Solarpunk

The reality is setting in that people simply do not care about making the world a better place. It is breaking my heart, and I do not know how to reconcile my thoughts. I'm sorry to be such a downer here but I don't know where else to share.

Perhaps the climate catastrophe, human suffering, and inequality is so large and so much out of people's hands that even people who care have come to a state of learned helplessness. However, there are things within people's control that doesn't change. At work, I listen to a coworker frustrated about a simple problem. It would be a simple change to make this person's job much less painful, but he "just works here". It's just such a dumb problem to waste hours of someone's life on. To a certain extent, I can't blame him, because a lot of people just work to survive.

I want to make the world a better place. A world where people have all there basic needs met, live in balance with nature, and have a right to self determination. A world where humanity strives to be the best version of itself. I can't help but get sad or frustrated when I see something wrong. I can't help but feel like I'm a downer to my friends when I point these things out. They don't disagree with me, but it just seems like a depressing topic. People seem generally content to live their normal lives. In the same way, I can't blame them. It won't build a better future, but they deserve to be happy.

Maybe my coworkers are right, and that I'm too naïve. Maybe my friends are right, and that I'm too empathetic for my own good. I am envious that they can turn off the thing in their head that worries, or wants to make things better, and that they can just enjoy life. A more utopian future is generations away, or maybe never. If I can't effect change, maybe I should find an outlet, or stop caring, or something. idk, sorry for yapping. if you're reading this i hope you have a good day

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/22925652

As artificial intelligence reconfigures every dimension of our societies—from labor markets to classrooms to newsrooms—we should remember the Luddites. Not as caricatures, but in the original sense: People who refuse to accept that the deployment of new technology should be dictated unilaterally by corporations or in cahoots with the government, especially when it undermines workers’ ability to earn a living, social cohesion, public goods, and democratic institutions.

Journalists, academics, policymakers, and educators—people whose work shapes public understanding or steers policy responses—have a special responsibility in this moment: To avoid reproducing AI hype by uncritically acquiescing to corporate narratives about the benefits or inevitability of AI innovation. Rather, they should focus on human agency and what the choices made by corporations, governments, and civil society mean for the trajectory of AI development.

This isn’t just about AI’s capabilities; it’s about who decides what those capabilities are used for, who benefits, and who pays the price.

In Finland, kindergartens are exposing children to more mud, wild plants and moss - and finding changes to their health that show how crucial biodiversity is to wellbeing

Many companies seem to be walking back climate pledges. The sad fate of the Net Zero Banking Alliance is a case in point. But if you peek behind the curtains of this seeming defeat, you’ll find a weird, counter-intuitive phenomenon that seems to be on the rise: many companies are actually continuing or even accelerating their climate goals, while also quietly scrubbing their public acknowledgement of them. In fact, in 2024, the consulting firm South Pole found that in some sectors across the world, the majority of surveyed companies are now intentionally talking less and less about their climate goals. 

This practice stands in stark contrast to greenwashing—when companies crow about their sustainability without the bona fides to back it up—and its rise has spawned a flurry of studies and think-pieces about this practice. So here we take a look at this new phenomenon and ask: is greenhushing a step backwards for climate accountability—or is it simply companies side-stepping a bigger problem?

(Video will be on YT later)

We’re happy to announce the release of the Eco-Libre Life-Line version 2025.10.

• https://www.eco-libre.org/life-line-2025-10-released/

Who is Eco-Libre?

Eco-Libre is a volunteer-run project that designs libre technology for sustainable communities.

Eco-Libre's mission is to research, develop, document, teach, build, and distribute open-source technology that sustainably enfranchises communities' human rights.

We aim to provide clear documentation to build low-cost machines, tools, and infrastructure for people all over the world who wish to live in sustainable communities with others.

Contribute to Eco-Libre

If you'd like to help Eco-Libre reach our mission to enfranchise sustainable communities' human rights with libre tech, please contact us to get involved :)

Join Us
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Cheers,
The Eco-Libre Team
https://www.eco-libre.org/

After decades of struggle, indigenous leaders and organizers have shown how to win against billionaires and large corporations

That is where many of us are stuck. Overloaded, stretched thin, feeling guilty for resting yet paralysed when we try to take in everything at once. The truth is that the outrage machine wants us this way. It floods our feeds with distraction and despair, demanding we react to every fresh injustice, every scandal, every policy failure. It bleeds us dry until we are too exhausted to act with intention.

This exhaustion is not weakness. It is a symptom of fighting on the terms of a system that thrives on chaos. If your hope feels gone, if you find yourself apathetic, it might be because your energy is being pulled in a thousand directions where it cannot make a difference. The corporations driving collapse know this. They profit when we rage online instead of organising in the streets, when we doomscroll instead of building solidarity with neighbours, when we feel so overwhelmed by the scale of it all that we forget the scale of what we can do together.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/47095833

The Self-Generation Incentive Program (SGIP) is a State of California initiative that provides funding for income qualified residential customers to install solar and battery storage systems on residential property. Solar panel systems provide residents with the ability to generate their own electricity, while battery storage systems can store electricity for use during peak rate periods or in the evenings when solar production decreases.

Every SGIP project will help enhance grid reliability, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and promote clean energy. It also supports LADWP’s goal to ensure equitable access to clean energy.

As someone who's deeply passionate about creating a more sustainable, decentralized, equitable, and community-driven world, I wanted to share my thoughts on confederal municipalism and how I feel it aligns with the solarpunk ethos. For those who may not be familiar, confederal municipalism is a political ideology that advocates for a decentralized, non-hierarchical system of governance, where power is held at the local level and municipalities are free to self-organize and cooperate with one another.

For me, confederal municipalism is more than just an ideology - it's a guiding principle for building a better future. I believe that by empowering local communities and fostering a culture of cooperation and mutual aid, we can create a more resilient, adaptive, and just society. This approach resonates deeply with the solarpunk values of community, sustainability, and social justice.

In a confederal municipalist system, decision-making is distributed among local assemblies, where citizens can participate directly in shaping their community's future. This approach allows for a more nuanced and contextual understanding of the needs and challenges facing each community, and enables more effective and sustainable solutions to be developed.

I'd love to hear from fellow solarpunks about your thoughts on confederal municipalism. Do you see it as a viable path forward for creating a more sustainable and equitable world? What potential benefits or challenges do you think this approach might entail? How do you think confederal municipalism could be integrated with other solarpunk principles, such as renewable energy, eco-friendly technologies, and social justice?

Edit: I'd also love to hear from anyone who's involved in or familiar with existing confederal municipalist projects or initiatives. What can we learn from these experiences, and how can we apply these lessons to our own communities and projects?

Hi all!

Long time lurker here on slrpnk.net and just signed up to participate more. I have myself been moving on a fairly slow but steady trajectory towards a life aligned with solarpunk values (although not with zeal or even the knowledge of solarpunk for most of this time). I still have a good distance to go, but I also have some concrete ideas in mind going forward.

So I thought I'd make this post where people could share their stories to inspire each other to take bolder steps: what steps have you so far taken and what do you plan to do going forward to live more true to a real solarpunk? What turned you onto these ideals in the first place? If not all ideals speak to you, which do and why? etc. etc. Anything goes!

I'll post my story in a separate comment.

As people across the United States face massive cuts to Medicaid, SNAP and other vital programs, many are asking: What happens when the systems we rely on fail us? And what happens when our communities are torn apart by toxic inequality, political fragmentation and declining social trust?

The solution may lie in something that humans have been doing throughout our existence: taking care of each other, often without realizing it. Today that’s what some of us call the “solidarity economy.”

Maybe not entirely on topic, but I wanted to share it somewhere 😅

An interesting discussion of the anarchistic, individual freedom, and social justice aspects of Green politics, and their dialogue with restrictions on environmentally harmful activity - how did a movement born of the '60s counterculture get itself (falsely) labeled as petty dictators obsessed with taking away people's freedom to consume?

The political battle Greens currently face is to reclaim their idea of freedom and reinsert it into the broader historical momentum of human emancipation. They need to reframe their message as one of hope, not constraint. In spite of climate and biodiversity urgencies, they have to focus again on politics with a capital “P”: not party politics and elections, but the encompassing vision that gives meaning to both the individual and the collective.

Green liberation is a message of freedom. It offers to change everything so that we can stay who we are. After centuries of learning to be “free from” constraints and building our sense of individuality, we need now to be free together. Indeed, the freedom to be yourself is about becoming aware of a triple reflexivity: oneself, the world, and the planet. Because if infinite material growth is indeed impossible within the physical limits of this planet, there is infinite growth potential in each and every one of us.

We thrive in the links we create and maintain with each other. And this is what Greens can offer to contemporary politics: a vision of humanity that is not reduced to relationships of domination or production; an anthropology that is not reduced to sociological determinism and victimisation; a representation of the world that makes sense of this individual life that none of us ever asked to live, the fruit of a desire that was not our own. In the depths of each of us, stifled by the anguish of living or fulfilled in our projects, there is the aspiration to belong to something greater than ourselves. Deep down, we are beings of connections.