NYX VAEL
Most cyberpunk worlds contain some kind of wasteland, even when it never appears directly. They are regions completely destroyed beyond the great megacities, something halfway between a ruin and a dumping ground.
In Judge Dredd, they are radiation-scorched badlands — basically everything outside the cities. The same idea runs through the Blade Runner universe. In The Matrix, despite the absence of the genre's typical urban sprawl, virtually the entire real world is a wasteland.
Regardless of the form, wastelands and their emptiness contrast sharply with the densely populated areas. It evokes the same feeling as looking at Hong Kong's massive residential blocks, where tiny apartments are stacked into every available space. Similar structures have begun to appear in other major urban centers, like Tokyo and São Paulo.
There are reasons people move to these places, in real life as much as in cyberpunk fiction: job opportunities and the impossibility of living anywhere else. That second reason is the most common in fictional narratives, and it will only grow more relevant in the coming years, as the extreme climate events we are already living through continue to escalate. In the fictional versions, the cause is usually sudden and dramatic — a collapse, a war, an event that can be pointed to. In the real world, the process tends to be slower and more deliberate.
These are not places abandoned after a disaster. They are places being abandoned while the disaster is still unfolding, quietly enough that the world can look away.
Climate sacrifice zones are a different kind of wasteland. Unlike a nuclear impact zone or a radiation field, they are not the aftermath of a single catastrophic event — they are the result of a slow, documented, and entirely predictable process. It is possible to anticipate much of the damage. But that does not mean states will do anything to minimize it, and normally, they do not.
One example is the Super El Niño projected for 2026. Reports have been circulating for a while now, but the general sense is that the only thing to do is wait for it to pass and then repair the damage. If that is even possible.
But climate alone is not the only culprit.
When a corporation decides that extracting resources from a region matters more than the damage it causes, sacrificing an entire area in the name of profit becomes a mere business decision. A mining company can devastate a massive zone, poison the water supply, and make local ecological recovery impossible, then move on to the next extraction site and begin the cycle of destruction all over again.
Over time, the cost of these sacrifice zones becomes impossible to ignore.
And once the existence and creation of sacrifice zones becomes normalized, demanding their revitalization becomes nearly impossible. When they grow too large or too numerous, the argument surfaces that there is nothing left to be done. It would cost too much.
Data centers: The New Wasteland Engines
Artificial intelligence has been classified by its enthusiasts as the greatest advancement in human history, capable of solving any problem that exists or might ever arise. The catch is that for AI to function and evolve, data centers must be built, and data centers are the new protagonists of this planetary sacrifice cycle.
They generate enormous amounts of heat and require vast quantities of water to operate. Large data centers can consume up to 5 million gallons per day, equivalent to the water usage of a town of 10,000 to 50,000 people.
Their global expansion is driven primarily by economic factors such as land cost, tax incentives, and access to cheap energy, not by sustainability. Which means these facilities are frequently built in already vulnerable areas that are cheaper to acquire, making local conditions measurably worse.
There are two important contradictions here. The cloud is sold as something immaterial, clean, and weightless, while the physical reality is the opposite. And AI is simultaneously promoted as a solution to all human problems, including the climate one, and quietly functioning as one of its accelerants.
It is the promise of High Tech — a promise that will not reach everyone — tied to the reality of Low Life and a future of guaranteed decline.