About us
Bay Area Solarpunks is eco-futurist, optimistic, and rebellious.
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We envision a future where people live in harmony with nature in autonomous communities organized as participatory democracies.
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We oppose all forms of exploitation of nature and people.
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We are part of the global Solarpunk Movement.
Our immediate goal is to build a Solarpunk community in the Bay Area, discussing, researching, and critiquing environmental, social, political, and cultural issues. We have monthly discussions, a blog with essays, fiction, and art, a book club, and movie nights.
Our midrange goal is to create an alternative community with our own beliefs, culture, permaculture gardens, third spaces, and governance.
The global Solarpunk Movement’s long term goal is to save civilization from itself by replacing capitalism and colonialism with a new world of democratically run communities living symbiotically with the natural world.
Upcoming events
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Podcast club: Are we too flawed for solarpunk to work?
·OnlineOnlineIs human nature too flawed for a Solarpunk world to work?
Join us Thursday, Mar 26, 2026 at 19:30 Pacific Time, for an online discussion of human nature and civilization, including our present situation.
Are humans too individualistic, violent, competitive, domineering for a cooperative, community-based economic democracy like Solarpunk? Have there always been exploiters and exploited, and is it in our genes to despoil the natural world? Two podcasts describe how humans lived in egalitarian communities, as hunter-gatherers, farmers, and the earliest cities for millenia, and how inequality evolved.
We welcome anyone to come and listen, but to participate in the discussion, listening to the two podcasts is required.
Required podcasts:
A New Understanding of Human History and the Roots of Inequality | David Wengrow, 17 min. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SJi0sHrEI4
and
Is Civilisation About to Collapse? Luke Kemp, segment from minute 10:53 to 25:00.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzpHT0gj558&t=653sOptional readings and podcasts: The podcasts are discussions of two groundbreaking books, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, by David Graeber and David Wengrow; Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse, by Luke Kemp. There are several discussions of these books on Youtube.
Time: Mar 26, 2026 19:30 Pacific Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting22 attendees
Human Rights and Nature Rights
·OnlineOnlineJoin us for an open discussion on what Human and Nature Rights look like in a Solarpunk future. What rights do we have now, promised and realized that are good? What rights are missing? Below are readings and videos to help facilitate discussion, but if you come without having read them, that's fine too :)
Universal Declaration of Human Rights: https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights
What are the universal human rights?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDgIVseTkuE
The rights you might not realize you have: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTW3dvuDmBE
Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature: https://www.garn.org/rights-of-nature/
Rights of Nature: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nZ9u2ZoIJo
Topic: Bay Area Solarpunks April 21st Meeting
Time: Apr 21, 2026 19:30 Pacific Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87989999763?pwd=W5gCqPjs8fSAoWflJQMwqNB9b2SYad.1Meeting ID: 879 8999 9763
Passcode: 6578583 attendees
Past events
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