Solarpunk Needs Better Stories, Not Just Better Tech - Tereza Bízková

Transcript

[Music] Okay, let me just test this out. Okay, perfect. Hello everyone. Good morning. I am Terza. I contribute to various projects. I was set fun in the comments, crypto altra and refine. And I feel super honored to be here today and speaking of Eve Prague and uh you know be maybe setting the foundations for some of the conversations that we are going to be having within the sustainable futures track of the conference within the next few days and I know that if actually has a history of you know supporting some of these and stewarding some of these solar bank

discussions and I think it's really exciting because it is like a little little opportunity for us to uh dive deep into world building and imagining what a future that we want to build uh what it looks like. So I want to focus on that today and maybe zoom in a little bit uh into what uh it takes to get more people excited uh about this vision. So what I'll do is that I'll spend the next 20 minutes basically arguing that it's not that technology is not important but rather that there is no tech scaling and adoption uh without culture and and stories. So just quickly uh let's do a little recap for what solarpunk is just to know what we'll be talking about. So

solar punk is basically a literary artistic societal movement that uh believes that you know there is a positive future out there that is like laying at the intersection of technology uh uh nature and community. So these are the the three pillars of solar punk. Obviously solar refers to renewables to an optimistic vision and punk is kind of a hint at you know this counterculture this di DIY culture this kind of opposition to the status quo. Solar punk was first mentioned in 2008 in a blog post uh titled from steampunk to solar punk by Mrs.

And it basically was uh this idea that we don't have to accept only dystopian visions of the future like cyberpunk but can have an alternative that's more optimistic. Um and then you can see that it was actually around the same time that uh the ideas for Bitcoin were laid out as well and it got more traction around 2014 where there were more posts. Uh that's also where a lot of the kind of like Tumblr aesthetic got got established. there were more posts like uh one by Adam Flynn called notes towards a solar punk manifesto. So that's kind of how how it got said.

Since then it's uh been you know like present uh more or less as a as a niche kind of movement. I think in the web free world it actually hasn't really established itself properly yet. But I think that it has a big correlation with something that has which is regenerative finance also known as refi. And I think that refi really is kind of the solar punk workshop uh in in the web free world and it has a lot of correlation when it comes to things like community currencies um you know things like uh lens tourship uh regeneration kind of uh creating different uh models of capitals that are uh less extractive and all that. Uh and I've been in the refi space for over three years now. I think it's

about four over four years old. And there have been a lot of interesting experiments also a lot of interesting challenges and I think it's uh interesting to to draw uh from that as as kind of some practical uh backing. So um that's kind of the the relation between those two. I think what's interesting obviously about both of those is that they have the same kind of they face the same criticism which is that they're trying to draw this big vision right of what the future should look like. And you must have seen like a lot of these kind of visuals on on Twitter or everywhere. It's like uh again like green but like what does it really say about like tangible actions towards real world change. So that's a that's the biggest challenge that it faces. And one phrase that I've seen a

lot when it comes to you know like solar punk Reddit discussions and and all that is that the only reason we don't live in a solar punk world is because no one has bothered to make it yet. And obviously that quote kind of hints at you know our own agency in like changing the world and you know us coordinating to to do that. But I think that it's obviously like more difficult than that and it requires a lot of different building blocks and I think that solar punk actually lacks in a lot of these. So for example there is the having the clear destination again you know there's a lot of the visual aesthetic kind of backing but there's no like consensus on what is actually solar punk and what isn't. And when we talk about something like I

don't know DeFi for example we probably don't have to sit here and like figure out together what DeFi is again. But uh when you go to you know different spaces when where people talk about these topics it's quite common that even after years of this being a thing there's still like okay let's stop and like discuss what is actually refi what are we trying to do. So there's not really like um you know consensus on what these things are and it really harms uh you know the kind of building of of uh different like primitives. Uh on top of that then there's the nerdy scaffolding which is uh related to that's kind of like the the passion the memes the concepts the culture all around that like solar punk has again a lot of visuals but not as many stories then

there's the composible stack uh and again in D5 we have like wallets and token standards and developer tooling but or like in Dallas right we have uh if you want to start a D you can just use charmer and coordinate and uh snapshot and all these tools but in regionary finance and solar punk a lot of these tools if they get built they often get lost uh and then there's uh shared memory which I think is actually like the other part of the stack very related to that like if you have the tools building the technological stack then shared memory is like the knowledge stack right what are some of the mistakes that we shouldn't repeat uh it's like when you go to hackathons years after years and you see another person building I don't know a tokenized carbon marketplace right and uh there's

no kind of uh library of what has been done in the past and how it can be improved. Then there's the economic engine and I think that's a really important one because if you're trying to sell someone on this big vision of future you know with different models like again community gardens and community currencies and barter systems you need to show them that it works and I think that solar bank and regenerative finance need to uh do more work in codifying these and really building a strong argument for for these new economic uh systems and then urgency signal which is really the the call to action right like why would anyone want to get involved with is who are the enemies in solar punk? Who what happens if the solar punk world doesn't doesn't get built? So yeah, there's um a lot that needs to be constructed. And maybe

to show that a little bit, if you've ever had to write anything or if you uh I don't know create content, you probably notice this curve. It's a story arc and uh usually have the hero kind of following that that path through, you know, setting the context. then there's some kind of tension towards escalation and and resolution. And when you think about things like Bitcoin, there is a lot of stories uh that could apply to this, you know, like even the the founding myth, right, with like Satoshi Nagamoto uh kind of uh being in the midst of the financial crisis in 2008 kind of uh building that maybe uh lack of trust towards instit in institutions and then uh kind of leading to to the Bitcoin white paper. So um the question

is what are these in the solar punk space? what are these in the regenerative finance space like if you've ever built something with you know positive impact what was your motivation for it like why didn't you choose to continue it or what happened that that it failed I think this these things really uh need to need to become clear because if I tell you like okay do you want a greener world you will probably say yes if you if I ask you do you want a communitydriven world you'll probably say yes like you I don't know who you would have to be to like really disagree with the solar punk vision per se but if I ask you are the solar punk.

It's, you know, I I bet like less people are going to say yes, right? So, there needs to be that kind of narrative uh story. There needs to be the passion, the tension. We need to have that clarity. And to make that even clearer, I want to just go quickly into like the Ethereum mythology, which is the story that I think most of you have heard about like Vitalik uh forming some of his views around decentralization, which really came from something, you know, simple that allows us to kind of relate. And I don't know if a lot of you played World of Warcraft, but the idea was that he was playing World of Warcraft, has this uh Warlock character feeling like really good empowered in the game until a patch comes 310 uh from Blizzard who says, okay, we are

going to nerf this spell that that you have the siphon life spell. And from there you realize, okay, anyone can come at any moment and completely change the rules of the game, right? And I don't like that. And then you know probably that leads to okay I'm gonna quit the game and uh you know gonna develop these ideas a little more because I don't believe that anyone should have control over over you know anything that that I do. So I think having stories like that that people can relate to you know when it comes to on boarding when it comes to sharing is is extremely important and just to highlight a little more even if you don't believe in this uh it's actually anecdotally said that stories are 22 times up to 22 times stickier than than facts. So it really helps

ground you in the in the real world. And the question really is for solar punk then what what's the cultural logic that makes it worth adopting? And it comes again to to answering these questions like who are the heroes? What do the cities exactly look like? How do these people spend you know their everyday? What do they uh try to solve on the community level? What are some of the lenses or or values that that they have? And that's uh really something that uh hasn't been done collectively that much yet. But at the same time, stories are also a system for you know like memory and and strategy. So it's not necessarily that there are not people doing these things like I know a lot of

people you know like uh doing great work in the Amazon working with indigenous communities. I know people bu building great dashboards for uh biodiversity data and marketplaces. But even then you realize that these stories are not told as often. It's really difficult to dig them up and I spend probably like tens of hours every week on Twitter and still I struggle to find them. So first is like um creating these stories in the first place but second is also creating like a whole infrastructure for it and that's really what I want to argue for here that like we need a whole culture and information infrastructure and scaffolding whether that's in solar punk on or outside because otherwise you know everything gets lost. There is nothing

to to build upon and you're kind of always stuck in the same conversations and cycles. So um we need better practices to create to share to uh capture stories and that's kind of what I want to propose here today. Um even though it's something we need to we need to do together. So oops here we are. So I just wanted to conceptualize this in like a little simple solar punk stack or solar stack. So I think we need to really start with three main layers. First is the story layer where we create the emotional pool there. That's where the memes come in.

That's the stories, the case studies, the pilots and all that. Then we have the tooling layer which is really building the composable stack that others can build upon. And it can be tech tools but it can also be different frameworks and standards. And then there's the coordination layer where these two really like come together. That's where we share practices. That's where we exchange. That's where we kind of again like ground ourselves in in our world. And there is a lot of cool projects that are already kind of contributing to these layers. And this is something that all of us can actually contribute to in some way. So let's uh look deeper into each. First there is the story layer. Again that's you know where we do a lot of the sense making together. That's where we establish the urgency. That's how we turn solar punk

or any idea from the region space for example into from utopian vision to a playbook. So this is why you know recording your work doing the working on case studies pilots is so important. Um a really good example that I like is from region network. I just included like a screenshot of what uh their uh app looks like. They're uh they launched this project called Jaguar credits which is an initiative in the Amazon. Uh and they have partnered with uh Patchama which is an NGO that's been around probably for like a decade. uh a Brazilian uh credits body uh and like local indigenous groups and they have launched these credits and when you go to their website uh you can see how many credits were sold, what's the price, you

can buy them as well and there is different case studies and materials written on this from different like POVs of the different actors involved. So it's really interesting. Um another one that I know is uh Mercy Ventures which does great work uh implementing stable coins in different communities uh in Africa. And there's also one uh which which I would recommend checking out uh by plastics uh which is basically like a protocol that uh tokenizes plastic uh recovery certificates and they have partnered with FC Barcelona and launch this like beautiful NFT collections that they can then sell to to their fans and it was just like a really good collaboration but what I noticed about all these like three different case

studies is that they are all uh driven by institutional collaborations right but I don't think we have to wait until you know we partner with like a big institution to be proper around the way we capture our knowledge and stories and document. So I think my invitation here is uh just like for for us to think about how do we capture knowledge? How do we make it accessible and how do we make sure that it helps and contributes to build uh capacity in this space. Um the second layer is the tooling layer. Um the tooling layer again is a really hard one because the idea is that you build something that someone else can use and it solves a real problem, right? And uh I think in the refi space more than anything else,

you will see that there's always like a new shiny like uh framework that someone you know wants to to promote and they get like people excited about it. And it's really cool because even if you believe in these frameworks, you're like, okay, this is something that would really help my community and I want to implement it. But then you realize, oh, it's actually not that easy. And I think a good example uh is hyperserts. I don't know if if uh everyone's heard about hyperserts, but basically it's like impact semifable impact certificates. And I do love the idea of, you know, having like impact uh like baked into a token and being able to trade it and create marketplaces for it and all that.

And uh we had a call with the refi with the local communities and we're like okay this would be great to implement you know because it's great for like impact measurement also transparency it's creating a new incentive for for impact. Um so we said okay let's let's try it right and then we went to our community and they didn't see the the value of implementing that right because it's just h more steps more work and unless you really ground it in like real world success people will not understand why they should use it or there's not enough incentive right so figuring out tooling and like u making it composible is really challenging because it needs to be something that really makes a difference and is easy to use enough um I think a project that has done great

work obviously is Gitcoin because um they have built a lot of the uh capital allocation primitives and you know contributed a lot to the public goods funding space and funded a lot of their region and and solar plant projects for sure and what is interesting about them that is that they really like took different mechanisms like the quadratic funding uh primitive and build it up and build different tools for it as well just like civil detection and grand explorer and the gitcoin passport and all that so they have really uh you know created a whole grand stack and now you can even like build on that and use that through things like Aloa protocol. So I think that's a great example but not you know everyone has the the I would say

like size and capacity of Gitcoin. So other really cool examples of something you can do doesn't necessarily have to be you know the the best like tech tech stack tool that that we can think of but there's for example traditional dream factory which is an eco village in Portugal that also does great work capturing some of the knowledge and they actually have really cool governance uh onchain governance mechanisms that I think if anyone wanted to start you know another eco village could learn from. Um and then another one is Edge City which is uh a pop-up community you know that started kind of after the wave of the the first like Zuzaloo communities and it's also trying to create a stack of how we can better build pop-up communities and and coordinate around uh space and one that I want to also give a shout out to is the design school for

regenerating the earth which is led by Joe Brewer doing fantastic regeneration work in Colombia. So again, you know, it doesn't necessarily have to be uh you know, like technical tools uh in the traditional sense, but also how do we kind of like codify uh knowledge that we can replicate and use so that it doesn't get lost. And finally, there's the coordination layer, which is really about not being, you know, an island and being part of your community. Um because, um at the end of the day, that's kind of how we move the space forward. And I realized that a lot when I was leading now the season 4 of the of the Refi podcast and we did like 15 episodes and you know I I realized like through the conversations that I was

having with some of our like listeners later that it doesn't really matter if we actually managed to get like the next big project on the podcast. What is more important is that we are creating like this little structure of knowledge and interaction because we kind of realize that okay somebody listens to this episode and then they're like okay I want to work with them. uh okay then they connect to the speaker uh then they try something together maybe it fails then somebody else picks it up you know in a few years or something but it's really about kind of creating the the pathways and always kind of um putting more more richness into the knowledge uh network somehow so uh I actually split the actions into two one is more like participate and the other one is steward

and I would say especially the stewarding uh of knowledge and all that doesn't always seem like the the sexy work right no one wants to be updating documentation and working on a case study, but it really uh does pay off to to invest in this. And maybe just um as an example, um I think maybe the Ethereum localism movement is worth uh mentioning because it's now picking up a lot of speed. And I actually really appreciate that it's a movement that's kind of trying to uh you know create a repository for some of this this work and what you can do locally with your community. So if you want to check them out, it's localism.xyz. And I am really excited about that because when you go there you can you know in one place see things like okay what is I don't know maybe

solar punk what is this what is like astramm uh principles and all that so you don't have to have those conversations again and you know like dig for those resources. So this is much appreciated. Okay. And uh just to wrap up maybe um I was kind of looking at the things that it takes for a movement to stick and thrive. And this is uh some of the things that I find and you'll see that they really are related to culture and stories a lot. So whether that's like solar punk or anything else, we need to invest in uh you know infrastructure for knowledge and culture. And I what it made me think about is that whether it's like a translation, whether it's someone uh building an integration, whether it's someone hosting a hackathon on these

topics, all these things really contributes to it and it is totally doable to you know like push this movement or push you know whatever it is like whether that's regularly finance or blockchain for good or if you just want to you know like advance your ideals and the things that you believe in it is doable if you are more strategic about the ways you capture knowledge, the things that you build, the the you know communities that you are part of and it really like makes all the all the difference. So this is my invitation to share uh build and and cultivate stories. Thank you very much.