We know that Earth That Was became difficult to live on, so humanity spread out to terraform and colonize other worlds. Was Earth TOTALLY abandoned, or is it just a difficult environment?
Answer
There are several canon descriptions of the ultimate fate of "Earth-That-Was", none of them it must be admitted, from especially reliable sources but all suggesting an apocalyptic collapse of Earth's ecosystem:
The first is contained within the episode Our Mrs Reynolds. The original shooting script has a bit more detail than was contained in the episode;
SAFFRON: That when she was born, she had no sky, and she was open, inviting and the stars would rush into her, through the skin of her, making the oceans boil with sensation, and when she could endure no more ecstasy, she puffed up her cheeks and blew out the sky, to womb her and keep them at bay, ['til she had rest some, and that we had to leave 'cause she was strong enough to suck them in once more].
The implication is clearly that the Earth's atmosphere became uninhabitable and may have been on the verge of being lost entirely.
The second canon reference is seen in the film "Serenity" and is from an even more dubious source, an Alliance teacher;
Teacher (Voiceover) : Earth-That-Was could no longer sustain our numbers, we were so many.
We see a solar system; a sun like our own, surrounded by many more planets than ours, they in turn surrounded by moons.
Teacher: (continuing) We found a new galaxy: dozens of planets and hundreds of moons. Each one terraformed - - a process taking decades - - to support human life, to be new Earths"
While she is speaking, we see the image above. The Earth appears to be in very bad shape. The atmosphere is visibly brown, the seas are almost black and the landmasses no longer seem to be capable of supporting vegetation. There is visible sea-level rise and there are columns of reddish clouds.
Although I'd bow to the judgement of an actual climate scientist (and taking into account that the Alliance teacher might simply be lying or the graphic faked), I find it hard to believe that an atmosphere with that much contamination could actually sustain human life.
The third reference is found in the episode "Heart of Gold" where we see a puppet show depicting the fate of the Earth. The official translation (found in the Firefly Companion) is very telling.
-A Circular shadow representing Earth-That-Was fills the frame
Narrator (in Chinese, translated below): Little by little, the tribes used the earth up. Barren, she had little left to offer them.
Silhouetted shapes appear. Spaceships. They radiate out from the Shadow Sphere, scatter in all directions. Leave it behind.
Narrator:
Swollen of her, they left. And for the first time since the Great Burn that birthed her, She was alone.The Ships are gone now. A wisp of Smoke wafts off the Sphere, creates a snake of Shadow.
Narrator:
The Earth cried, and terrible were her tears. Acid and caustic, the spawn of the Tribe's rape.
They flowed a Century.The smoke intensifies, becomes shadowy Flame.
Narrator: The fire that finally came did so as a Blessing.
The sphere smolders now, bits of it breaking up and disintegrating under the intense heat.
I also found this webchat comment from Joss Whedon. Note that while he doesn't totally confirm the questioner's assumption that Earth-that-was has been destroyed, neither does he deny it.
philUK: Joss, in Serenity universe before earth got destroyed, what happened to the UK? Did we finally become the fifty-first state?
Joss: Yes. In fact, America annexed England and the planet that represents America in Serenity and Firefly is called Londinium, proving once and for all that we killed daddy because we wanted to be him.
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