There's currently a huge push online to make Solarpunk a thing, as a kind of an optimistic counterpart to Cyberpunk, but I'm skeptical about whether it can attain the same level of cultural traction as the other big *punks.
Cyberpunk and steampunk both fetishize aesthetics from the past - 80's corporate Japan and the Victorian Britain, respectively, - there's a sort of nostalgic longing that keeps them culturally relevant. Solarpunk tries to fetishize sustainability in a similar way, but I'm not sure if there's enough foundation there to build onto.
I guess the first step then is to build a wider foundation for sustainability! I feel like building closed loop systems well is extremely rewarding(think aquaponics) but it is also hard to scale...and in a world where everything seemingly gets pushed to be scaled, adoption is more in a hobby form.
Cyberpunk is an explicitly dystopian genre setting so I'm not sure "nostalgic longing" is how I would characterize it so much as searching for a kind of catharsis or fictionalized escape from the things about it people feel parallel their own lives.
Neither would I. If Neuromancer wrote about 80's Japan corporate culture it is because it was written in the 80's and tried to extrapolate that to the 21st Century.
This article’s main purpose seems to be to fill the gap you observe:
“ Perhaps you might have also picked up on one of the more discreet but omnipresent characteristics of Schuiten’s work (and thus the Solarpunk aesthetic), which is his undeniable appreciation for Art Nouveau.”
>There's currently a huge push online to make Solarpunk a thing
Its proponents seem to be flogging the Green New Deal, or related policies, but is this spontaneous, done out of conviction, or is it more coordinated?
I would argue that cyberpunk is only nostalgic because not much has been done to modernize it or push the genre forward. It's simply nostalgic because it's aged... similar mid-century depictions of the future.
Given Wikipedia's definition Solarpunk fits squarely into the punk ethos:
The punk ethos is primarily made up of beliefs such as non-conformity, anti-authoritarianism, anti-fascism, anti-corporatism, a do-it-yourself ethic, anti-consumerist, anti-corporate greed, direct action and not "selling out".
Comes up on which media? Very often mainstream media like hollywood or video game industry love to coopt the aesthetic of a movement and water down its message.
People often complain that the idea of cyberpunk is being turned from a protest against a dystopian future to a bland scifi style with fog and neon lights.
Instead, The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin is an excellent example of solarpunk.
Cyberpunk and steampunk both fetishize aesthetics from the past - 80's corporate Japan and the Victorian Britain, respectively, - there's a sort of nostalgic longing that keeps them culturally relevant. Solarpunk tries to fetishize sustainability in a similar way, but I'm not sure if there's enough foundation there to build onto.