Why Write a Manifesto Now
The first solarpunk manifesto appeared in 2014. It was sharp, generous, and necessary. Search interest in “solarpunk manifesto” is breaking out in 2026, which I read as a signal: the original manifestos have done their work, and a new generation is asking to see the principles restated.
Manifestos are not contracts. They are descriptions of what a community holds together as true. The point of writing one isn’t to bind anyone — it’s to clarify what we’re reaching for so that we can recognize each other. This is mine.
What We Believe
1. The future is alive. Not as metaphor — as fact. The species that survive the next century will be the ones whose societies recognize themselves as part of a biosphere rather than tenants in it. Solarpunk insists on this recognition.
2. Hope is a discipline, not a mood. We are not optimists in the sense of believing things will be fine. We are practitioners of hope in the sense of doing the daily work that hope demands. Hope without action is sentiment. Action without hope is exhausting.
3. Beauty matters. A future that isn’t beautiful will not be defended. We do not apologize for caring how things look, feel, smell. Aesthetic is strategy.
4. Technology must serve life. We are not anti-technology. We are anti-extractive-technology. Solar panels, fermentation chambers, open-source software, bicycles, looms, libraries, and mycelium-grown materials are technologies. We celebrate them. The question is always: does this tool make the living world more, or less, alive?
5. Community is infrastructure. A neighborhood that knows each other’s names is more resilient than one that doesn’t. Mutual aid, tool libraries, seed swaps, shared meals, and skill-sharing networks are not nice-to-haves. They are how a society survives the next century.
6. The local is the unit. No solution scales without being rooted somewhere. We work at the scale of the watershed, the neighborhood, the city block. Federations of local commitments are how planet-scale change actually happens.
7. Ancestors and descendants are present. We are not the first people to live here, and we will not be the last. Indigenous knowledge systems, traditional crafts, and ancestral foodways are not relics; they are the working answers we kept losing and rediscovering. Future generations are not abstract; they are the actual people who will inherit the soil we leave them.
What We Reject
The doom monoculture. The assumption that the future must be dystopian, that imagining better is naive, that grim is sophisticated and hopeful is childish. This was always a failure of imagination dressed up as realism.
Extractive growth as moral good. An economy that requires the continuous conversion of living systems into dead products is not a successful economy. It is a slow-motion suicide note. We reject GDP-as-virtue.
The lone-genius story. Solarpunk is not waiting for a single billionaire’s breakthrough to save it. The solutions exist already, distributed across millions of practitioners. The work is implementation, not invention.
Greenwashing. Solarpunk is not a marketing aesthetic. A corporation that adds vines to its rendering while continuing to extract from communities and ecosystems is not solarpunk; it is camouflage. We name this when we see it.
Cynicism as identity. The cynic is not wiser than the believer; the cynic is exhausted. We reject the position that caring publicly is naïve.
What We Practice
Solarpunk is not just a worldview. It is a practice, and practice means we do specific things. Among them:
- We grow some of our food. Not all of it. Some.
- We learn the names of the plants and insects in our neighborhood.
- We support local makers, growers, and repairers.
- We mend before we replace.
- We share tools, books, skills, and meals.
- We vote, organize, and show up at planning meetings.
- We rest. We sleep. We refuse to be productive every hour.
- We tell each other better stories about the future.
What This Project Is
Futurespore is one node in a much larger network. We write, we teach, we host community forums, we build software (projectGAIA) that helps people learn about plants. None of that is the work itself. The work is what readers do in their neighborhoods with what they learn here.
If this manifesto resonates, you are already part of this. There is nothing to join. Plant something. Notice a bee. Repair something instead of replacing it. Tell someone what you’re reaching for.
That’s the manifesto. The rest is implementation.
Frequently Asked Questions
What do solarpunks believe?
Solarpunks believe a livable future is possible and is built rather than awaited. They favor renewable energy, decentralization, biodiversity, repair over disposability, community over consumption, and the integration of nature into daily life. They reject techno-utopianism without ecology and ecology without technology — both are partial.
What is the Solarpunk Manifesto?
The Solarpunk Manifesto is a 2019 collaborative document by ReDes Regenerative Design articulating core solarpunk principles — hope as method, integration of low-tech and high-tech, biodiversity, decolonization, and beauty as essential. Multiple manifestos exist; the ReDes version is the most widely cited. Each iteration shares similar core commitments.
What does solarpunk reject?
Solarpunk rejects dystopian futurism, infinite-growth capitalism, planned obsolescence, monoculture, the lawn, car-dependent urban planning, and the cynicism that says nothing better is possible. It also rejects shallow aesthetic appropriation — solarpunk pictures with no underlying politics are part of the problem, not the solution.
Is solarpunk anti-technology?
No — it's anti-extractive-technology. Solarpunk loves the right kind of technology: renewable energy, open-source software, repairable hardware, biomimicry, regenerative agriculture, public transit, mycelium materials, and local AI. The critique is of technologies that centralize wealth, surveil people, and externalize ecological cost — not of technology itself.
How do I 'be solarpunk' in everyday life?
Grow some food. Forage in your bioregion. Bike when you can. Repair instead of replace. Plant natives. Skip the lawn. Join (or start) a community group. Support local agriculture. Read fiction that imagines a livable future. None of this requires utopia — it requires consistent practice. Solarpunk is a verb.
Written by E. Silkweaver