i'm always trying to take notes & inspiration from solarpunk stories about what can be done here & now, so for me, if a story's setting is post-apocalyptic or society only improved after some extinction event getting rid of most humans, i tend to skip it.
most of us have been consuming (or at least couldn't avoid hearing about) apocalypse-themed media for our whole lives. i think it's really important for us as a society to work on imagining a non-apocalyptic world, because we need to imagine something before we can make it reality. 🙌