A Solarpunk Manifesto (CC-by-SA)
Solarpunk is a movement in speculative fiction, art, fashion, and activism that seeks to answer and embody the question “what does a sustainable civilization look like, and how can we get there?”
The aesthetics of solarpunk merge the practical with the beautiful, the well-designed with the green and lush, the bright and colorful with the earthy and solid.
Solarpunk can be utopian, just optimistic, or concerned with the struggles en route to a better world , but never dystopian. As our world roils with calamity, we need solutions, not only warnings.
Solutions to thrive without fossil fuels, to equitably manage real scarcity and share in abundance instead of supporting false scarcity and false abundance, to be kinder to each other and to the planet we share.
Solarpunk is at once a vision of the future, a thoughtful provocation, a way of living and a set of achievable proposals to get there.
- We are solarpunks because optimism has been taken away from us and we are trying to take it back.
- We are solarpunks because the only other options are denial or despair.
- At its core, Solarpunk is a vision of a future that embodies the best of what humanity can achieve: a post-scarcity, post-hierarchy, post-capitalistic world where humanity sees itself as part of nature and clean energy replaces fossil fuels.
- The “punk” in Solarpunk is about rebellion, counterculture, post-capitalism, decolonialism and enthusiasm. It is about going in a different direction than the mainstream, which is increasingly going in a scary direction.
- Solarpunk is a movement as much as it is a genre: it is not just about the stories, it is also about how we can get there.
- Solarpunk embraces a diversity of tactics: there is no single right way to do solarpunk. Instead, diverse communities from around the world adopt the name and the ideas, and build little nests of self-sustaining revolution.
- Solarpunk provides a valuable new perspective, a paradigm and a vocabulary through which to describe one possible future. Instead of embracing retrofuturism, solarpunk looks completely to the future. Not an alternative future, but a possible future.
- Our futurism is not nihilistic like cyberpunk and it avoids steampunk’s potentially quasi-reactionary tendencies: it is about ingenuity, generativity, independence, and community.
- Solarpunk emphasizes environmental sustainability and social justice.
- Solarpunk is about finding ways to make life more wonderful for us right now, and also for the generations that follow us.
- Our future must involve repurposing and creating new things from what we already have. Imagine “smart cities” being junked in favor of smart citizenry.
- Solarpunk recognizes the historical influence politics and science fiction have had on each other.
- Solarpunk recognizes science fiction as not just entertainment but as a form of activism.
- Solarpunk wants to counter the scenarios of a dying earth, an insuperable gap between rich and poor, and a society controlled by corporations. Not in hundreds of years, but within reach.
- Solarpunk is about youth maker culture, local solutions, local energy grids, ways of creating autonomous functioning systems. It is about loving the world.
- Solarpunk culture includes all cultures, religions, abilities, sexes, genders and sexual identities.
- Solarpunk is the idea of humanity achieving a social evolution that embraces not just mere tolerance, but a more expansive compassion and acceptance.
- The visual aesthetics of Solarpunk are open and evolving. As it stands, it is a mash-up of the following:
- 1800s age-of-sail/frontier living (but with more bicycles)
- Creative reuse of existing infrastructure (sometimes post-apocalyptic, sometimes present-weird)
- Appropriate technology
- Art Nouveau
- Hayao Miyazaki
- Jugaad-style innovation from the non-Western world
- High-tech backends with simple, elegant outputs
- Solarpunk is set in a future built according to principles of New Urbanism or New Pedestrianism and environmental sustainability.
- Solarpunk envisions a built environment creatively adapted for solar gain, amongst other things, using different technologies. The objective is to promote self sufficiency and living within natural limits.
- In Solarpunk we’ve pulled back just in time to stop the slow destruction of our planet. We’ve learned to use science wisely, for the betterment of our life conditions as part of our planet. We’re no longer overlords. We’re caretakers. We’re gardeners.
- Solarpunk:
- is diverse
- has room for spirituality and science to coexist
- is beautiful
- can happen. Now
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/435152
> cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/435150
>
> > cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/435149
> >
> > > I want to find the most sustainable operating system, because computers nowadays waste a lot of energy, because of data collection and data processing. Avoiding unnecessary processes and using resources in a mindful way could reduce the CO2 output on the whole world.
> > >
> > > This discussion grew very fast and I put all links to other platforms in the end of the blog article.
cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/46443
> Old society is not going to leave the scene peacefully. They will go down kicking and screaming, until their last breath leeching energy and matter from the planet and all of us. When they die anyway, why should they let us survive?
>
> **So, should we have a SolarPunk warfare available to defend the planet (including ourselves) against "apres nous, le deluge" strategy of planet destroyers?**
>
> There was an attempt to create similar kind of warfare, within the ranks of US Army, of all imaginable places. **The 1st Earth Battalion**, if *not exactly* what we may imagine, was certainly planet-oriented.
> https://web.archive.org/web/20110811190649/http://arcturus.org/field_manual.pdf
>
> So, what do you think of the initial question? And if we need it, do you know any examples that could help us answer it and, perhaps, develop the idea towards implementation?
*Morning coffee musings*
Transition / Collapse solutions — how to get most out of collapsing infrastructure.
During slo-mo catastrophe, more and more infrastructure may become unused, but still technically working. This is what we have now with empty buildings / apartments for example. Or some abandoned industrial facilities taken over by their crews.
But there are more technical challenges. If the grid is down, what shall we need to redirect output of a local wind/solar farm to the local community use? How to start running local rail transport? How to salvage content of a logistic centre before it gets marauded? Etc. etc…
The inconvenience here lies in the fact that most of such actions are considered illegal *under regular circumstances*. But we will need them when conditions cease to be "regular". I believe we should be able to discuss them under the general category of "civil / civic defense" or "communal resilience".
What do you think?
Hi,
We just started a [fundraising campaign](https://zrzutka.pl/en/a2gfn6) to buy our first boat, intended as a proof-of-concept for the WartaMAX project.
It will be the first boat fully dedicated for Persons With Disabilities (PWDs) here in Poznań (Western Poland). It will also be the beginning of the process to introduce SolarPunk values into local communities across Warta bioregion.
See more on slides below.
Supporters and interested associates warmly invited!




From the event's site:
What Is SolPunk??
Solpunk22 is a gathering for anyone interested in creating anything solarpunk with others!
Well, what does that actually mean? Is it an un-conference, is it a festival, is it just some punks in a field? We don't know yet, but a wise guess is that punks here are interested in many of the following things:
Lowtech and community tech, Energy reduction and renewables, sharing resources, temporary nomadic community, dancing, alternative economy, creating a just future, hackathons, dumpster diving, opensource hardware, software and production, means of care and solidarity, community
There was a Solpunk gathering last year, held at the grounds of the Myselium Collective, with workshops about solar panels, scuttlebutt/fediverse, edible wild plants, contact dancing, utopian thinking, dumpster diving, psychedelics, planetary meditations, local alternative history, starlight rave dancing and more and all the connections and meetings happening in between it all.
A great opportunity to learn, experience and share. So bring your projects, make a workshop!
[Read the flyer](http://futurologi.org/solpunk22.pdf)
In a solarpunk society, how would transgression look like? Obviously not the lame edgy kind like throwing a plastic wrap on the ground but the artistic, aesthetic, sexualized forms of transgression that challenge the status quo. Does it even make sense to pose such a question in an utopic setting? (especially one naively devoid of social tension like solarpunk)
a well thought through idea of what an actual decentralised liberatory society might look like, it may not get the details all right but it should be praised for its form, thought processses and basic ideas, does go to lengths to avoid the parochialism in these types of structure, good criticism of the work machine inherent to both capitalism and state communism.