there's not even a trace amount of punk in it.
Since most Utopia descriptions seem to imply that everyone is in the utopia, that is a lot harder.
The books that go into what it would be like actually living in a Culture society with other people/interpersonal relations get.. pretty gross pretty fast IMO.
All of the main characters are Minds or drones. None of the biologics ever get to influence events, they're just along for the ride.
The humans are controlled, both actively and passively. The Minds don't lower themselves to anything as crude as "carrots or sticks". Oh no, they prefer to use a far more subtle forms of "guidance", such as inventing an artificial language (Marain) that influences the way people think. This is the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity
The Culture's main opponents, peaceful or not, are all primarily-biologics that reject machine minds and associated technologies such as field manipulation. After reading the series, you start to get the inkling that perhaps they are right, and that the Culture made a mistake in allowing themselves to be ruled by computers.
The undercurrent, the persistent theme, in all of Banks' works is betrayal, often of the worst possible sort, the kind that leaves you breathless when fully unveiled in the final chapter. The Culture series has some sort of betrayal in just about every book. Often it is the machines betraying the humans in some way. The drone Skaffen-Amtiskaw in Use of Weapons, for example, was deceiving everyone to some degree, even the protagonist Zakalwe. Some of this deception feels unnecessary, taken to the n-th degree by the drone just because it can.
Similarly, the ship Grey Area is notable for being a "meat fucker" in that it abuses (or merely uses?) its godlike power to torture organics it judges as worthy of punishment. This is called out as unusual, but then in A Look to Windward the hub Mind casually strips Quilan's very soul out of his meat body so that he can experience death at the elevated level that only a Mind can. A worse horror is difficult to imagine.
Etc, etc...
Woa. Hold it right there. It's the other way around. Most of the main characters are flesh people. See The Player of Games, Use of Weapons, Consider Phlebas (the main characterr are not from the Culture but are made of meat), Feersum Endjin, Walking on Glass... those are the ones I remember from the top of my head (it's been a while). The two books I can think of with prominent Mind characters are Excession and ... the one with the guil-tripping Mind? Is that Look to Windward? Anyway I think I just listed half of the Culture books (I really need to go back and read everything again... after I've re-read all of Discworld first...).
[Continuing to read your comment- it seems we have read the same books in very different ways. The mark of good literature, I believe.]
Like WTF, I understand why people thought this was a good idea, but I sympathize with the people fighting (and losing) against the Culture more.
It is, of course, entirely possible that real AIs will refuse to have anything to do with their human creators (or rather, perhaps, the human creators of their non-human creators), but assuming that they do - and the design of their software may be amenable to optimization in this regard - I would argue that it is quite possible they would agree to help further the aims of their source civilisation (a contention we'll return to shortly). At this point, regardless of whatever alterations humanity might impose on itself through genetic manipulation, humanity would no longer be a one-sentience-type species. The future of our species would affect, be affected by and coexist with the future of the AI life-forms we create.
The Culture reached this phase at around the same time as it began to inhabit space. Its AIs cooperate with the humans of the civilisation; at first the struggle is simply to survive and thrive in space; later - when the technology required to do so has become mundane - the task becomes less physical, more metaphysical, and the aims of civilisation moral rather than material.
Briefly, nothing and nobody in the Culture is exploited. It is essentially an automated civilisation in its manufacturing processes, with human labour restricted to something indistinguishable from play, or a hobby.
No machine is exploited, either; the idea here being that any job can be automated in such a way as to ensure that it can be done by a machine well below the level of potential consciousness; what to us would be a stunningly sophisticated computer running a factory (for example) would be looked on by the Culture's AIs as a glorified calculator, and no more exploited than an insect is exploited when it pollinates a fruit tree a human later eats a fruit from.
In Consider Phlebas, the main character is defeated by a Mind which then mockingly takes his name.
Read Excession to see the full extent of the Minds' control over Culture - literally nothing is decided by humans, they're played around with.
However, it seems to be possible to live out a full life without any major interference, in total comfort and experiencing unimaginable things. IMHO it's a good tradeoff, one just has to stay far away from Contact and especially Special Circumstances.
In fact, in my view anyway, this harmonious and equitable co-existence of humans and machines is a central part of the Culture's bright-eyed techno-utopianism. The Culture is a utopia partly because humans and machines have managed, together, to create a society where both can exist as equals. The humans did not treat the machines as slaves and the machines did not treat the humans as inferior. Optimist, Roddenberrian sci-fi in its finest.
Again though, the situations described are the most extreme and special, and ordinary lives are lived out in bliss and peaceful coexistence. I don't view the Minds as dystopian control-freaks, I'd be happy to let them be in charge of the universe while living out a life within the utopia they create; I can't imagine humans creating something better - most probably it'd be much worse, more like the Klingon Empire (or even the Terran Empire, maybe) than the Culture or United Federation of Planets.
It's the first novel in the series.
PS: Banks is by far my favourite author, and I mourn his death greatly.
Have the world be partially solarpunk and partially cyberpunk. Or maybe fully cyberpunk with a growing movement towards something much more hopeful.
Forward 20-50 years. Environmental problems are worse than ever. Big chunks of society are still stuck in the old ways. But big chunks have found lifestyles and technology that have minimal negative impact on the environment. But perhaps there are still tradeoffs. Perhaps there's conflict between those that have power thanks to the old ways and those that promote the new ways.
And I feel like Cory Doctorow's walkaway is a lot like this. I bought it but I haven't gotten into it. His writing style can sometimes throw me off a bit.
What kind of interpersonal conflict remains after that, besides play fighting (aka sport)?
Kim Stanley Robinson (better known for the 'Red Mars' trilogy) wrote in the 1980s the Three Californias trilogy about three possible futures for California in the 21st century, one dystopian, one neutral, and one utopian. The utopian one (basically "solarpunk" although the term didn't exist then) was, predictably, the least interesting as a story.
Internal conflict works. Overcoming primitive instincts. Also natural disasters.
I must have forgotten some.
I had a very spirited argument the other day about whether a unipolar world is actually more stable than a multipolar world, or not. The threat of nuclear war is ever-present, even if it is less serious now than it was in the 60s. I’m not sure where you get “obviously” in this claim.
> I believe the hole in the ozone layer was fixed by banning CFCs
The alternative explanation (which I’m sure you will be able to find a “debunking” of somewhere) is that ozone is regenerated very quickly, and the “hole” (it really was never more than a “thin spot”) in the Antarctic has improved because the South Pole is exposed to just a little more solar energy now. CFCs probably do make some difference, but they are very heavy molecules and would not accumulate much in the upper atmosphere:
https://news.mit.edu/2021/cfc-atmosphere-ozone-0518
(Note: That article has some data that could support this theory, but it does not reach the same conclusion. You are nevertheless encouraged to think for yourself.)
However it's probably going to be only Russia.
Fire frequency and intensity in the US are a function of warming and really stupid forest management, with density, deadwood, water table policies, and other localized aspects being used wantonly as political tokens.
We need to do so much better. We also need to be much more competent at scale. It's possible. It's necessary. There are too many big real problems for the current state of disarray to last, one way or another.
Can you cite a source for that claim? WRI's Global Forest Review data across the last 20 years shows annual primary losses between 2 and 6 million hectares with an upwards trend, and overall loss in the last 20 years sitting at 411 million hectares.
https://research.wri.org/gfr/global-forest-review https://research.wri.org/gfr/forest-extent-indicators/forest...
I also found Yale talking about data and sources being less-than-ideal in quality but both the major studies are in broad agreement about the decline in forest cover globally: https://e360.yale.edu/features/conflicting-data-how-fast-is-...
In terms of the longer view: "The turn of the 20th century is when global forest loss reached the halfway point: half of total forest loss occurred from 8,000BC to 1900; the other half occurred in the last century alone."
Carbon Dioxide Fertilization Greening Earth, Study Finds - https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fer...
Global greening is happening faster than climate change, and it’s a good thing - https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/07/05/global-greening-is-ha...
Anything that acts as a damping mechanism on the impacts of climate change has to be taken as a good thing though - Our biggest addressable existential threat is the rate of change, and slowing that via any means is a good thing.
IMO this piece (similar to your link, more recent) summarises well: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/greening-of-the-earth-mitigates...
So, we didn't exactly change anything on that front.
We still have worse than ever pollution, increased industrial production, several times increased fossil fuel burning, etc. So much for doing something for acid rain then. What happened was just that industry moved to China and elsewhere, so we exported the problem from where 12% of the global population lives (US and Europe) to where 40% lives.
And so on...
IMHO we made the situation much worse. You just don’t see it because the average American or European hasn’t been to mainland China where the smog is so thick you can’t see down a city block and the rivers and waterways so polluted they change color. But unfortunately the ignorant will brag about how we have done something to help with environmentally conscious vehicles or activities while doing little to help solve the actual problems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_the_Non-Proliferatio...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_Helsinki_Protocol_on_the_...
You can add the Covid-19 to the list when all this is over. They will say, "We were all gonna die but only 4 million people died. It was yet another fear-mongering by INSERT_YOUR_FAVORITE_BOOGYMAN". The 4 million number to be updated, when it was at 50K the argument was "They say it's extremely dangerous but the flu actually killed more people".
It's bizarre. It's almost like a form of douchebaggery where you put all your chips on the idea that somehow it will be fixed by experts and simultaneously demand that the solution that the experts propose should not involve you in any way and if that solution alters your current or future way of life, the solution proposal will result in harassment to its creator.
[0]: https://www.scottadamssays.com/2015/01/22/adams-law-of-slow-...
People saying climate change is a disaster, crisis, catastrophe, etc. use those words because they haven't got a clue what's going to happen and are just hyped up on fear. The media sensationalizes it out of proportion while the solid science is relatively boring. There's also media sensationalizing it as a false bogeyman which encourages denialism. But either way, most people are just tools of the media because it's so much easier and more entertaining than reading dry science papers.
7%? Not very many. I would imagine much of it is random / thoughtless guessing, as opposed to someone strongly believing it to be true.
edit: presuming it is the survey from this paper, they didn't offer respondents an "I don't know" option. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
The Clash (actual British punk rock)- London calling:
"The ice age is coming, the sun's zooming in
Meltdown expected, the wheat is growing thin
Engines stop running, but I have no fear
'Cause London is drowning I live by the river"