Earth vs Earth Two - Solution or Extension?

In The Engines of God, the best minds on earth have decided that the only way to save the species as a whole is to take a select group of people who are of a like mind, and take them to a habitable planet elsewhere and begin again. The theory is that knowing what we know now, these few humans can change the events that led to the current disastrous state of affairs on Earth. Specifically, aggression based on territorial boundaries and overpopulation leads to starvation. Industrial excesses that accelerated the pollution and atmospheric instability that currently exist on earth could have been avoided with previous knowledge that they can be the outcome of these excesses. Some of the population agrees with this assessment while there is a group who believe that humans are humans.

The second group feels that human...