The makers of the iconic Soylent Green, released nearly 50 years ago, offered us a glimpse to our own year, 2022.

It was the first film to mention the Greenhouse Effect, though there is no suggestion that the inhumanly overcrowded, sweltering society depicted is the result of CO2 emissions. Rather, all the problems in the dystopia of 2022 are caused by "overpopulation".

The film was made in 1973, when the world's population was 4 billion. Today, it is 7.7 billion. The filmmakers expected it to be much larger than that. Some countries, like China and India, with huge populations are lifting themselves from poverty.

The United Nations Human Development Index, which has measured health, education, income, gender equality, and poverty since 1990, indicates that population growth and progress are not mutually exclusive.

Soylent Green is a type of biscuit on which the malnourished population portrayed in 2022 has come to rely. It was formerly made from plankton but the oceans have acidified. Soylent, the monopoly manufacturer, finds a new source, one that is not revealed until the film's shocking end.

The action takes place in New York City, which in the film has a population of 40 million and is terribly overcrowded and polluted. (Reality check: New York City's population today is 8.8 million).

There is no sunshine, just grim darkness and power outages. The streets have people dying in gutters, car wrecks everywhere, and makeshift shanties in laneways.

Tenements are dilapidated and their stairwells crowded with women and children who have nowhere else to sleep.

The film's main character, Detective Thorn, played by Charlton Heston, clambers over them to reach his small room.

In this imagined 2022, Manhattan has 20 million out of work. Corruption and crime are out of control. (Reality: crime has reduced greatly in New York City since the 1970s).

In Thorn's precinct, there are 137 murders a day. (Reality: there were 450 murders in all of New York City last year).

In the Soylent Corporation's New York, everyone swelters as the days reach 32 degrees all year round. (Reality: Winters remain very, very, cold).

The masses line up at rusty central water pumps for their ration of water which has become a scarce resource. (Reality: New York City's seven reservoirs are at 88 per cent capacity).

Fresh food is a luxury for the great mass of people who are malnourished. But not so the rich.

Thorn, who is probably in his late 30s, has to be taught how to eat an apple by his best friend, Sol, the elderly man of wisdom who remembers how things used to be in "the good old days" before "our scientific magicians poisoned the water". (Reality: New York City water is only poisonous if you regard fluoride as a poison).

Sol is played admirably by Edward G. Robinson in his last cinematic role.

An exasperated Sol declares that "everything's burning up! No-one cares!", but that is hardly true when it comes to climate change. Not only do governments around the world take action to reduce CO2 emissions, admittedly some more than others, some of the biggest multinational corporations are on side as well.

At its core, Soylent Green is a reactionary film because it adopts the Malthusian view that "too many people" cause the problems.

The misanthropy is expressed through Sol when he says: "People were always rotten but the world was beautiful".

Beautiful - but for the people? None of the world's problems, such as lack of democracy and development, corrupt governments, oppression of women, inequality, nationalism, shifts in climate patterns and the rule of capital, would be solved by reducing population numbers.

Charlton Heston, a prominent right-winger in the US, commissioned the script for the film. The great divide between rich and poor is revealed when Thorn investigates the murder of a director of the Soylent Corp, and enters the victim's spacious apartment in the ruling class' exclusive Chelsea Towers.

The capitalists live in utter luxury with fresh food, water, air-conditioning and the latest mod-cons, including video games. But the film goes nowhere with this class divide; instead, the problem is overpopulation.

Echoing the Rev Thomas Malthus' "libel against humanity", as Marx described it 157 years ago, it is the poor, tired, huddled masses who are responsible for their own suffering. A very convenient belief system.

There is one scene in which the people riot, but that is short-lived and they are easily defeated, their bodies scooped up from the streets in large front-end loaders and taken off to... well, that would be a spoiler.

The film's portrayal of women in the imagined 2022 is laughable. They are either part of the sweaty anonymous mass or beautiful "furniture girls", who are assigned to each new tenant in the apartments of the rich.

They do what they are told. It's as though the Women's Liberation movement never happened.

The film ends with poor old Sol going to a euthanasia clinic. Given his attitude to humanity, who can blame him? It's legal in 2022 and performed in clean comfortable circumstances.

Sol watches beautiful scenes of Nature on a large screen - blooming flowers, blue skies, fluffy white clouds, streaming rivers, forests, ocean waves crashing gently on a beach - while his favourite classical music is played in the background.

He is nearly 80, which approximates the life expectancy in New York today. But in 1973, when the film was released, life expectancy was 71.

After Sol dies, Thorn secretly follows the truck carrying the corpse to an unknown destination. Dozens of bodies end up in a large warehouse and are then processed into... you've guessed it! - Soylent Green.

Thorn screams out: "It's made out of people!" Not a bad metaphor for capitalism, actually, as a system that objectifies our labour potential and exploits and consumes the best hours of our lives.

As the credits roll, we again see the scenes of beautiful Nature. My mind turns to recent road trips with my wife along the east coast of Australia and the glorious scenery.

Soylent Green inspired hundreds of similar sci fi films and influenced countless numbers of people with its unreal dystopian vision.

Such films are a reflection of a social system that accurately sees no future for itself.

Soylent Green, and the ideology it represents, really is bad for us - toxic, in fact.