Embrace positive tipping points to inspire policy

July 7, 2025

As climate warnings grow ever more strident, as carbon pollution intensifies and icecaps melt, a dystopian future seems inevitable. There is so much that governments could do – eg charge higher royalties for fossil fuel companies to contribute to the cost of repairing climate damage; increase regulations on agricultural pollution and run-offs to better protect our oceans and reefs. In tolerating environmental degradation our governments are steadily killing life on our planet.

There is much concern for tipping points – those limits which, once breached, make damaging change unstoppable. These represent existential threats now imminent; the absence of any will, from our own and other governments, to genuinely reverse the damage which brings these points closer leads to resignation to the inevitability of climate disaster.

This is why the notion of positive tipping points is so valuable: building changes in societal attitudes and behaviours (eg EV take-up, solar power) which help restore healthy environment, and can foster the adoption of new social norms and expectations. These changes to norms and expectations can in turn lead to more fundamental changes in government policy.

Targeting positive tipping points as common climate goals could help pull humanity forward towards a sustainable future.