Gaia's Lament: Difference between revisions

[[File:trashballearth2.png|link=WALL-E|frame|[[Hello Dolly|Put on your Sunday clothes...]]]]

[[Only Electric Sheep Are Cheap|Real food]] is a luxury for only the rich while the general populace lives off of [[Future Food Is Artificial|synthetic food]], [[Food Pills]], or a [[Human Resources|new kind of meat]]. Forests are gone, replaced by concrete and steel jungles, more commonly known as cities, which are [[City Noir|dark]] and [[Used Future|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 [[We Will Have Euthanasia in The Future|special clinics.]]

* ''[[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.

* ''[[The Running Man (Film)|The Running Man]]'': The intro mentions how Earth's resources, such as food, are in short supply.

* ''[[AI Artificial Intelligence]]'': The human population has been reduced by ecological collaspe, and most of New York City is under water. [[It Got Worse|It gets worse]], At the end, {{spoiler|all of Earth is frozen over, and humanity is extinct.}}

* ''[[Final Fantasy the Spirits Within (Anime)|Final Fantasy the Spirits Within]]''

* ''[[9 (Animation)|Nine]]'', although it's unclear whether the whole world is like this, or just the city where the film is set.

* ''[[Avatar (Film)|Avatar]]'': While outdoors Earth is never seen in the theatrical cut, tidbits of information throughout the movie (and explicitly in ''[[All There in the Manual|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.

* ''[[Soylent Green (Film)|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 [[Future Food Is Artificial|processed soy]], plankton, or...[[It Was His Sled|well]]. One very [[Tear Jerker|emotional scene]] involves Sol and a tearful Thorn watching videos of what the world used to be, {{spoiler|as Sol commits suicide.}}

* [[Philip K Dick]]'s ''Do Androids Dream Of Electic Sheep?'', filmed as ''[[Blade Runner]]''.

* Invoked in [[Ursula K Le Guin|Ursula K. LeGuin]]'s ''Hainish Cycle'' - Earth is described in ''The Dispossessed'' as having been reduced to a less-than-stellar state of existence.

* 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.

* In the [[Speculative Documentary]] ''[[Earth 2100 (Film)|Earth 2100]]'', not only have countless creatures been wiped out, but the worst part is {{spoiler|because knowledge has been lost, it will take thousands of years before humans can begin to repair what they've done.}}

* ''[[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...

* The video for [[Disturbed (Music)|Disturbed]]'s [[Green Aesop|Another Way To Die]] has the world depicted as this in the [[Bad Future]].

* ''[[Battlefield (Video 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 (Video Game)|Dystopia]]'': [[All There in the Manual|Mentioned in the wiki's backstories]] but implied in-game when you find a cafe with nothing but [[Future Food Is Artificial|soy food.]]

* ''[[Deus Ex (Video Game)|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 [[Future Food Is Artificial|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 [[We Will Have Euthanasia in The Future|suicide clinic]] that offers its user's family 10,000 [[Global Currency|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 (Video Game)|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 {{spoiler|the Omar ending, the environment is outright destroyed in the many wars that happen after the game ends.}}

** ''[[Deus Ex Human Revolution (Video Game)|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 Meiers Alpha Centauri]]'': Just one of the many things mentioned of [[Crapsack World|Earth]] before its final destruction. {{spoiler|The ending reveals that it is recolonized sometime later though.}}

* ''[[Half-Life 2 (Video Game)|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."

*** Ironically, both [[Portal (Video Game)|Portal]] games seem to subvert this. The first game takes place completely inside {{spoiler|except the brief ending where the Aperture grounds look relatively verdant and Combine-free}}. The previews for [[Portal 2 (Video Game)|Portal 2]] show [[G La DOS]]'s chamber entangled by plants and in the end {{spoiler|Chell emerges from the facility into a lush wheat field.}}

* In ''[[Sonicthe Hedgehog CD]]'' all of the [[Bad Future]] levels are either this, or in the process of becoming this.

* ''[[Final Fantasy VII (Video Game)|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.