A climate tipping point is not a game on TV
The Earth has enjoyed 12,000 years of uniquely stable climate. It has arrived at this after aeons of instability; climate volatility is the norm. That exceptional stability has given us the ability to establish agriculture and civilisation. These are now, within the foreseeable future, coming under threat. By continuing to pump carbon into the atmosphere we are hastening Earth’s return to climate instability.
The risks we face have been characterised as “tipping points”. As Peter Sainsbury observes, a tipping point occurs when natural processes begin to “exacerbate problems previously caused by human activity”. Once these natural processes start, they will be beyond our control. The many tipping points which threaten us include the melting of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, the collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (the ‘Gulf Stream’), and the melting of Arctic permafrost and subsequent huge methane release.
The expression “tipping point” has become so normalised that this name has been adopted by a TV game show. For politicians, these risks may be part of the political “game”, balancing competing electoral priorities but, for those of us deeply concerned, those existential risks cast a long dark shadow over our children’s and grandchildren’s futures.
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