Solarpunk as a way of redesigning higher education for the climate crisis

One well-known risk of working on climate change is depression. The topic presents so many terrible futures that dwelling in it can be mentally brutal.

In response to this grim issue, people have been offering hopeful ways of thinking about global warming. One of them became a design movement which strikes me as an antidote, and I’d like to introduce it and its implications for higher education in this post.

The design movement is called solarpunk.

1: What is solarpunk?

I’ve seen people describe it as a way of prompting us to imagine the best possible Anthropocene, and that’s a good start. Generally solarpunk envisions a positive response to the climate crisis, a way of designing and living that’s in harmony with nature, as opposed to exploiting it. We rethink everything from transportation to clothing, food systems, landscapes, and social relations. Put another way, solarpunk is a prompt to get us thinking of a climate future that isn’t horrifying, but actually appealing.

The name is interesting. On its face the two parts clash: “solar” standing for the sun, of course, and “punk” referring to a rebellious or nihilisitc attitude. In practice the prefix makes us think of solar power, representing renewable energy in general, while the suffix emphasizes creative dissent and an attempt to break with the present day order of things. The sun also tends to have a positive…