Solarpunk has two primary tenants. The first is that we envision an ideal future, imagining a world with a stable climate, social justice, local communities, diversity and inclusion of everyone, responsible technology use, etc. This tenant is primarily embodied in our art, fiction, music, and other imaginations of what that future could be like. The second is the recognition that we have yet to achieve that future, and is centered on activism and political movement, coalition building, decolonialisation, and all of the other steps necessary to achieve the vision we've imagined together.
Rather than being focused on a single issue like prison reform or tackling the climate crisis, solarpunk is a holistic movement that seeks to build coalition and community while jointly imagining what the end result could be. This encompasses an enormous variety of initiatives that already have thriving activist communities. Solarpunk is intended to unify these efforts and feed them with our explicit hope and imagining of a better future.
Various summaries and manifestos have been written since the term solarpunk was coined in 2014. Here are several:
What does solarpunk mean to you?