The X-Files Season 11: 10 Things We Learned From My Struggle, Part III
7. Aliens Are No Longer Colonizing The Planet, Because Of Us
Now here's a kick in the teeth. It's sort of like being dumped by the popular girl in school, because you're not cute enough. She's moved on to a bigger, fitter, more handsome guy. See, aliens showed up on Earth eons ago, then returned to colonize the planet. X-Files fans have known that for years. Only, they don't want to colonize us anymore, we learn in My Struggle, Part III. Pretty much because we've wrecked the place.
Ouch.
While the episode isn't exactly consistent (at one point aliens are referred to as having come to study us), we do learn that aliens are no longer interested in colonizing the joint. Why? Because the planet is heating up.
We can change. We'll do better!
The global warming twist is an interesting one, and hopefully it gets expanded on later in the season. In any case, we also learn that the Smoking Man was the agent in charge of dealing with the alien threat, which should come as no surprise to faithful viewers of the show. What is new, is that the Smoking Man became power hungry early on, and unwilling to listen to anyone but himself. He wrests all power away from his contemporaries, leading to the manipulative, shadowy figure we know today.