Love it when an article starts of with shitting on an entire genre. Seriously, the entire first paragraph is basically implying that anyone enjoying dystopian fiction couldn't possibly (a) read other genres, too and (b) be an activist.
Other than that, the article is a nice overview on the history of solarpunk.
A couple of points that I'm not entirely sure I agree with: One the one hand, the there seems to be an air of "aesthetics only serve the rich". The conclusion seems to be that we shouldn't ever care for aesthetics, since that's only something the privileged do.
Secondly, the problem of genres entering the mainstream. As far as I can see, that's inevitable, especially if we want to have *any* sort of effect on the mainstream. Fringe works just don't get noticed nearly as much. Having a genre that's a moving target, never defined, ever changing is is paradoxical since a genre is to a large degree defined by these shared tropes and aesthetics.
I agree with the conclusion however: Utopia for utopia's sake is not going to help us any more than dystopia for dystopia's sake. What we need are paths that lead us to that utopia.