Dangerous ideas in Second Life

Being on holiday from SL has allowed me to do some reading. One book that really made me ponder my use of SL was, "What is your dangerous idea" by John Brockman. Find out more at the edge.org. One "dangerous idea" is that though the universe is most probably populated by many ET's, the reason why they are not here is that they got addicted to video games. Instead of colonising space, they got addicted to virtual reality narcisism.
My dangerous idea is that virtual worlds could help us save the planet. We can get our need for more, our "retail therapy" as you will, without overconsumption of our natural resources and so reverse the damage being done to our world by our growth fuelled consumerist society. If we get our "hit" from virtual products, we won't have to cut down trees, mine ores or expend energy and pollute our ecosystem with carbon to attain what our society and civilisation needs us to do. That is, to consume and grow endlessly like some cancer cell.
What do you think?
Of course, all the above can be taken with a grain of salt...like me :)