I hate what most of our world has become. I hate the hierarchy, the bureaucratic bullshit, the soul-crushing tedium of working an “office job” that does nothing but market illusions to people who can’t afford them. I hate being 33 years old, stuck in a hamster wheel I never asked for, in a society that treats me like a mildly malfunctioning cog because I have ADHD and can’t concentrate on soul-crushing tasks. The problem isn’t just me. It’s everything.

And so, in a half-desperate attempt at escapism, I revisit a concept that’s been rattling around in the internet’s forgotten archives: Solarpunk. This marks another edition of my somewhat-optimistic-but-not-really essays.

Remember Solarpunk?

Back in the early 2010s—especially on Tumblr—Solarpunk was the alt-trend. People posted art of lush cities blooming with vines and solar panels, societies living in an eco-friendly harmony, all of it with that rebellious, anti-corporate “punk” flair. It felt like the total antithesis to the neon-lit hellscapes of Cyberpunk or the gloom of the usual post-apocalyptic fantasies.

Yet here we are, more than a decade later, and Solarpunk feels… stale. Old utopian wallpapers that feel naive and stupid. The initial wave of optimism dried up faster than my houseplants. Now it’s mostly an obscure hashtag you see pop up once in a blue moon, overshadowed by climate dread, political chaos, and whatever new crisis pops up daily.

But with the meteoric rise of AI, AGI, and machine learning hype, maybe—just maybe—Solarpunk is poised for a surprise comeback. Because, ironically, the same technology that might drive us deeper into a new corporate dystopia could also, under ideal circumstances (here we go with the naivety), free us from the chains of wage labor, consumerism, and that suffocating sense that none of this is really living.

The idealistic vision

Let’s do an exercise in imagination, for old time’s sake.

We’ve got these architecturally stunning cityscapes: every rooftop crowned with gardens, every vertical surface clad in vegetation, wind turbines humming in the background. No more fossil fuels, no more frantic hustle just to scrape by. Solar panels soak up energy from a radiant sky. AI manages the grid: intelligent distribution of resources, minimal waste, near-zero carbon footprint.

Economy? Decentralized. Collaborative. No one’s forced into menial labor for a scrap of a paycheck; automation and advanced robotics do the heavy lifting. People have time—to create art, raise kids (if they really want), lie in fields, talk to one another. Entire neighborhoods are organized around mutual aid instead of rent-gouging. No one’s enslaved to a landlord or a faceless boss.

We keep the internet, but it’s not owned by billionaire parasites. We keep advanced medicine, but it’s not locked behind insurance paywalls. We keep AI, but it isn’t hijacked for corporate profits or Orwellian surveillance. That’s the Solarpunk dream.

Neat, right? Also, naive.

Cyberpunk reality

The truth: we’re living in the future already, and for now it’s bleak as all hell. Forget corporate towers bathed in neon—we’ve got them. Forget inequality so absurd it feels like satire—we’re drowning in it. Corporate wars?—coming soon. Folks can’t afford rent or groceries, but billionaires are talking about Mars. Whole countries are bein devastated by climate catastrophes. We’re living Cyberpunk.

But all this isn’t some second-rate dystopia we watch in a cringe Netflix special; it’s our everyday existence. Capitalism has an uncanny knack for warping every promising technology—AI included—into a method of further exploitation. The idea that we’ll somehow circumvent that entire dynamic and evolve into a green, communal paradise? It requires a massive, global shift in consciousness.

Sure, we see miniature-pockets of actual resistance and progressive experimentation—co-op living, regenerative agriculture, local communities building microgrids. But let’s not kid ourselves. Those remain tiny islands in a vast ocean of fossil-fueled cynicism. Politicians stall on climate legislation. Corporations buy politicians. The status quo invests every fiber of its being into maintaining that status quo.

Change, if it ever comes, is terribly slow. And possibly too slow to matter.

AI: Our last hope? Really?

Now let’s talk about AI. An arms race is underway, with big players salivating over ways to harness machine intelligence for data-mining, cost-cutting, and profit acceleration. The visionary among them might spin it as “increasing efficiency” or “optimizing productivity,” but we all know it’s about extracting more value for the corporate overlords. Meanwhile, entire swaths of human workers get replaced or “streamlined.”

If AI remains locked behind closed-source paywalls, we’re sprinting toward a hyper-capitalist meltdown. We’re talking about a world where a handful of tech kings own everything—energy, healthcare, education, maybe even your fucking thoughts—while the rest of us keep “re-skilling” ourselves into oblivion. The dream of Solarpunk becomes laughably quaint, a relic of some whimsical Tumblr post from 2014.

But, if by some cosmic miracle we seize AI as commons—imagine open-source everything, robust data privacy, a globally decentralized structure—maybe then we get a chance to reorganize the entire production chain. Imagine automated agriculture that doesn’t funnel profits to shareholders. Imagine universal basic income that isn’t just a band-aid but a stepping stone toward the end of wage slavery. That’s the kernel of hope: an AI that serves everyone rather than a chosen few.

You can support my work by buying me a coffee (or some delicious nicotine pouches) via Stripe. Cheers.

Odds are against us

The odds are stacked massively against us. Why?

1. Entrenched power: From fossil fuel titans to Big Tech, the 1% will cling to privilege. They’re not going to just hand over the means of (fully automated) production because we said “please.”

2. Global fragmentation: Far-right movements, political tribalism, climate refugees, resource wars—tell me how we leapfrog that to embrace a unified, cooperative Solarpunk future? The left is, for all practical purposes, functionally dead right now. There is no unified working class on the horizon.

3. Apathy & distraction: We’re exhausted, bombarded by crises every single day, many of us too mentally drained to do more than doomscroll.

4. AI’s corporate capture: Already happening. Many of the biggest players want to patent the world. The notion of AI for the people is dangerously naive if we’re not actively fighting for it.

For Solarpunk to be real, we’d need nothing short of a revolution in consciousness—and not the superficial “just buy an electric car” greenwashing bullshit. We’d need total upending of capitalism, global solidarity, and an unflinching commitment to share resources. That’s a tall order for a species that can’t even agree to wear masks during a pandemic.

Possibility

Yet part of me clings to the idea that maybe an unhinged chain of events—catastrophic climate disasters, unstoppable labor uprisings, AI breakthroughs that can’t be monopolized—might tip us over into a radical reconfiguration.

Maybe people will get so fed up, so cornered, they’ll realize we can’t keep playing this rigged game. Maybe they’ll break the system from within. Maybe.

I’m not gonna pretend it’s likely. I might be more depressed than hopeful. I see AI being used to replace me at my job (which should be a good thing!), see the climate meltdown intensify, see supposed democracies teeter on the brink to fascism. Still, I can’t fully extinguish the thought of solar-powered arcologies. It’s a coping mechanism, a fancy daydream to keep me from drowning in cynicism. Whatever.

You can’t kill imagination

Somebody is going to revive Solarpunk. Maybe a new wave of conscious kids, or disgruntled engineers, or AI researchers who see the writing on the wall. The images of overgrown skyscrapers and communal gardens are just too beautiful to die forever. There’s romance in it. There’s yearning.

But will it move beyond aesthetics into actual political traction? Nah. Likely it’ll fade again, overshadowed by a new wave of dystopian mania—the endless reboots of “Everything is fucked, and we’re all doomed” that we see in TV shows and movies. They do make for more profitable stories, ironically. The system capitalizes on our fear, too.

And that’s the problem, too: hope doesn’t sell as well as cynicism.

Antonio