If the industrial nations push to get education, health and welfare policies in place throughout the world we will gain scientists, thinkers and leaders that may just produce different alternative ways of doing things. We may be able to help control population growth, lessen wars, slow down destruction of the globe. This will give us additional breathing space to make change.
I've been reading some arguments recently surrounding some dangerous journal articles submitted to the only hypotheses journal that is not peer reviewed, Medical Hypotheses. There was the thread of an argument running through the conversations surrounding the problems there that new and radical technology and ways of doing things may never see the light of day as when someone suggests it, the people who peer review may call them dangerous idiots, much like when a certain person claimed the world was not flat, and that the Earth swung round the Sun, and not the other way round!
I have become interested in a subject that is off my BA degrees curriculum, where a journal was created about 5 years ago and 3 years ago one of the guys involved has finally argued against the grain. The way they've had to build up their case with data that fitted the current way of thinking and add to it was a slow process. Go too radical and your peers will attack you, even ruin your career.
For scifi, we see this in Steampunk, alternate world history (Turtledove is heavily into this) and other branchings. What If? Well academics, scientists and governments don't like What If's. They like proven, tried and tested formula, building onto existing processes.
So they panic and dig a big hole in the ice and store seeds, etc. They try to improve carbon footprints (but only in the countries where industry is no longer located?) And all the while, the countries we outsourced our manufacturing to are noticing their isn't enough water to go round as manufacturing is using too much of it...................
A Sri Lankan student in my uni told me how on his Bsc back home he took a local fruit and created a process to turn it into a safe juice drink. After his business MA here he will qualify to work in our country for 2 years and can get extensions if his employer writes to our government. He was asking for help to get in with the food industries around where I live to get data for his MA dissertation. With local knowledge, I turned my laptop on, googled the main government food science department, opened googlemaps and showed him the route to the main science centre down the road, the main one for this country! "This is who you have to approach!" I said to him. Education, experimentation and change isn't necessarily a change brought on by the superpowers. This guy is one mere chess piece in the change we have to see in the world. But if he is restricted by those above for whatever reason, will we ever see the changes we need?