Yeah, which makes the burn story kinda flop at the end. It was a good idea, a resource everyone has become dependent on becomes scarce. There was a lot of untaped potential there IMO, but a great premise. Then it gets turned into this asnine root cause. They could have done so much better. Imagine if they turned it into a tragedy of the commons. A warp superhighway wore a crack in subspace and that interacted with a nebula or something. It was a death of a thousand cuts and everyone ignored it. Maybe Starfleet even knew it could happen but ignored it because that’s how they have always done it, and even if Starfleet stopped the cardasians and the gorn etc would still be using dilithum based warp bubbles (excuse after excuse)… Heavy handed, maybe, but more meaningful.