I won't promise to write a full post on it, but you might be interested in my pet theory saying that we do not observe any paper-clippers burning the cosmic commons because they are approaching us with the speed of light. I never wrote it up, but there are some short scattered comments about it here and here.
It's pretty unlikely that there are space-faring aliens inside our own galaxy at all. If they were moving at near c they would take around 50,000 [edited] years to get here - next to no time. In which case it would be quite a coincidence that they evolved to the "space-travel" stage almost exactly when we did. So: it is more likely that we are locally first.
In a recent thread, SarahC said:
... so here's the place to float ideas around: is there an area you know a lot about? A topic you've been considering writing about? Here's the place to mention it!
From a poll on what people want to see more of, the most votes went to:
Some that got less votes:
... but there are certainly many more things that would be interesting and useful to the community. So what can you teach us?