Solarpunk is
- a visual aesthetic and science fiction genre
- a social movement working towards a sustainable and beautiful future
Solarpunk emerged in the 2010s in response to a lack of desirable visions for the future in the popular imagination. Solarpunk is a rejection of dystopia. Whereas Cyberpunk depicts futures in which humanity is totally estranged from nature, living in dense and bleak cities controlled by megacorporations, Solarpunk is imagining human societies that are more egalitarian and decentralized and are seeking a harmonious relationship to the natural world. In a Solarpunk future we have begun (or succeeded) to address global challenges such as climate change and ecological degradation through the appropriate use of technology and the abolition of oppressive and exploitative systems such as capitalism and colonialism.
Some of the characteristics of Solarpunk (both visually and ideologically) have been articulated in the Solarpunk Manifesto.
One of the best depictions of Solarpunk to date was created as an advertisement. Fortunately there is a decommodified version in which the branding has been removed: ‘Dear Alice’ Decommodified Edition
For a more politically explicit and socially conscious depiction of Solarpunk, check out the short comic We Would Call It Solarpunk by the-lemonaut.
My Appeal to You
When seeing these images you might feel inspired and excited. They could make you say “Yes! This is the future I want to live in!“. But maybe you are also sceptical. You might say “Well this all looks quite nice but it’s never going to happen”. This would be quite justified, given the state of the world and the trajectory that things seem to be going.
I want to encourage you to look at Solarpunk (the aesthetic) not as an escapist fantasy but as a means to collectively develop Images of the Future. These images allow us to trace a path from where we are to the future we want to see. It is quite likely that we will not live to see a world like the one depicted in these pieces of Solarpunk art. But this should not discourage us. It is in our power to withdraw our support for the exploitative status quo and to band together to start building the world we want to see in the shell of the old.
When we do this we will start to see a flowering of possibilities even amidst a larger picture of decline. We will catch glimmers of the world we know and feel to be possible. We will realize that we are many and there are already thousands of people and projects out there that align with Solarpunk values and visions - whether they know of and affiliate themselves with the Solarpunk movement or not.
This website aims to grow a collective knowledge commons, to connect people and projects (see Solarpunk Communities) and thus to empower us to put the vision of Solarpunk into practice. To this end, each one of us probably has some valuable information to give. So if you are able, we would love it if you could share what you know and contribute to the Solarpunk Knowledge Repository.