Dreaming of Solarpunk futures in a world on fire

From Wakanda to the Commonwealth of New Appalachia

I am taking a class this term on Social Analysis and Community Engagement this term at United Theological Seminary. The first assignment for the class was one called “Imagining Wakanda” where we were tasked with writing short paper that identified a social problem, and then posits a fictional utopian world/place in which this problem does not exists (akin to Ryan Coogler’s movie Wakanda that presented an Afrofuturist country that developed free of the destructive forces of European Colonialism.)

In my paper I took on the issue of Ecological Overshoot and worked to briefly imagine a solarpunk future Appalachia learning to live in the wake of societal collapse and climate crisis called “The Common Wealth of New Appalachia.”

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