Basic Trope: Setting in which the environment of the world is in a low state.
- Straight: Tim's world is a smog-filled wasteland, with real food now a luxury, non-human animals are mostly, if not completely, extinct, and no hope for recovery.
- Exaggerated:
- The world is completely covered with garbage and nasty chemicals; if there is any sort of plant life left, expect it to be few, hidden and zealously guarded.
- There is literally no animal or plant life left, no topsoil to grow crops, the oceans are too acidic to support life and the atmosphere is unbreathable from pollution.
- Downplayed:
- Occasional references are made to abnormal weather and increasing rates of respiratory ailments, and trees are rarely shown.
- The ecological damage is "merely" relegated to one continent. The rest of the planet's ecosphere is doing relatively ok.
- Justified: Earth technology is shown to be highly destructive to the environment well before this trope kicks in.
- Inverted:
- Nature has destroyed or spoiled civilization beyond repair, see Gaia's Vengeance.
- Gaia is an Evil Matriarch Social Darwinist who is proud of how humanity has treated her.
- Subverted: Tim's homeland has been destroyed, but he is able to move to another part of the world that is still in good shape.
- Double Subverted: Everyone else had the same idea, and the sudden overpopulation puts Tim's new home on the path to becoming just like his old home..
- Parodied: Earth slits both of her wrists, cries tears (er, rivers) of blood, buys all her clothing from Hot Topic, and writes fanfiction dissing all the "preps".
- Zig Zagged:
- The environment has degraded and the degradation had caused problems. But the problems were solved (for the humans only) using science. So the biosphere is perhaps completely dead and some people lament the loss of trees and clean air. While others follow Machine Worship and see the replacement of the "inferior and inefficient" biosphere as a positive for mankind. Basically contrasting an argument from nature or tradition against one from novelty or technophilia, and saying that neither is correct or incorrect.
- Earth has lost much of its natural biodiversity but genetic engineering allows for the restoration of a vibrant environment which cleans up the pollution. While human friendly it is specifically noted how it is worse in other ways like less biology for genetic engineering to mimic, or genetic diversity which takes time to mutate and develop in the same stable way as natural life. In a bittersweet way it is noted that human friendly traits will fade with time unless they are beneficial to the new lifeform.
- Averted: Tim lives on a self-sustaining spacecraft and never visits the surface of any planet..
- Enforced: Green Aesop.
- Lampshaded: "It's funny how we haven't choked to death yet with this crap floating in the air, huh?"
- Invoked: A character tries to stop modern (or futuristic society), because they believe it will, (or it has already) lead to this trope.
- Exploited: 4Prophet Co. takes financial advantage of the situation, selling people things like clean water and air because breathing the air outside and drinking the water carries a risk of illness.
- Defied:
- Someone may point out how unbridled industrialization/development may have ramifications in the future. They are listened to too late.
- Gaia always have a strong opinion about her state.
- What's left of the government undertakes a massive effort to reclaim the Earth.
- Discussed: Characters who lived before the environment's destruction will lament how far the world has fallen; characters may suffer a BSOD after witnessing what the world was like/could have been like.
- Conversed: "Our world is just like those cheesy dystopic movies from back in the late 20th, early 21st century, eh? Too bad they hit too close to home...."
- Deconstructed:
- As bad as things get, humans never end up causing this because, according to certain interpretations, humans will never have the potential to destroy the world outright through industrial means. In the end, this trope comes about through a wholly natural disaster.
- The trope is turned up to eleven, showing just how bad a world suffering an ecological collapse would be, often giving hints, or outright stating that there is no possible recovery.
- Reconstructed:
- The world is screwed up and the ramifications are shown, but things may possibly get better.
- Humans Are Survivors, and technology adapts to fulfill needs. Crops are grown in hydroponic bays in vertical farmscrapers, and humans live in domed cities or arcologies, CO2 scrubbers fill in the role of plants and geothermal, nuclear, solar or wind power have replaced fossil fuels. Animals and plants are kept in captivity alongside seeds, gametes, embryos and zygotes on ice to repopulate the earth once ecological restoration efforts are under way.
- Played For Laughs: Humorous shout outs to Green Aesop movies may be present. (A joke involving a food resembling Soylent Green is usually an indicator.) Usually dips into the more "positive" side of crapsack world, where citizens trash the environment out of stupidity or apathy, opposed to outright greed or malice towards the environment.
- Played For Drama: Much like the second variant of deconstructed, the ramifications of a ruined ecosystem are seen, such as failing agriculture, mass extinctions, flooded coastlines, and at worse, an After the End scenario with a dead Earth.
- Implied: Aliens scoff at humanity for never knowing the true value of what they had. It isn't specifically said to be environmental but resembles it remarks about it.
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