In a guest article, a leading campaigning climate journalist explains why you’ll shortly be hearing more about climate ‘tipping points’. See Through News then considers if this tactic might itself provide a comms tipping point in helping the inactive become active.

Jonathan Watts is Guardian Global Environment Editor, based in the heart of the Amazon. He also co-founded Sumaúma, ‘the voice of the Amazon’, promoting the voice of indigenous people as ‘journalism from the centre of the world’.

Tipping Points need to be on the agenda at COP30

Jonathan Watts, Xingu River, Altamira, the Amazon, Brazil.

If you lean back on a chair, the balance becomes more and more precarious until you reach a point beyond which you will crash to the ground.

If you stretch a rubber band, it gets thinner and thinner, until you reach a point beyond which the elastic simply snaps.

If you run down your body – by sleeping too little, working too hard, protracted exposure to heat, insufficient hydration, inadequate nutrition – you will become sicker and sicker until you reach a point beyond which your organs will fail.

These are all examples of points of no return, or tipping points, when change within a system becomes self-propelling. They mark a switch from one state to another (balanced to collapsed, stretching to snapped, declining health to incurably sick) that is typically sudden and irreversible.

Tipping points are also found in climate and nature. Scientists have found evidence of rapid, catastrophic change in ice core records of the distant past, supercomputer projections of the near future, and local data collected in the here and now.

They can take many forms: the degradation of the Amazon rainforest into a dry savanna, the collapse of polar ice sheets, the slowdown of ocean circulation, the breakdown of coral reef systems, and many other apocalyptic scenarios that would make the Earth less habitable for the vast majority of its species, including humans. The risks are existential.

Determining where those tipping points lie ought be a scientific and political priority, but the subject has been repeatedly nudged into the background at the United Nations. The failure to fully engage at the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the IPCC, the world’s top scientific advisory body) is usually explained away by people who say tipping point studies are more complex and less certain than other aspects of climate science so they might confuse the public with doomsday scenarios that are less likely than other outcomes. It is no coincidence that the countries using this excuse for inaction are mostly oil producers.

But this is patronising, misleading and negligent. Even if the probability is low (which is no longer the case), the risks are too enormous to ignore. To draw a comparison with aviation, passengers on a plane want to know that every safety precaution has been taken even though the possibility of a crash is far lower than that of a smooth flight.

Many of the world’s leading scientists are now insisting that more attention be paid to catastrophic dangers. Hundreds of them met last week at a global tipping point conference in Exeter, the UK. They have updated their own report, identifying 16 major threats and localised areas where tipping points have already been passed.

“If anything we have under-estimated the risks,” said the conference organiser Tim Lenton. “In the climate science community, we have tended to concentrate on assessing what’s the most likely thing to happen but the more important question is, what’s the worst thing that could happen?”

Among those in attendance was Brazilian climate scientist Carlos Nobre, who was one of the first to warn about the risks of a tipping point in the Amazon that would irreversibly transform the world’s biggest tropical rainforest into a drier savanna with sparse, shrubby plant cover and low biodiversity. This would be more vulnerable to fire, less effective at drawing down carbon from the atmosphere, and weaker at pumping moisture across the continent. Nobre told SUMAÚMA that a tipping point could be reached if deforestation reaches 20-25% or global heating rises to 2.0-2.5C. “It is very, very serious,’ he said. “Today 18% of the Amazon has been cleared and the world has warmed by 1.5C and is on course to reach 2.0-2.5C by 2050.”

“Forty-five years ago, the annual dry season in the southern Amazon used to last three to four months and even then there would be some rain. But today, it is four to five weeks longer and there is 20% less rain. If this trend continues, we will reach a point of no return in two or three decades. Once the dry season extends to six months, there is no way to avoid self-degradation. We are perilously close to a point of no return.”

If the Amazon hits a tipping point, Nobre’s calculations indicate the forest would lose more than half of its vegetation, releasing between 200 and 250bn tonnes of carbon dioxide between 2050 and 2100, making it completely impossible to limit global warming to 1.5C. After two years of record drought, he is more worried than ever.

Tipping points have already been reached at a local level. Along the arc of deforestation in Mato Grosso, southern Pará and elsewhere in southeastern Amazon, the land is already so degraded by cattle ranching and soy production that it now emits more carbon than it sequesters. Coral reef systems in the Caribbean are so damaged that experts say they have largely passed the point of no return. Some glaciologists believe the loss of the West Antarctic ice sheet may now be inevitable because of the warming of the oceans.

Scientists often talk about these changes as “non-linear”, which means they happen abruptly – a jolt rather than a steady, predictable transition. This is particularly concerning when it happens as a cascade – one tipping point triggering another tipping point, like a row of falling dominoes.

The non-linear, self-propelling nature of tipping points is highlighted by Polar scientist Louise Sime, who describes how sea ice in Antarctica seemed relatively stable until 2023, when there was an enormous drop. About 2.5 million sq km of Antarctic sea ice went missing relative to the average – an anomaly that should theoretically happen only once in tens of thousands of years. This coincided with an equally improbable heatwave. This had a knock-on effect because the melting of so much ice exposed more of the ocean to the sun, which means more water evaporates. A freakishly enormous atmospheric river formed over East Antarctica, substantially changing weather patterns in the region.

Sime said a tipping point in East Antarctic could eventually add four metres to global sea levels, which would be catastrophic for billions of people. She does not know when this might happen, but she said the risks are growing:  “It’s unthinkable, but it’s not impossible, and it looks more likely with each day that we continue burning fossil fuels. It’s beyond worrying.”

Uncertainty about the timing should not be an excuse for inaction. Given the scale of the risks, it is essential for the world to have a better understanding of such tipping points. Without this, it is impossible for politicians and economists to justify the radical change of direction that is needed to avoid these dangers. Currently, for example, most economic models do not account for tipping points or other forms of catastrophic change, which means they can blithely suggest global heating will only have a tiny impact on the world.

This assumption is called out by Genevieve Guenther, the founder of End Climate Silence, which studies the representation of global heating in public discourse: “The idea that climate change will just take off only a small margin of economic growth is not founded on anything empirical. It’s just a kind of quasi religious faith in the power of capitalism to decouple itself from the planet on which it exists. That’s absurd and it’s unscientific,” she says.

This is vitally important because it shows that most national decisions are based on a complacent misunderstanding of the climate crisis. If you assume that it only means linear, incremental adjustments, then it feels manageable – a chronic medical condition like diabetes that can be handled with very few lifestyle changes. But if you seriously consider the risks of tipping points and collapse, then suddenly the challenge is life-threatening and demands a transformational response.

There are examples of potentially positive tipping points – changes in society, culture, technology or consciousness that can help us to overcome emergencies. 

First though, we need to fully recognise that threats are catastrophic as well as incremental. That should be one of the priorities of COP30 in Belém.

(A longer version of this article can be found on the Sunaúma website here.)

***

Will Talking About Tipping Points Be A Tipping Point?

Robert Stern/SternWriter, Editor, See Through News.

The Hope Bit

For journalists-turned activists like Jon Watts and me, the toughest challenge is the Hope Bit.

Instinct and experience impel us to report facts and reflect reality. But if you seek to nudge people to take action, we know (better than most) journalism alone is not enough.

When the reality is overwhelmingly depressing, and you’re trying to convince people to take action, rather than despair, what should you say? 

In Hollywood disaster movies, the disaster sets up the heart-warming, narratively satisfying rescue at the end. The worse the threat, the greater the redemption.

In real life, we seem to expect the same narrative resolution. But nature obeys the laws of atmospheric physics, not Hollywood scriptwriting.

So. Where’s the Hope Bit? And can you deliver it without lying?

Hope and Lying

In conversations, in articles, on panels, in podcasts and interviews, any climate activist can feel the Hope Bit pressure building. If you don’t include it pre-emptively (and risk diluting your message of urgency), it will drop by the end. 

Someone in the audience will raise their hand to ask for a bit of hope, amid all this grim bleakness, overwhelming odds, and self-destructive calamity. The exact form of the question varies, but they generally begin with the word ‘but’, end with the word ‘hope’, and include the pronouns ‘you’ and ‘us’.

The Hope Bit is the moment when you switch roles, put down your reporter’s notebook, and pick up the bullhorn. When people expect you to have answers, not questions. When you feel like a messiah, not a messenger.

You’ve given the Bad News – the bleak reality of remorselessly rising emissions, the multiple massive challenges, as laid out in Jon’s meticulously researched article. You’ve explained who’s driving it –  the power and influence of the Three-Headed Beasts of Government, Business and Media impeding carbon reduction. 

Then someone says ‘But can’t you offer us any hope?’.

The Hope Bit is where you’re expected to provide the Good News. Kill the monster. Bring on the cavalry. Rescue the kids.

The temptation to deliver bland platitudes, outright lies, or silver bullets can be overwhelming. 

The problem is, you’ve just been pointing out that’s what our leaders, driven by short-term profit and self-interest, do. If lying is part of the problem, can it be part of the solution?

Lying comes easily to demagogues, billionaires and rabble-rousers. Aping them invites accusations of hypocrisy.

The tiny space between denial and despair

When you walk the tightrope between telling it straight, and offering realistic solutions, knowing what to say in this moment is, in more ways than one, the moment of truth.

Attracting the attention of ordinary people, engaging them with the scale and reality of the problem, and communicating a sense of urgency are all hard enough.

But how, at the moment when your audience is primed for action, do you deliver a rousing call to action without resorting to misinformation or disinformation? 

How can you nudge people from denial or disinterest onto the path of effective climate action, without hitting a dead end? You stand at the fork of the Sunny Uplands of Hope, and the Inescapable Pit of Despair. How do you direct your audience to take the uphill path of action, which requires more effort than the downhill slope of inaction?

If there were easy answers to this, human civilization wouldn’t be in such peril, but what are the options available to the Effective Climate Activist? 

How to avoid resorting to the comfortable, performative, ineffective answers, like  litter-picking, social media grandstanding and petition-signing?

The Tipping Points mentioned in Jon’s article are, increasingly, what the climate action movement is turning to.

How might they help?

Break It Down

Dividing a problem makes it more manageable. 

We all know this. Whether we start the day compiling a to-do list, code software for a living, or manage any project from a children’s party to the Three Gorges Dam, we all know the value of breaking complex things down to smaller, achievable steps.

Our global ecosystems are unimaginably complex and interconnected. Focusing on one element at a time reduces this complexity considerably. This alone is a powerful reason to focus on Tipping Points. 

It’s one of the reasons science communicators are now making it the focus of climate action tactics. In a world increasingly inclined to favour simple answers to complex questions, delivered by leaders who profit from our fossil fuel addiction, why not simplify too?

Given that most people haven’t heard of any of these tipping points, is it possible to simplify without being simplistic?  This is the job of the journalist, or science communicator.

The climate scientists’ list of global Tipping Points is up to 16. The fact that these are only the ones we know about is scary, but also an opportunity for climate activists to make the challenge 1/16th less scary.

The next time you get involved in a climate conversation, at work, at the pub, at a dinner party, on a bus, try breaking it down.

First, Listen Carefully and pick a Tipping Point

A few probing questions will reveal which of the sixteen major environmental tipping points is most relevant to your particular audience. 

Most of us need no invitation to talk about our particular passion, hobby, or obsession, so you may not even have to ask a probing question. Just keep your ears open.

Having identified your audience’s particular passion, move the conversation on by matching the most imminent threat to whatever they’re most emotionally attached to.

• Do they live by the sea, or want to move somewhere on the coast? Talk about how collapse of ice sheets will lead to rising sea levels.
• Are they wildlife fans, or nature documentary lovers? Talk about coral reefs disappearing or the Amazon becoming a savannah.
• Do they ski? Switch to mountain glacier loss.
• Are they keen gardeners, birdwatchers or sunbathers? Go for biodiversity loss, or the Gulf Stream disappearing, along with the AMOC.

You might even consider keeping a copy of this summary of a recent climate science paper to hand as a cheat sheet.

What not to do 1: wrong Hope Bit

Identifying the right Tipping Point for your audience on its own risks nudging them towards the Pit of Despair, accessible via inaction.

This is the moment to deploy the Hope Bit, and point out the Sunny Uplands, accessible via taking action.

But to be effective, the Hope Bit must focus on changing government regulation, rather than tweaking individual behavioural change.

Your audience will be expecting – maybe even secretly hoping for – ineffective actions, such as:

• ‘Separate your recycling and everything will be OK’
• ‘Buy a few more carbon offsets and you’ll be carbon neutral’
• ‘Do your bit by only taking 10 short-haul flights this year’
• ‘Click on this non-binding online petition’.
• ‘Email your MP this template, to raise their awareness’

Deploy these, and you blow all the hard work you’ve done to get your audience to this ‘point of sale’.  

The problem with these calls to action is they:

• Don’t actually reduce any carbon
• Create unrealistic expectations that they will reduce emissions
• Encourage complacency that this is enough and you’ve ‘done your bit’

Suggesting such actions is triply ineffective:

1. They won’t reduce emissions
2. When the futility of such actions becomes evident, your audience is more likely to head for the Pit of Despair’, having concluded climate action is ‘pointless’
3. You’ve blown all your hard work in getting them to take effective Sunny Uplands action.

What not to do 2: wrong story

Humans are hard-wired to like stories.

We make ourselves the heroes of our own stories.

We like telling other stories featuring us as the hero.

If the fifty years since scientists started telling us global heating was happening have taught us anything, it’s that a good story with a strong emotional attachment trumps boring stats and abstract science every time.

The smart answer, therefore, is not to keep shouting stats louder, but to tell a better story than Big Oil.

When you’ve got your audience to the Uplands/Pit fork, offering ineffective solutions, like recycling, carbon offsetting or petition-signing, is not only bad storytelling, it’s exactly what Big Oil would love you to parrot. That’s why they’ve spent billions confecting and spreading them.

• Carbon offsetting is an elaborate excuse to continue business as usual. It’s what happens when you leave business who profit from fossil fuel to ‘self-regulate’.
• Recycling plastic not only doesn’t actually work in practice or even in principle, but is the petrochemical industry’s cunning way of perpetuating demand for plastic.
• Petitions with no legislative consequence are a way for the powerful to pretend they’re listening, while granting them licence to ignore you. It’s why only one country has so far made any genuine attempt at direct democracy. 

These fake solutions (or False Hope Bits) work so well because they’re the storytelling equivalent of a short-term calorie boost from a candy bar vs a square meal, a TikTok video vs a classic novel, or a sticking plaster vs. antibiotics. They give temporary highs, but cause long-term damage.

These False Hope stories are:

• Boring: everyone’s already heard them before 
• Fragile: A moment’s reflection, or a snide remark online or in the pub when you try to pass on your Hope Bit exposes them as futile at best, and counter-productive at worst. 
• Ineffective: deflated, your audience will likely head for the Pit of Despair, and pass on their rationale for this instead of your Hope Bit.

There will be plenty of misinformation and disinformation out there to encourage this.

The Hope Bit you want to offer should instead be fascinating, robust and effective. The kind of story that when you tell it at work, the dinner table or the pub, makes people lean forward, not roll their eyes.

The kind that makes you the hero.

Next, have an effective action to hand

When you reach the Despair/Uplands fork, have a story ready that will lead your audience towards taking effective action.It must:

• Directly address the problem, i.e. could measurably reduce emissions
• Have a measurable chance of success in the short, medium and long term
• Leave them with the best story, in which they’re the hero of a narrative they can pass on to others.

The more closely your suggested action matches the tipping point you’ve been discussing, the better.

So what’s the story? 

Well, the See Through Network, and other effective activists like Sumaúma, have their many options.

Take your pick from See Through’s options described here. There are loads more in hundreds of articles on the See Through News website. 

Just search for whatever topic you’ve isolated as your audience’s personal passion. The more bespoke, the better your odds.

Don’t Give Up

Is this guaranteed to work every time? Far from it. 

Take Tipping Points – climate activists have played this card before, though under different circumstances. 

Volume 19, Issue 3 of Global Environmental Change published an article titled The tipping point trend in climate change communication in 2009.

The political climate in 2009, ironically, was far more positive to taking meaningful action than it is to today. Ironic, because emissions have continued to rise ever since, apart from a brief Covid blip that was soon made up. 

Today’s leaders, regrettably, are even less inclined to even pretend to care about our slow-motion self-inflicted suicide.  They’ve doubled down on lying instead.

But climate activists can take heart, bleak though it is, from the fact that continued inaction will only hasten the point when we’ll be forced to actually wean ourselves from our fossil fuel addiction, and turn to the sustainable alternatives that have always been available.

Not easy, because of the asymmetry of resources. Big Oil has billions, and those that profit from business as usual own most of the media.

But also easy, because of the asymmetry in truth. They’re lying, and you’re not. Sooner or later, they stories will snap. That may be the most significant Tipping Point of all.

In the meantime, it might take one or more of the 16 major Tipping Points discussed at the Exeter Tipping Point conference cited by Jon in his article to happen, before our climate action tipping point arrives.

Beware the backlash

Jon’s tipping point article quoted climate communication expert Dr. Genevieve Guenther, an academic-turned-activist, and founder of End Climate Silence.

She notes how facts alone, far from prompting remedial action, can trigger a backlash. Her thoughts are worth quoting extensively, as it contains, and exemplifies, some excellent storytelling tips:

There was a constructive wave of global climate alarm in the wake of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on 1.5C in 2018. That was the first time scientists made it clear that the difference between 1.5C and 2C would be catastrophic for millions of people and that in order to halt global heating at a relatively safe level, we would need to start zeroing out our emissions almost immediately. Until then, I don’t think policymakers realised the timeline was that short. 

This prompted a flurry of activism – Greta Thunberg and Indigenous and youth activists – and a surge of media attention. All of this converged to make almost everybody feel that climate change was a terrifying and pressing problem. This prompted new pledges, new corporate sustainability targets, and new policies being passed by government.

This led to a backlash by those in the climate movement who prefer to cultivate optimism. Their preferred solution was to drive capitalist investment into renewable technologies so fossil fuels could be beaten out of the marketplace. This group believed climate fear might drive away investors, so they started to argue it was counterproductive to talk about worst-case scenarios. Some commentators even argued we had averted the direst predictions and were now on a more reassuring trajectory of global warming of a little under 3C by 2100.

But it is bananas to feel reassured by that because 3C would be a totally catastrophic outcome for humanity. Even at the current level of about 1.5C, the impacts of warming are emerging on the worst side of the range of possible outcomes and there is growing concern of tipping points for the main Atlantic Ocean circulation (Amoc), Antarctic sea ice, corals and rainforests.

If the risk of a plane crashing was as high as the risk of the Amoc collapsing, none of us would ever fly because they would not let the plane take off. And the idea that our little spaceship, our planet, is under the risk of essentially crashing and we’re still continuing business as usual is mindblowing. I think part of the problem is that people feel distant from the dangers and don’t realise the children we have in our homes today are threatened with a chaotic, disastrous, unliveable future. Talking about the risks of catastrophe is a very useful way to overcome this kind of false distance.

The Hope Bit?

Activists should make their efforts more strategic, effective and focused. By smart deployment of science like tipping points, it’s possible both to avoid the pit of despite yourself, and delivering false hope.

It won’t be easy. 

100% guaranteed success is the kind of thing conmen, demagogues, and tricksters promise.

Is that hopeful enough?