Climate Change and Social Tipping Points

Title: Social tipping points are the only hope for the climate

Author: David Roberts

URL: https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/1/29/21083250/climate-change-social-tipping-points

Type: Vox online magazine article

Why It’s Important: Will unexpected, rapid changes in coming decades be good or bad, positive or negative? That depends on millions of individual choices made in the interim. Some of those choices, if they happen at just the right moment, could be just the perturbations that spark cascading changes in social, economic, or technological systems. Some of those choices, in other words, will be incredibly significant.

Date Published: January 2020

Submitted By: Jonathan May

Excerpt: “Just as climate scientists warn of tipping points in biophysical systems, social scientists describe tipping points in social systems. Pressure can build beneath the surface over time, creating hairline fractures, until a precipitating incident triggers cascading changes that lead, often irreversibly, to a new steady state. (Think of the straw that broke the camel’s back.) It is less a matter of simple cause and effect than of emergent network effects that are unpredictable and somewhat mysterious even in retrospect.“