A small booklet that I received at a seminar in Tallinn a few years ago, Solarities by After Oil Collective ended in my handbag because of its small size and I now finally read it. The many short texts bring forth different aspects of the turn from fossil fuels to solar energy and all the hopes for another kind of society that the transition includes. Solarity without solidarity does not change much. I picked up the fragments directly related to plants, of course, and obviously the focus and basis of vegetal life, and thereby life for the rest of us is the sun.In the chapter Solarity as solidarity the writers quote Natasha Myers and “the photosynthetic ones – those green beings we have come to know as cyanobacterial, algae and plants”, noting how “‘those sun worshippers and world conjurers’ reveal another mode of engaging with the sun – through nothing short of magic, they transform the world to a hime for the rest of us.” (p 27) They quote Robin Wall Kimmerer’s point that “plants tell their stories not by what they say, but by what they do”, and note that “plants are world creators in all senses and across scales. They weave and endless symphony from sunlight, water, and air, alchemically communing with one another and with insects, birds, and other animals that live with and among them.” (p 27)
 
In the chapter Decolonial and Feminist Solarities the writes “If solarities are to be just rather than unjust, they must be generated from below rather than from above; solar energy must be dispersed as the sun’s rays, refusing the kind of concentration that petrocapitalism has engendered.” (p 40) And they state the obvious: “Light and heat come freely from Earth. They are the basis for planetary life. /–/ Left to itself the sun models an economy based on abundance, on gifting, on interconnection, on multi species flourishing. This is an economy of cycles, diurnal and seasonal.It is a dynamic economy of constant circulation…” (p 40) The writers note that there can be scarcity, like in seasons without rain, and competition, as between light seeking saplings in the forest. “But at its core, the solar economy is one of a abundance and renewal, of plenty.” (p 40)
 
In the chapter on The Work of Solarity the writers emphasise that liberal political theory has no answer to scale. “Yet many of us hang on to the little gestures of agency that liberalism offers” (page 58) Yet they make clear that this is not enough. “Solarity in the age of global warming (if it is to carry forward the project of democracy) requires something different, something to meet scale with scale, something to level this uneven playing field /– solidarity must scale up.” (p 58-59) They insist that “Solarity means that we matter only by relation.” (p 59)
 
In the chapter Storytelling and Worldmaking, the writers turn to Donna Haraway and suggest that we look beyond work and labour towards games and play. (p 65) “If the promise of solarity is a promise of better relations between different humans and nonhumans, it must be accompanied by stories, arts, tools and crafts that celebrate and sustain collective flourishing.” (p 65) They further note that we must learn to listen, to admit that we will make mistakes. “We require stories that move away from solitary individual heroes to multi species stories that are grown over time, stories that are intertwined wit other beings and celebrate not individual feats but the the mutual creation of new ecosystems. To thrive collectively requires listening, learning and making collectively.” (p 66).
 
Touché! But, that is easier said than done, at least for people like me who are impatient and like to work on their own. It is not impossible, though…
 
 
 
After Oil Collective. Ayesha Vemuri and Darin Barney, editors. Solarities – Seeking Energy Justice. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, London 2022.