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Hans-Peter Plag
Created on Jun. 25, 2025.
Several tipping points could very soon be crossed, and some may already have been crossed, with severe consequences for humanity and the planetary life-support system.
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Next week, more than 500 experts will get together in Exeter, U.K., at the Global Tipping Points Conference to discuss the knowledge they have about major tipping points in the Earth system and the consequences crossing them could have for humans, the economy, and the planetary system. The conference has the goal of “Accelerating action to ensure a socially just transformation,” although it must be doubted that any such transformation is possible under the current power structure with a global ruling class preventing any transformation away from the system that feeds growing wealth to them.
Jonathan Watts interviewed Genevieve Guenther, who published the book “The Language of Climate Politics.” In his article titled “‘This is a fight for life’: climate expert on tipping points, doomerism and using wealth as a shield” published in the Guardian, Guenther comments on the fact that humanity is facing an existential risk but continues business as usual: “If the risk of a plane crashing was as high as the risk of the Amoc collapsing, none of us would ever fly because they would not let the plane take off. And the idea that our little spaceship, our planet, is under the risk of essentially crashing and we’re still continuing business as usual is mindblowing. I think part of the problem is that people feel distant from the dangers and don’t realise the children we have in our homes today are threatened with a chaotic, disastrous, unliveable future. Talking about the risks of catastrophe is a very useful way to overcome this kind of false distance.”
It truly is hard to understand why the broad population is unable to grasp the severity of the threats the global ruling class and the cronies supporting this class have created. Almost all of the global population is exposed to the existential risk without the cloud of extreme wealth protecting the few who have mainly caused the emergency. It is urgent to ring the alarm bell and to figure out where the lifeboats are.
Guenther concludes the interview with an important statement: “This is a fight for life. And like all fights, you need a tremendous amount of bravery to take it on. Before I started working on climate change, I didn’t think of myself as a fighter, but I became one because I felt I have a responsibility to preserve the world for my son and children everywhere. That kind of fierce protectiveness is part of the way that I love. We can draw on that to have more strength than our enemies because I don’t think they’re motivated by love. I believe love is an infinite resource and the power of it is greater than that of greed or hate. If it weren’t, we wouldn’t be here.”
In another article titled “‘It’s death by a thousand cuts’: marine ecologist on the collapse of coral reefs,” Jonathan Watts interviews David Obura, the Kenyan marine ecologist who chairs the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). Obura explains that coral reefs have reached a tipping point in many places, and on the other side of that tipping point are many dead coral reefs. His answer to the last question “Putting aside scientific knowledge acquisition, how do you feel about the state of the world’s corals?” is very much to the point: “Angry, more than anything else. I want to point my fingers at the people who are responsible so they change what they’re doing. It’s not the billions of poor people around the planet; they face local challenges and environmental degradation, but they don’t have a global footprint. The global footprint that is causing a decline of corals and so much else is from the much smaller number of high-income consumers and economies. Until that is understood and they transform what they’re doing, we won’t be able to resolve the challenges at the bottom end of the income pyramid. You, in the global north, have to change what you’re doing in order for there to be an option for better futures, rather than just giving up and letting the worst futures come about. This is my mission now – to make waves for change.“
This is important reading: A matter of Survival ...
