It would help to see what you consider "bleak".
There are a couple options for a similar effect. You could try creating a particle system within the sphere
- make a small icosphere inside the globe
- add a particle system and
- unselect "even distribution"
- Set "Random" in "Velocity" to 1.0
- turn off "Emitter" in the "Render" section
- in "Field Weights" set "Gravity" to 0
- Select the glass globe, on the physics tab turn on collision
- Press Alt+A and watch particles bounce a bit, and Alt-A again to stop
- For the globe, give it a Volume material:

And voila

For something fancy, you could add more particles and maybe some force fields. And yes, for a much better look, add an environment map. If you want, you can make the environment map only appear in reflections and not behind it by using the lightpath node's "is reflection ray"