Hi ^^
(first thing first – I’m really sorry if this doesn’t make any sense, I’m not very good at explaining things or talking and I muddle up a lot, so I’m sorry)
I have this story thing that I’m working on and I think that it could be considered to be in the Solarpunk genre but I’m not sure, it’s definitely on the theme of environmentalism and sustainability and such. The scenario of the beginning of it is that the people are just going hell for leather with its consumption and destructive behaviour no consideration for the environment or the people. Sooo after many years of destructive behaviours of deforestation, mining, polluting and so on, that the environment is heavily damaged, there are environmental disasters and that this leads to wars between nations for resources, the air is heavily polluted and so is the water and earth, famines and droughts on huge scales and tension with people fleeing damaged areas and there that would be a partial collapse. After this event, there aren’t any things that really resemble nations left, there are fairly large city states that are clinging on to their old ways and believe that this is just a phase and it will soon pass, the city states are closed up to try and protect themselves and pretend that everything is fine, they are very crowded and unhealthy, and smog and such fills the streets.
There are however groups of people who go against what the cities are doing and leave to try and rebuild and heal the environment. They go to the coast and mountain ranges or anyplace that is out of range of continues effect of the cities and they slowly begin to rebuild things (here is where Solarpunk comes in).
Now the main story would begin, there has been about 50 years (maybe the time scale will change) that the Solarpunk communities are growing steadily and have a fairly good existence going on, things are still a bit polluted in their area and there’s a need to where gas masks on really bad days and similar things. But in general they have it good, and is especially better than what the city states are going through. The city states have noticed what the Solarpunk communities are doing and that there are increasing tension between them as the cities want the resources that the Solarpunk communities have built up for themselves. There is currently a large practically uninhabited wasteland that separates the two communities.
It is a little apocalyptical I think but I suppose I just want to show that there is hope, no matter how bad things are. Showing a hopeful side that there is a way to recover and that there is hope and showing people working together to come back from the brink to a brighter future.
The tension in the story would come from that the cities send out air strikes to try and drive out the communities because the Solarpunk communities refuse to allow them to destroy all their hard work and that the Solarpunk communities fight back against the cities. And advance further and maybe even lead a revolution within the cities or something I still need to work on this a bit.
Because it’s only a partial collapse there is still things like the internet, but coverage is patchy and not always reliable – so the sharing of knowledge is still possible, and that communication between the remote communities is highly valued. There are still things like postal services and delivery but takes much much longer and is highly dangerous job but because of this has great benefits. Television is mostly present in the cities, but broadcasts are possible to be received in the Solarpunk communities but a lot of the cities are against them and spread miss information about them. There are planes but they are more like fighter planes, they are old and rare and aren’t easy to fix so the cities are very careful with them, whilst the Solarpunk communities have their own flying machines, they use renewable energy and stuff and are easy to fix so are generally better, but they also don’t want to destroy the planes to get rid of them once and for all, because that would add to the pollution and wouldn’t be helpful.
The main character is a 16 year old girl named Efa. She’s mixed race. Likes nature and the environment and also helping her father in the nursery. She’s good with fixing things and also has good leadership skills. The antagonist would be a big/powerful figure from the city closest to the community Efa is from.
The scenery/landscape would be based on North Wales.
I have a lot more about this project and the world building that goes into it, but I’ve gone on long enough as it is, I have two little note books that is filling up with ideas and rambling. Again I’m really sorry if this makes no sense and is hard to read.
More stuff about this project can be found [here] – I’ll post them here once I have my oc world up ^^;
