Gaia's Lament



"In the year 9595 I'm kinda wondering if man is going to be alive He's taken everything this old earth can give And he ain't put back nothing in"

- Zager & Evans, In The Year 2525

On a futuristic Earth, or similar location, plants, animals, and naturally clean water are things of the past. Something terrible has happened -- civilization's negligence of the environment, a strange natural disaster, or even a combination of both -- to turn the world into a wasteland. This isn't (usually) the Earth-That-Was, as the planet is still populated (usually overpopulated), but its on its way there.

Real food is a luxury for only the rich while the general populace lives off of synthetic food, Food Pills, or a new kind of meat. Forests are gone, replaced by concrete and steel jungles, more commonly known as cities, which are dark and dirty. If there is any undeveloped land still left, it's a desert wasteland, spoiled beyond recovery. What was once coastline is now underwater. If the story takes place/has a scene in a coastal city, expect to see the tops of skyscrapers sticking out of the water. Sometimes this is reversed: seas become salt deserts, with the remains of beached ships scattered about. The problem of overpopulation may be solved with the legalization of suicide, or special clinics.

The general populace is detached from the natural world, having had no experience with it. However, if a character has the chance to see what is left of the green, or what the world once was, expect it to be a powerful moment. If the world is really far gone, they may simply see it as strange or alien.

A Sub-Trope of Dystopia and Crapsack World. Sister Trope to Just Before the End, Earth That Used to Be Better, and Green Aesop. "Cousin" Trope to After the End, as society is usually still hanging on, if barely, although it can go with it, (usually, this trope is either the reason why the world ended or whatever ended the world causes this trope). Frequently seen in Cyberpunk settings.

Compare to Gaia's Vengeance, when the world fights back.

Anime & Manga

 * Toward the Terra: In a distant future, humankind has destroyed the natural habitat of its homeplanet Terra and colonized other stars.
 * Uchuu Senkan Yamato: In the original series, the surface of the earth is a radioactive desert and humanity is forced to live underground.
 * Towards the (chronological) end of Osamu Tezuka's Phoenix, Earth is pretty much a dying, overpopulated hellhole.

Comics

 * A comic in Odyssey Magazine had a wandering robot discover a civilization that had drained its own homeworld of geothermal energy, and despite their very advanced technology, they died when the last pocket of air froze.

Film

 * Alien: Earth has been reduced to a over-polluted slum, and one character refers it to as a 'shithole.'
 * WALL-E: Earth is left almost completely lifeless after rampant consumerism, forcing humanity to leave on giant ships to the stars.
 * Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home: While Star Trek's Earth is generally positive, some sort of environmental faux pax resulted in whales going extinct. Which becomes a problem for Earth in the movie.
 * Lost in Space: The 1998 film has the family searching for a new home for humanity after Earth has sufferred irreversible ecological damage.
 * The Running Man: The intro mentions how Earth's resources, such as food, are in short supply.
 * A.I.: Artificial Intelligence: The human population has been reduced by ecological collaspe, and most of New York City is under water. It gets worse, At the end,
 * Final Fantasy the Spirits Within
 * Blade Runner: Real animals are a luxury, and people are trying to get off of the dying Earth, which is polluted and irradiated.
 * Judge Dredd: A public service robot goes about proclaiming how good recycled food is for the environment, or what's left of it.
 * 9|Nine, although it's unclear whether the whole world is like this, or just the city where the film is set.
 * Avatar: While outdoors Earth is never seen in the theatrical cut, tidbits of information throughout the movie (and explicitly in Avatar: A Confidential Report on the Biological and Social History of Pandora) say that it is an ecological mess, including the quote at the top of the page.
 * The alternate opening from the extended cut shows that most people wear masks while walking outside. There is also a mention on how a species of tiger, which has been extinct outside of captivity, is making a comeback thanks to cloning.
 * Soylent Green: There's a year-long heat wave, New York City is home to fifty million people, real food is precious, and cheap food is either processed soy, plankton, or...well. One very emotional scene involves Sol and a tearful Thorn watching videos of what the world used to be,
 * Random tidbit of information, Thorn's actor, Charlton Heston, really was crying, as Sol's actor Edward G. Robinson was dying of cancer. Only Heston knew.
 * The Terminator: A deleted scene would have shown Kyle and Sarah, getting into a fight, and rolling into a wooded area. Kyle suffers a bit of a Heroic BSOD, and starts to cry when he sees how beautiful the world used to be.
 * Intro to Red Planet (2000): "By the year 2000 we had begun to over populate, pollute, and poison our planet faster than we could clean it up. We ignored the problem for as long as we could. But we were kidding ourselves. By 2025, we knew we were in trouble. And began to desperately search for a new home - Mars." There's a bit in it where the younger astronauts question Terence Stamp's character about what the Earth used to look like.
 * Silent Running: All natural life on Earth is dead, save for human beings, who at the beginning of the movie are on ships that are trying to save the last of the trees. Food has been reduced to some sort of artificial goop, and all of the characters except for the protagonist find real food disgusting.
 * In Battle for the Planet Of The Apes dogs and cats have become extinct and people use apes for pets and cheap labor.
 * All Summer In A Day: The storyline is just like the short story of the same name, but Margot mentions how the Earth is "too crowded now."
 * The Matrix: The Earth is completely covered in perpetual darkness caused by nanomachines which cover the sky, this causes all plant life and animals to die out. All that's left are machine cities which cover the Earth.

Literature

 * Nights Dawn: Earth is so overpopulated, that minor crimes will get you sent off world, and pollution has forced cities to build domes.
 * The Road Much like the movie, the unnamed disaster has reduced the Earth to a lifeless rock, populated only by what is left of humanity.
 * In The Supernaturalist by Eoin Colfer, the world drinks sim-coffee, the smog is always heavy, and the sky is never blue unless you fly out of the atmosphere (it is instead colored according to the chemicals in the smog). Also, there are no whales.
 * The Lorax is just one big book of this, which brings in the question how in God's name they're going to do the upcoming animated movie without watering down how grim the story actually is.
 * They didn't.
 * House of the Scorpion: Somewhat implied. The Rio Grande is so polluted, that Tam Lin berates Matt when he simply just goes near it. The Gulf of California has been drained to a small river, and Matt finds skeletons of whales within it.
 * Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream Of Electic Sheep?, filmed as Blade Runner.
 * Like its movie, Soylent Green, the book Make Room! Make Room! (by Harry Harrison) features much of the features of this trope, sans the human meat part.
 * L.E. Modesitt's The Forever Hero features this heavily. Earth is practically uninhabitable due to massive ecological disaster, and the few survivors are quickly dying off. The main character is one of the (very) surviving outside a city, and he ends up spending his life and career trying to restore the planet.
 * In Asimov's short story 2430 A.D. the entire earth's land area is covered by buildings which house the planets 15 trillion inhabitants. The oceans are empty, except for plankton which provide both food and oxygen. The plot revolves around plans to kill off the last non-human animals on earth.
 * Invoked in Ursula K. LeGuin's Hainish Cycle - Earth is described in The Dispossessed as having been reduced to a less-than-stellar state of existence.
 * Supported by another Hainish novel, The Telling. Although the book doesn't take place on Earth, the main character is a Terran, and through her we learn that in her time, Earth was both an ecological and social mess. Yet another early Hanish novella, The Word for World is Forest, has humans stripping the peaceful forested planet Athshe of its valuable wood, having mined the Earth into barrenness.
 * The  Earth in The Lathe of Heaven is wildly overpopulated, global warming appears to have disrupted the ecosystem (Mount Hood is said to be permanently snowless), and near-starvation appears to be the norm.
 * This also happens at some points in Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars Trilogy - . However, this may not be as severe an example as several others on this page for various reasons, such as the fact that.
 * Norman Spinrad's Anvilicious He Walked Among Us basically revolves around whether the future will be this, or Ecotopia. (Or both possible futures might just be the ravings of an insane comedian.)
 * In Beauty by Sheri S. Tepper. In the section of the book set in the future, the wilderness and all its animal species are wiped out (even the oceans) to make way for crop growing facilities and housing for the rapidly growing population. People live packed on top of each other in tiny appartment 'boxes' and eat artificially processed food.
 * Bill McKibben's Eaarth, which describes how we have irreversibly changed our planet with global warming, etc.
 * Oryx and Crake and its companion novel The Year of the Flood have the ecosystem devastated by climate change and overpopulation. The near-total lack of any food not either based on soybeans or heavily genetically engineered is frequently mentioned.

Live-Action TV

 * Subverted in the Speculative Documentary Life After People, humans disappear suddenly, resulting in ecological disaster when no one repairs hazardous waste storage facilities and the like, but centuries later, there is surprisingly little evidence humans once ravaged the environment.
 * In the Speculative Documentary Earth 2100, not only have countless creatures been wiped out, but the worst part is
 * Stargate SG-1 visited at least one planet where unchecked industrial growth had destroyed the environment - to the point where the atmosphere was not just toxic, but downright caustic. The last survivors were living inside a force-field dome, waiting for the planet to recover...
 * This happened at least twice, though in the other instance the people on the planet had been kept in stasis to await the planet's recovery and when SG-1 arrived
 * Another example would be the Tollan. Their homeworld was ravaged by a disaster caused by sharing technology with the inhabitants of a neighbouring planet (if I recall correctly). And the characters that turned up on earth had never seen any animals before. They move to somewhere nicer.
 * There's a Space: 1999 episode where the Alphans make contact with Earth, where several centuries have passed due to relativity or something. Everyone on Earth lives in domed cities because the atmosphere is now poisonous and nothing can live outside. Still, as they say, "who needs nature?"
 * This seems to be the state of the Alphaverse in Charlie Jade.

Music
"All the birds and trees and things they are a-losing Everything, everywhere is vanishing When I lay me down at last My body tired, my time passed We've eroded the soil from the ground A rocky grave is where I'll be found, cause Whatever direction you may turn You'll see my friend, the earth's been poisoned By the human germ"
 * The filk song No Such Thing (as sung by Kathy Mar, among others). A mother tells her daughter that dolphins and whales are just fairy tale creatures, but knows that eventually said daughter will grow up and "In spite of all our lying, she'll know what we have done."
 * Snog's "The Human Germ":

"Look at Mother Nature on the run in the 1970s Look at Mother nature on the run in the 1970s"
 * "They paved paradise, and put up a parking lot..."
 * Neil Young's After The Gold Rush

Then at the end "Flying Mother Nature's silver seed to a new home in the sun Flying Mother Nature's silver seed to a new home"

Music Videos

 * The video for Disturbed's Another Way To Die has the world depicted as this in the Bad Future.

Tabletop Games

 * Shadowrun: Nuclear plant accidents, industrial pollution and side effects of the return of magic have caused massive environmental damage.
 * GDW's Dark Conspiracy. In addition to the usual cyberpunk environmental damage, there are areas called "Demonground" with evil extraplanar monsters.
 * R. Talsorian Games' Cyberpunk 2020.
 * Risk 2210: Players place down "devastation zones" on the map, which are nuclear fallout markers and are impassable. Other features included the Amazon Desert. Going by that, 23rd century Earth isn't doing so hot.
 * Dark Sun: Corrupt magic and war have turned Athas, a once beautiful world, into a desert wasteland.
 * Like everything else, Warhammer 40000 turns this Up to Eleven. Earth, or rather Holy Terra, has become a Hive World. All of its resources have been depleted (even the oceans are completely gone), and its atmosphere is choked with pollution.

Video Games

 * Earth in Terranigma starts out like this, but you restore it in the beginning of the game. Towards the end though, as humans become more powerful, dialogue reveals that the environment is starting to head downhill.
 * Touched upon in Illusion of Gaia. When Will sees the vision of modern society, he seems to be a bit disturbed at the concept of natural environments being replaced by sprawling cities.
 * Metro 2033: The only place in game where you can breathe without a gas mask is in the titular Metro system (and there are even some places there where you need one!). The surface of the world is a frozen toxic wasteland, and you cannot survive up there for long without a mask. A side conversation heard between two NPCs reveals that the surface won't habitable for at least 50 more years.
 * Another side conversation reveals that outside of Moscow, the area is habitable, but still very dangerous and nothing like pre-war Earth.
 * In Command and Conquer 's Tiberian continuity, thanks to the titular alien substance, Earth was basically on it's last legs until  Of course before that the world outside the blue zones was the epitome of a Crapsack World Fallout style.
 * Fallout: The war that created the setting has devastated the entire planet.
 * Halo: Pre-Covenant war, Earth was suffering due to overpopulation and human activities. As colonization increased however, its noted, at least at the Halo Wiki and in the books that global warming reversed itself, with seawalls built to keep out the waters becoming worthless. During the Second Battle of Earth though, its pretty much a given that the Covenant's actions were not in the planet's best interests.
 * Overpopulation isn't a problem anymore... side materials note that the human population after the war is only 200 million.
 * Assassin's Creed: Never directly seen, but implied by the emails in the first game.
 * Battlefield 2142: The manual mentions that global warming hastened the Ice Age which has left most of Earth inhabitable. What is left is now being fought over in a global war. Meanwhile, sea level has gone down, in certain levels, you can find beached ships laying where water once was.
 * Dystopia: Mentioned in the wiki's backstories but implied in-game when you find a cafe with nothing but soy food.
 * Star Fox 64: The planet Zoness was once beautiful and lush, and served as a vacation spot, but later became a waste dump thanks to Andross's experiments. Also, in the intro, Corneria is mentioned to have been turned into a wasteland by Andross, but has recovered by the start of the game.
 * According to the original game's manual, Venom once had "beauty second only to Corneria's" before Andross turned it into "a dark, polluted world".
 * Deus Ex: While not as prominent as other fiction, its implied through in-game media that the Earth could have a better ecological record. Coastal flooding has become common and the majority of food the player can pick up seems to be artificial, or made with Human Resources. A conversation heard between two NPCs reveals that grizzy bears have been extinct for decades (The game is set in the 2050s.) If you read an email on Paul's computer, an advertisement, citing "dwindling resources", talks about a suicide clinic that offers its user's family 10,000 credits. News articles also read that the East River had a massive chlorine spill, killing almost all life in it, and that water supplies may be contaminated.
 * Deus Ex Invisible War: The sequel to the above isn't any better. Transgenic species have escaped from labs, causing trouble for people in cities and functioning as invasive species. Nanite Swells cause Grey Death-like (the plague in the original game) symptoms in their victims, and in
 * Deus Ex Human Revolution: The prequel to the above shows the "Golden Age" of the augmentation revolution. Cities are bright and beautiful, and people are prosperous...as long as you're rich. There's strong rumblings in the background of bad things happening around the world environmentally, as well. The rumblings are strong enough that a gigantic undertaking in the Arctic Ocean involving a massive complex that essentially creates a hole in the ocean to aid with global warming not only seems like a fantastic idea, but is actually serving as a template for other facilities that are planned to be built throughout the world later.
 * Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri: Just one of the many things mentioned of Earth before its final destruction.
 * Half-Life 2: The Combine occupation of Earth has reduced much of it to a wasteland, populated by hostile alien life forms. Food has been reduced to what must be very revolting, as one NPC says to the player, "You gotta be damn hungry to wait in line for this crap."
 * Actually, that's pre-packaged food made by the Combine. The Resistance living outside the cities use alternate food sources: while the Xenian lifeforms wrecked the planet's ecosystem, at least headcrabs and leeches are edible to humans and vortigaunts. It's unknown exactly what Combine soldiers and Elites are fed but it's likely they get the same saline solution used by Stalkers.
 * Ironically, both Portal games seem to subvert this. The first game takes place completely inside . The previews for Portal 2 show G La DOS's chamber entangled by plants and in the end
 * In the game Rogue Trip, the Earth is an irradiated wasteland, and the only green spots left are vacation areas controlled by a thug named Big Daddy.
 * In Sonic the Hedgehog CD all of the Bad Future levels are either this, or in the process of becoming this.
 * Subverted in Cuban Missile Crisis: The Aftermath: much of the northern hemisphere is left as a nuclear wasteland forcing The Anglo-Americans, Franco-German, USSR, and China to relocate in the Southern Hemisphere. And they bring their monuments with them.
 * Final Fantasy VII deals with a group of eco-terrorists named AVALANCHE fighting to liberate the world from the ruthless exploitation by a greedy mega corporation who never stops draining the life energy of the planet (and thus the very cycle of life itself) for their own money and power. The trope is driven home when the player first leaves Midgar, and is able to see the surrounding lands are indeed grey and dead, there isn't a even blade of grass for miles around. Most of the rest of the world is still doing ok for now, but the underwater reactor at Junon has apparently wiped out the marine life that used to support the fishing town nearby.
 * Mega Man Zero: the entire world was laid to ruin as a result of the Elf Wars before the start of the series. It isn't until the final game in the series that you see non-artificial nature.

Web Original
"Some see the vessel as half full; others see it as half empty; We pour it out on the floor and laugh."
 * Pave the Earth!, founded in Usenet, have not just a plan but The Plan (TM) to geoengineer this themselves.

Western Animation

 * Played for laughs on The Simpsons episode "Lisa's Wedding". Set in the future, trees are apparently extinct, as shown by a holographic image of a tree, with the description: "In memory of a real tree."
 * The Ice Age short "No Time For Nuts", Scrat encounters a Time Machine that takes him and his acorn through several time periods. It ends in the shade of what appears to be a huge oak tree full of acorns, but Scrat discovers to his dismay that it's actually a bronze monument to the last oak tree.
 * According to various comments heard throughout Futurama, by the year 3000, pine trees, poodles, cows and anchovies will be extinct; there will be jungles on Mars but not on Earth; and with petroleum reserves depleted, cars will run on whale oil.
 * The whales deserved it.

Real Life

 * There are various places on Earth which are like this and we'll leave it at that.