Thanks for the thoughts etlecho.
I can understand where you are coming from but I am too cynical to believe that a paternalistic world government would make things any better. I believe that environmental collapse became inevitable as soon as the human population topped 3 billion. It is a matter of when, not if. Humanity has demonstrated over and over that it will only learn hard lessons the hard way. Climate change will be a hard lesson. An alien invasion would of course also be a hard lesson.
But do you think Omega is right? Can we learn and improve or will we destroy ourselves no matter how hard we try? I am still not sure where I stand but I certainly hope he is wrong.