A recent article in Nature suggests human behavior and cooperation arise not just from altruism or selfishness, but the conflicts between these two poles. As the authors noted, “The interaction between altruists and selfish individuals is vital to human cooperation.” One couldn’t help but recall Hall’s masterful study, Cities in Civilization, which observes that controlled cultural conflict is an important, if not essential, prerequisite for the creative bursts that have characterized the most innovative urban cultures: ancient Athens, Elizabethan London, Berlin between the wars, Manchester and the Industrial Revolution.

Each suggests the fundamental observation that evolution of all kinds is often most fruitful under conditions of conflict, confusion, and mild chaos, where different interests, values, and behaviors are tossed against one another, generating new approaches and ideas. Most of these combinatorials, whether biological or cultural, turn out to be flawed and are soon discarded, but a few become the basis for future evolution. By contrast, ideological and cultural conformity can lead to stasis, loss of vitality, and death.

From this perspective, the failure of first the United States, and now Russia, to ratify the Kyoto Treaty on global climate change may not be as terrible as some environmentalists claim. Quite the opposite: It could be the start of a creative systems response far more productive than any doctrinaire solution.

To begin with, it is apparent that the treaty is, by and large, reflective of a particular approach to climate change issues, structured by an implicit but generally environmentalist prioritization of values, with unexpressed but powerful teleologies lying behind it. That is not to say it is “good” or “bad” in itself, of course, but to suggest that it does generally reflect one view of what the world is, and should be.

The chances that such a single approach could successfully be imposed on a highly multicultural world in varying stages of development with very different values were always small (one reason the initial negotiations left developing nations out completely). But, in failing, it has had a much more salutary effect, for it has encouraged an already bubbling process of bounded conflict, discussion, and evolution that in the long run may offer far more promise.

Each pole of the debate now finds itself needing to defend its position against discourses that, regardless of what one may think of them, are extremely powerful. Thus, European greens continue to attack Americans’ consumption and lifestyles, while countervailing economic considerations -- e.g., the need for Russia to grow economically; the dependence of current U.S. economic stability on fossil fuels -- begin to flex their considerable political muscle.

But even the most recalcitrant on both sides are having to address new arguments and suggest new policy alternatives, while those in the middle, such as moderate NGOs and most firms, struggle to adapt in strategic and rational ways -- and often find new and valuable ways of doing so (e.g., implementation of virtual office systems and netcentric firm structures).

But this is only the tip of a little understood iceberg. Meaningful institutional and cultural change usually is not perceived by those involved in the process, but even now we can survey scientific journals such as Nature and Science; daily newspapers and popular magazines; business conferences and statements; and public surveys and activities, and tell that over the past ten years attitudes and priorities have shifted, even as debate rages.

In ways too complicated to understand clearly, public opinion and culture continue to evolve, as conflict and debate generate options and ideas that no set of ideologies, no matter how appealing, ever could. If we are going to learn to design, manage, and live in an anthropogenic world, it is the evolution of highly complex and integrated systems -- not ideology -- that will provide the knowledge and wisdom.

Indeed, in some ways the Kyoto Treaty seems strangely irrelevant. For even the strongest supporters of the Treaty admit it would have almost no effect on climate change even if implemented fully. But as a means of encouraging systematic bounded conflict and, from that, evolution, it gains an efficacy in failing that it never could have achieved in implementation.

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Brad Allenby is Environment, Health, and Safety VP for AT&T, an adjunct professor at the University of Virginia’s Engineering School and Princeton Theological Seminary, and Batten Fellow at the University of Virginia’s Darden Business School. The views expressed herein are those of the author, and not any institution with which he is associated.