Of Mangoes and Solar Panels

The damn temperate latitude people are doing solarpunk wrong and leaving the "punk" out

Over lunch in Singapore yesterday, my friend Sam Chua offered a brilliant definition of punk that I think nails the problem with solarpunk as currently constructed. Sam’s definition is simple and in my opinion correct: punk is technology without technocracy.

As I’ll argue in a bit, by this definition, the idea of solarpunk as currently constructed is wrong, and we need to reconstruct it correctly. As a preview: we need to deconstruct the version that centers solar panels, and center a version that centers… wait for it… mangoes.

And in the process, we will inevitably need to move the center of gravity of the idea from the temperate latitudes where I suspect it was born, to the tropical and equatorial latitudes where I think it belongs. Why? Because thesis: solar panels are technocratic, and mangoes are punk, and the tropical-equatorial belt is where “solar” really comes into its own.

But let me back up and start where this train of thought started.

After my last trip to Singapore/India, in September last year, I wrote a newsletter issue titled Sweating Solarpunk. Well now I’m back in the region, and it’s May/June, and I guess I’m really sweating buckets of solarpunk. And I’m even less happy with the way the term is typically used than I was 8 months ago.

As currently used, solarpunk gestures at a solar that’s nothing like the connotations I have for the adjective, and there is very little punk to it. We need to put the punk into solarpunk, which begins with locating it primarily in regions defined most strongly by their relationship to the sun, where it reigns as an angry but benevolent god. Not in regions where it is a tepid, mostly benign presence that barely peeps above the horizon. Regions where the sun is never directly overhead; where shadows never vanish.

Both Singapore (1.35° N) where I was over the last few days, and Coimbatore (11° N), where I am right now, are sweltering at the moment. The entire region, encompassing South and Southeast Asia, and parts of the Middle East, which is sometimes called Monsoon Asia, is in the midst of probably the unholiest time of the year, when the scorching summer is starting to give way to torrential rains and humidity. It is wet-bulb hellishness around here.

If you’re from this region, the idea of the sun is inseparable from the idea of rain. Torrential rain. This is an association that is not obvious in most parts of the world, but in Monsoon Asia it is inescapable. Torrential rains are just another aspect of the reign of the angry sun.

Like the sun, the monsoon too, despite the welcome cooling, irrigating, and water-table-recharging effects it brings, is not exactly a benign force. It is an apt assistant angry god to the sun god. If the sun is Vito Corleone around here, the monsoon is something of a Luca Brasi. A violent beserker you can’t really reason with. Only try to avoid… for a while.

You haven’t really experienced torrential rain if you haven’t experienced full-force monsoon rains, complete with flooded streets, overflowing storm drains and sewers, and relentless humidity when it isn’t raining. There is no English word corresponding to keechad, the Hindi word for the squelchy muddy mess creates everywhere that is unpaved. In much of the West, while there are occasional torrential bursts, steady torrential downpours, with near-opaque curtains of water falling for hours, day after day, are rare. You mostly get energetic drizzles. In Monsoon Asia, you get torrential rain day after day for months. And that’s preceded by a cyclone season as well (cyclone is Asian for hurricane). And tedious though it can get after the initial welcome respite from the scorching heat that comes before, not getting the monsoon, or getting a very weak one, is even worse. You’d rather have flooding and overflowing dams than a summer that stretches on and on, with water scarcity/drought for a year. You don’t want the main angry god for too long. You want the assistant angry god to take over.

I grew up in these conditions, but this is the first time I’m visiting the region during peak summer-to-monsoon transition time in 20-odd years. It says something that I usually time my visits to avoid the summer-monsoon interface, when not one but two angry gods are beating down on you at the same time, while they negotiate the hand-off.

Anyhow, this is my intuitive idea of solar, which is why I’m now convinced solarpunk is defined wrong. Stupidly, badly wrong. In terms of a sun construed as a servile entity domesticated by solar panels, and constructed in authoritarian-instrumental ways that are actively hostile to the punk spirit.