59. THE BACTERIAL MODEL

Peak oil will affect different countries and regions in very different ways. In a way, it will be like delivering a mild toxin to a petri dish full of bacteria. It will hinder certain colonies and regions within the dish, but other colonies will have resistance to it. Resistance is conferred by cultural practices which run on less oil. Therefore, the high population and cultural diversity of the earth is a positive because it provides greater flexibility to respond to the selection pressure of peak oil. The more bacteria there are in a dish, the more likely that the dish contains a favorable mutation. Some culture, somewhere, is going to be impervious to peak oil, or flourish because of it. That information will be beamed by satellite to all people on the earth, and they will learn from it. That's where humans have the edge over bacteria. If some colony has the favorables "genes" (i.e. culture), the genes can be diffused out to other colonies because they are just information.