Senior scientist, Earth system resilience, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
Disclosure statement
Alex Lenferna currently works for 350.org - a global non-profit climate advocacy organisation. Ilona M. Otto received funding from the Earth League alliance. Jonathan Donges received funding from the Earth League's EarthDoc program, the Stordalen Foundation (http://pb.net/ Network), the Leibniz Association (DominoES), and the European Research Council (Earth Resilience in the Anthropocene).
The Conversation is funded by the National Research Foundation,
eight universities, including the Cape Peninsula University of
Technology, Rhodes University, Stellenbosch University and the
Universities of Cape Town, Johannesburg, Kwa-Zulu Natal, Pretoria, and
South Africa. It is hosted by the Universities of the Witwatersrand and
Western Cape, the African Population and Health Research Centre and the
Nigerian Academy of Science. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is a
Strategic Partner. more
Achieving the Paris Climate Agreement
goal of keeping global warming to 1.5°C requires a worldwide
transformation to carbon-neutral societies within the next 30 years. The
task ahead is immense. It requires dramatic technological progress,
policy implementations and wide scale changes in society.
To explore how to bring about such changes, we asked this question:
is it possible to unleash tipping points within societies, which unlock
positive and rapid climate action in line with keeping warming to 1.5°C?
To answer it we conducted a survey of 133 international experts in
the field of sustainability research and practice. Those experts
suggested potential societal transformations that could lead to a
reduction in greenhouse gas emissions fast enough to avoid crossing dangerous tipping points in the Earth’s climate system.
The survey, an extensive literature review, and a workshop involving
17 selected experts formed the basis of our recently published research paper.
We found that social tipping interventions have the potential to
collectively pave the way for rapid transformative change, making the
seemingly impossible possible – a decarbonising global society.
Positive social tipping points
Fossil fuel use and emissions are at record highs because business-as-usual and conventional policy processes have proven inadequate
to slow climate change. Achieving a rapid global decarbonisation to
stabilise the climate depends on activating processes of social and
technological change within the next few years.
In our paper, we identified a number of potential tipping points that
could trigger such changes. These ranged from technologies to
behaviours, social norms and the way society is run and governed.
Some examples include a shift in moral norms that leads to the
removal of the fossil fuel industry’s social licence to operate. Another
is reaching an economic shift where renewables out compete and displace
fossil fuels. These two tipping points could in turn lead to a withdrawal of capital from the fossil fuel industry.
Our research proposes concrete interventions which could potentially trigger such tipping points. These include:
removing fossil-fuel subsidies and incentivising decentralised renewable energy generation;
building carbon-neutral cities;
divesting from assets linked to fossil fuels;
revealing the morally harmful nature of fossil fuels;
strengthening climate education and engagement, and
building information feedback loops on greenhouse gas emissions.
The different interventions wouldn’t work in isolation. Rather, they
could potentially reinforce and magnify each other, leading to a rapid
decarbonisation of societies to avert some of the worst impacts of
climate change. Social tipping elements (STEs) and associated social tipping interventions (STIs)Otto et al. (2020)
On the verge of tipping?
There are early signs that some of these social tipping points are
close to being reached. For example, renewable energy prices are now
lower than fossil fuel prices in most world markets. If this trend was coupled with the removal of distorting fossil fuel subsidies, it could see a rapid uptake of renewable energy.
Read more:
Vast subsidies keeping the fossil fuel industry afloat should be put to better use
Another example is the emergence of a younger, more climate aware
generation which is becoming increasingly politically active. This has
led to emergence of the youth-led climate strike and fossil fuel divestment movements.
Both have played powerful roles in exposing the moral harms created by
fossil fuels. As a result, the fossil fuel industry is increasingly
losing its social and moral legitimacy, with a UK oil and gas boss, Tim Eggar, recently warning that:
The licence to operate for the industry has changed fundamentally and – unlike the oil price – forever.
Developments like these open up the possibility for more transformative action. They create political and economic space for ambitious policy platforms like the Green New Deal
in the US, which seeks to rapidly decarbonise and transform societies
for the better. Passing a Green New Deal could, in turn, inspire greater
action by demonstrating the positive impacts of more transformative climate action.
Rethinking climate action
Traditional models of climate action presume linear change.
Our research hopes to encourage exploration of more transformative,
non-linear social tipping points and how to unlock them. Doing so can
help discover novel pathways to reaching net zero emissions – and reveal
what tipping points might be needed to get there.
Fortunately, many activists are already putting pressure on a number
of these social tipping elements. Whether they’ll reach critical
capacity in time to meet the Paris Climate Agreement targets depends on
the agency of all of us. Financial investors, company managers, home
owners, teachers, activists, public opinion leaders, young, old, and
everyday people – all have a role to play as the critical minority that
can tip society towards rapid decarbonisation.
