If you read the above and were asked, "Is this fact or fiction?" what would your response be?
My own response is -- It's somewhere
between fact and fiction. It's statistics.
2050 isn't exactly soon, nor exactly "way out there", and based on how populations and consumption WORLDWIDE are rising, I'd say we need a wakeup call of some sort to bear in mind that for all humanity's ingeniousness, we haven't found a way to manufacture raw materials -- we're reliant on the same processes (albeit refined over generations and scientific advances) that our hunter & gatherer predecessors relied on -- the evaporation/transpiration cycle that brings us rain and purifies water naturally, photosynthesis of plants to purify the air, the breeding patterns of sea and land creatures for food (we can't "grow a cow" much faster than they grow naturally, for instance...or a huge old growth tree, the most prized in logging for its strength and amount of wood per effort expended to harvest it). Plus, the many things we have figured out how to create from raw materials are in many ways not environmentally friendly and they're not recycled so we can at least make OTHER non-environmentally friendly items from them instead of polluting more land with more and bigger landfills. And don't get me started on the environmental ravages of war, which last in the landscape long after the dead have been brought home, given a heroes welcome or proper burial and peace has been "achieved".
So, I think it's probably between fact and fiction, leaning towards the fact side of things moreso than fiction. Colonizing two planets is a stretch, particularly since there are no planets like earth within our transportation means or current knowledge. Asteroids might become a possibility someday, or capturing comet's gases, but now I'm venturing pure guesses... And there's always the moon, God help us (my dread is to have kids look up at the moon in a telescope and see a colony and landfills up there, instead of Mare Tranquillitatis and natural craters.)