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I highly suggest reading The Thirteenth Tipping Point by Julia Whitty. It appears online over at MotherJones. Ms. Whitty intertwines information about ecological tipping points with thoughts and research about how human cooperation might make a difference in the face of climate change.

A recent study hints at the evolution of altruism. A team of Swiss and American mathematicians and population biologists ran a variant of game theory known as a public goods game, in which players contribute money to a common pot that an experimenter doubles, divides evenly, and returns to the players. In ordinary play, if all players contribute all their money, everyone wins big. If one player cheats, everyone wins small. If an altruist and a cheater go head-to-head, the cheater wins consistently. This paradox is known as the Tragedy of the Commons.

After 100,000 generations, the results were surprising. Rather than succumbing to the cheaters, the cooperators overwhelmed them.

This is because cooperators flourish in smaller groups where their high investments begin to pay off, says Thomas Flatt, one of the study’s authors. They reproduce at higher rates, gain a toehold in a group, eventually come to dominate it, then launch their offspring to spread their altruism to other groups.

It’s widely thought that competition alone is enough to create solutions to our problems both as individuals and as a society. It seems though to quote Einstein, “We can’t solve our problems with the same thinking we used to create them.” I’m not saying that Einstein was a communist nor that I am. Competition also has its role in ensuring the development of any individual or society at large. But I don’t think we should discard the role of working together to solve the massive problem of climate change that any of these tipping points could suddenly hoist upon us. Working together seems to provide security and stability for certain species. Maybe it’s time we humans gave it a try, again.

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