Environment & Energy

In some ways, I think you are absolutely right. Nations and high-net-worth elites are constantly jockeying for position. The "winners" are generally the governments (or individuals) who can deploy the most energy and material - this applies to both economic and military competition. Why would any of the players voluntarily back off? The kind of coordination required does lead one to think of a "single world government."

In another sense, I think you're missing the obvious. Authoritarianism is what got us here. Any formal economy is coercive. (That goes without saying, but if you have any doubts about that being the case in the US, just look as how wildly off actual policy is with respect to polling - raise the minimum wage and increase taxes on the rich have had supermajority support for years, and even "is protecting the environment more important than growing the economy" registered above water when I checked recently.) There are plenty of people in the US (and many more elsewhere) that use very little energy and materials due to income/wealth constraints. There are already prohibitions or stipulations about what can be manufactured - or what goods and services can be sold - and under what conditions. Our government wouldn't have to be any more "authoritarian" that it already is, it would just have to enforce different rules. Or the world could go wildly anti-authoritarian, which would remove most of the "incentives" to produce a massive surplus...