It's a parallel with the current world problems, climate change, ocean levels rising... The energy Vegapunk discovered being likely a reference to clean energy, with the world government (irl the owners of traditional emery fuels) preventing that and using that towards other means, leading to catastrophic results to the planet. The withhold of information from the WG kinda paralleling the withhold and manipulation to the seriousness of the problems we were facing due to economic and power maintainance...