Honestly, the categorization of the #solarpunk vision as "Utopic" bothers the hell out of me as a Greek person. The use of utopia as a word has been a linguistic tool against optimism for as long as we've agree to hold onto it.
Ουτοπία (utopia) literally translates to "a place that can never exist", and our complacency to accept it as the opposite of dystopia is doing us harm by perpetuating this idea that a society built on "good" cannot happen; is impossible.
Believe it or not, there is a word for something which I believe describes solarpunk and our vision perfectly: Ευτοπία (Eutopia / Pronounced eff-topia), "the best POSSIBLE place" and we might as well adopt it
Utopia (from Ουτοπία) is an impossible Vision of the future, while Evtopia (from Ευτοπία) is the best possible Vision.
that wikipedia article is interesting, because it mentions Ευτοπία
In his original work, [Thomas] More carefully pointed out the similarity of the word to eutopia, meaning “good place”, from Greek: εὖ (“good” or “well”) and τόπος (“place”), which ostensibly would be the more appropriate term for the concept in modern English. The pronunciations of eutopia and utopia in English are identical, which may have given rise to the change in meaning.
Because of the same pronunciations I spelled it Evtopia instead of Eutopia which also seems to be closer to the greek pronounciation.
I do think though, that the term utopia has a tint of pessimism as it can be used to discredit ideas, because they were merely utopian and should be realistic.
that wikipedia article is interesting, because it mentions Ευτοπία
Because of the same pronunciations I spelled it Evtopia instead of Eutopia which also seems to be closer to the greek pronounciation.
I do think though, that the term utopia has a tint of pessimism as it can be used to discredit ideas, because they were merely utopian and should be realistic.