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I handed off a rough draft of Volume One of my book at the writer’s retreat. Now I can think about other things and then get back to writing.

One thing I’ve been thinking about a lot is a hopeful vision of the future. We live in authoritarian times. But fighting against authoritarianism, though necessary, is not sufficient. We need to supersede it. We need to look beyond dystopia. We need a vision and a direction to go in.

And that’s where the vision of solarpunk comes in: people living in harmony with the world, but with all the things we have learned as well. An early effort towards this was “Evelyn’s Story“, an assignment I did in animation school.

It seems to me that the biggest difference between the solarpunk world and ours might be the solarpunk reduction in short-term thinking and profiteering. Wikipedia on solarpunk: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solarpunk

Solarpunk artwork tends to be green and sunny. There are related artistic styles in cozy animation and certain outdoor sketching communities, which have also inspired me:

Spanish illustrator Alariko (https://www.instagram.com/_alariko/) has some images with this quality:

And here’s a beautiful rendition of an ecotopian solarpunk world, which incredibly is a yogurt commercial?!! Youtube video link:

Edited 2026-09-27 to add:
And I found this video from Em’s Wild World on the history of the term solarpunk, which references some of the artwork I remembered but couldn’t place!

Here’s architect Dami Lee on solarpunk:

…and here is some of the cityscape artwork I remembered seeing, referenced by concept artist Olivia Louise:

Meanwhile, some books: