Prof. Stacey Balkan Publishes "Can Solarpunk Save the World?" in Public Books

Congratulations to Prof. Stacey Balkan on publication of her essay "Can Solarpunk Save the World?" in Public Books. "Can Solarpunk Save the World?" is an exploration of a genre and a political movement that offers viable infrastructural alternatives (and hope) for a world after extraction.

Balkan's essay is a new format for Public Books—a long-form essay on issues of the day. An excerpt from "Can Solarpunk Save the World?":

Solar power is, of course, already being slotted into existing grids and investment portfolios across the world. This shift is occurring because of increasing awareness of the fact that “the sunlight striking the earth’s surface in just one hour delivers enough energy to power the world economy for one year,” alongside the belated acknowledgement of the catastrophic consequences of atmospheric carbon.5 (Although, because of the intermittent nature of solar power, it has yet to gain traction as a marketable alternative to fossil fuels.) But what organizations like Queremos Sol are calling for is something different: a society founded not on scarcity and hierarchy, but, instead, on abundance and equality. They don’t just want the sun; they want what energy-justice workers would describe as an “energy commons.” They want not only solar power, but a solar politics oriented toward solidarity.

Read Balkan's essay "Can Solarpunk Save the World?"at Public Books; read more about Balkan's projects on her faculty page and at her website.
 

beech tree roots by Felix Mittermeier; licensed under CC0 / public domain declaration