There are many examples of both cooperation and competition in living nature: Dicty (slime mould) cells clump together and produce a fruiting body during times of food scarcity, while walruses on the beach compete for the scarce fish. An alga and a fungus cooperate in lichen, as does another alga and a polyp in coral reefs; but predators in the jungle compete for prey. Each mode of behaviour may help survival, depending on the circumstances.

What will humans do when resource scarcity hits us? Our history also shows examples of cooperation (e.g. within nations) and competition (often between nations). Competition would further deplete resources, and even faster. Walruses on the beach can always hope for more fish in a future season, but in our much deeper depletion, such hopes may be vain, unless some unprecendented new technological invention intervenes.

Cooperation may be our better choice. It is as yet uncertain if we can do it on a global scale. We have no innate signal for clumping together, as Dicty has in CAMP (cyclic adenosine monophosphate). We stand again at the fork of two roads. Can we take “the road less travelled by” to make “all the difference”?

All past evolution is built on a series of bifurcations, as Prigogine has shown. They were always choices between breakdown or breakthrough, danger and opportunity, as in every crisis. Can we pass the bifurcation test this time, or fail, thus making room for our successors?