Tipping Points: The Domino Effect's Back

And How Positive Tipping Points Might Help Cool Things Down

I’m rarely accused of being slow; indeed, the accusation has generally been that I tend to jump in way too fast. But the price of being a hare in some areas is that you can end up being a tortoise in others. In that vein, I wanted to share some belated reflections on a report on tipping points launched at the COP28 climate summit, almost a year ago. The implications for tomorrow’s markets are set to be profound.

But, first, let’s zoom out a bit. Not so long ago, today’s increasingly taken-for-granted realities would have been dismissed as the stuff of hyperventilating science fiction. In the summer of 2024, for example, the world woke up to the fact that the Artic was on fire. Indeed, wildfires across the Arctic region have now emitted almost as much carbon dioxide as the petrostate Kuwait emits in a year.

The obvious question now is just how long it will be before we stumble cross unrecognized thresholds, triggering tipping points that make such planet-destabilizing processes irreversible? Some scientists insist that we have already passed the point of no return in some areas. My own view is that our world is already changing more profoundly than we have any way of understanding.

Do you hear the burping?

In the midst of all this, the science on Arctic wildfires is increasingly both clear and unsettling. As global temperatures rise, a process moving alarmingly fast in polar regions, lightning strikes ignite carbon-rich soils, with nearby boreal forests often then catching fire in turn. As the frozen ground thaws further, the Arctic’s vast methane reserves start to burp into the atmosphere, with massive potential for accelerated global warming.

The frequency and intensity of fires will increase, further accelerating the drying out of soils, setting the stage for today’s lands of ice to become tomorrow’s lands of fire. A particularly vicious form of vicious cycle, you might conclude—but it’s just one among a growing number of planetary headaches. Indeed, anyone with an appetite to know more, and endowed with a stout heart, can climb related learning curves via the Planetary Boundaries work of the Stockholm Resilience Centre.

None of this will surprise the far-sighted ecologists and environmentalists who have long warned of the danger of unseen thresholds and tipping points, where potentially runaway challenges become self-sustaining—and with the world then locking into grim new realities. But the exponential nature of our challenges, and of some emerging solutions, should be more widely appreciated.

That was the thinking behind our Volans initiative with the UN Global Compact, Project Breakthrough, which kicked off in 2016. Related themes surfaced in both my subsequent books, Green Swans (2020) and Tickling Sharks (2024). It has also driven our enduring fascination with the work of organizations like the XPRIZE Foundation, Conservation X Labs (where I was for some years on the board) and RethinkX.

Then late last year, when we were at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai, the Global Systems Institute at the University of Exter launched its Global Tipping Points report, funded by the Bezos Earth Fund. I skimmed the report at the time but didn’t take it fully on board. So, it’s time to rectify that.

At the heart of the challenge lurks a paradox, spotlighted in the report’s foreword by Andrew Steer, President & CEO at Bezos Earth Fund. “Here’s a puzzle,” he says. “Ask a group of the world leading experts on climate change where they stand on the pessimistic/optimistic spectrum, and you will get answers at both ends. Many will say ‘We are heading for disaster at a scale that we are only beginning to understand’, while others will say ‘We are seeing potential progress at a rate and scale that shocks even the optimists. Just look at those cost curves!’ They can’t both be right. Or can they?”

The unsettling answer, Steer concludes, is that “both are indeed correct.” Furthermore, he continues, “it is only by holding these seemingly inconsistent positions continually in view that we will be able to act with the inspiration and courage necessary to prevent catastrophe.”

Our future on the floor

Tipping points, the report notes, “are moments when something changes abruptly. Think about leaning back on a chair. You can do so until the chair abruptly falls backwards. That moment is the tipping point. The previous state—where you were balancing precariously—has been replaced by a new state: lying on the floor.”

Potential tipping points can be found throughout the natural world. “For example, coral reefs are being stressed by climate change, which is making the water too warm. This stress could become so great that reefs enter a new state that leads them to die off.”

Such dynamics, we are told, now “pose some of the gravest threats faced by humanity. Their triggering will severely damage our planet’s life-support systems and threaten the stability of our societies. For example, the collapse of the Atlantic Ocean’s great overturning circulation combined with global warming could cause half of the global area for growing wheat and maize to be lost.”

The full damage caused by negative tipping points will be far greater than their initial impact. And crossing one harmful tipping point could trigger others, “causing a domino effect of accelerating and unmanageable change to our life-support systems. Preventing this—and doing so equitably—should become the core goal and logic of a new global governance framework. Prevention is only possible if societies and economic systems are transformed to rapidly reduce emissions and restore nature.”

The report warns that, “the current approach of linear incremental change favoured by many decision makers is no longer an option,” it argues. “Existing governance institutions and decision-making approaches need to adapt to facilitate transformational change.”

Crucial to achieving this transformational change will be new waves of positive tipping point opportunities, where desirable changes in society also become self-propelling. A welcome version of the long-feared domino effect. Recent examples flagged include the exponential increases in renewable electricity, the global reach of environmental justice movements, and the accelerating rollout of electric vehicles.

An illustration of positive and negative tipping points from the report

A growing global governance gap

Rapid changes to nature and society are now occurring, with more coming. If we don’t revise our governance approach, the report cautions, “these changes could overwhelm societies as the natural world rapidly comes apart. Alternatively, with emergency global action and appropriate governance, collective interventions could harness the power of positive tipping point opportunities.”

Electric vehicles, for example, “illustrate a growth in market share much more rapidly than anticipated. Potential for exponential change also exists in food systems, holding tremendous promise in meeting climate, biodiversity and development goals, including alternatives to livestock products and green ammonia production for fertilizer.”

These positive tipping points will not be reached without effort. “They require financial investments, policy support, courageous leadership, behavioural change, technological innovation, and social action, which create the enabling conditions to alter the balance so tipping can occur. And equity and justice must be at the heart of change.”

Work is now under way on a 2025 edition of the Global Tipping Points report. For more information, contact tippingpoints@exeter.ac.uk.

What readers say:

What readers say:

“By coaching the enlightened—and confronting the laggards—John has helped put the issues and opportunities firmly on the top tables of some of the world’s largest and most impactful businesses.”

SIR DAVE LEWIS, former CEO, Tesco PLC; chair, WWF-UK

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