A race to the tip—revisiting societal tipping points in the public climate debate

Abstract

Two decades after the tipping points became part of climate policy discussions, this study examines how the relation between societal tipping points and climate tipping points is understood in public discourse. We analyze views on how political and social actions might impact the race between negative climate tipping points and positive societal tipping points, drawing on a global sample of 10 news outlets from 2020 to 2024. In line with previous research, our findings suggest that “Tipping point” rarely implies an irreversible, self-reinforcing process. Three discursive tensions stem from the concept's ambiguous ontology: the kind of transition envisioned, agency of actors and politics needed, and means for change. Positive tipping points offer a discursive balance, allowing discussions on negative climate tipping points without excessive pessimism. The paper ends with a reflection on whether this shift may dilute the focus on risks and promotes a depoliticized belief that incremental changes will lead to a conflict-free transition.

Introduction

Concepts of temporality and their relation to real, physical processes within climate systems have been a central topic of debate in science, politics, and public spheres in recent decades (e.g., Hulme, 2006, 2023; Milkoreit et al., 2018; Milkoreit, 2023; van der Hel et al., 2018). The debate gains urgency from the prevalent sense that time for climate mitigation is running out, and that concepts of temporality are important for both the construction of that belief and of the political action space for mitigation (van der Hel et al., 2018). There is therefore need for critical analyses of how temporality in the public climate discourse is constituted. In this paper, we critically investigate the arguably most influential temporal concept relevant to climate change over the previous two decades: the tipping point, which refers to a threshold that, once it is surpassed, causes significant and accelerating change that is irreversible or only partially reversible (Milkoreit et al., 2018) ¹

Inserted 20 years ago in climate science discourse by Joachim Schellnhuber, a prominent climate scientist and the founder of Potsdam Institute of Climate Research (PIK), the tipping point concept has become hotly debated and contested. Already in 2006, the editors of Nature (Nature, 2006) warned that oversimplification and distortion when communicating climate science risked leading to fatalism. This line of argumentation has been most consistently and forcefully advanced by professor of Human Geography Mike Hulme, who for over two decades has warned that the use of unscientific, deterministic, and apocalyptic language in climate science communication will lead to resignation and despair (Hulme, 2023). Not totally dissimilar in substance, but with a different conclusion, the counterargument has been made that the function of the metaphor is not to accurately represent science but to inspire action in the face of the apocalypse (Milkoreit et al., 2018). The latter argument evokes the claim by Science and Technology professor Paul Edwards about advanced climate computer modeling in 1996 that its primary purpose is not to be realistic but to allow for the formation of an “epistemological community” and a common interpretative frame for global climate action (Edwards, 1996). In between these positions, researchers have cautioned that popularization of the tipping point concept risks leading to over-use that would limit its analytical value (Milkoreit, 2023; Russill, 2008; van der Hel et al., 2018).

What is at stake in this meta-discourse about discourse is the utility of the “tipping point” as both concept for scientific analysis and for sociopolitical mobilization. Considering that two decades have now elapsed since Joachim Schellnhuber introduced the concept to climate policy discourse, it is worth revisiting how the concept has been debated among climate scientists since, and to investigate its current usage in public debate. Our study therefore looks broadly at how tipping points in both natural and societal spheres are understood in the public climate policy debate, and more specifically, how tipping points in the societal realm are related to those in the natural.

As a metaphorical point in time, the tipping point signals a point of no return. If natural, climate tipping points connote apocalypse, as Mike Hulme (2023) critically observes, then the hope must be that positive, societal tipping points can be made to occur sooner. Indeed, that is what climate scientists Schellnhuber and Tim Lenton argued in 2007, when they explained “fast” climate action as something akin to “a Third Industrial Revolution in the sense of a socioeconomic tipping event” (Lenton and Schellnhuber, 2007: 98). In effect, there would be a race between negative tipping points in the climate system and what we refer to as positive societal tipping points that can be triggered through political and social action. In the present paper, we investigate how such a race is imagined in the public climate policy debate between 2020 and 2024. We ask what kinds of transition, agency, politics, and means for change are associated with the current usage of the societal tipping point concept. ²

Background—a brief genealogy of climate and societal tipping points

In the 1960s, the phenomenon of abrupt climate change gained attention when mathematician and meteorologist Edward Lorenz published his influential paper “Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow.” Lorenz mathematically demonstrated that minor variations in weather conditions could lead to significant atmospheric changes, highlighting nonlinear behavior in the atmosphere. Around the same time, theories of tipping events in society were developed, first in sociology by Morton Grodzins who studied racial segregation as the accumulated result of small but accumulating demographic changes. Economist Thomas Schelling developed these theories in two landmark papers published in 1969 and 1971, and a 1978 book titled “Micromotives and macrobehavior,” where he developed what he called a “general theory of tipping.” The key idea of his studies was that minor individual preferences could result in behaviors that, when aggregated, generated abrupt change on a macro-level. In the same vein, Mark Granovetter (1978) developed a theory to illustrate how individual thresholds are affected by perceptions of how others will act and determine whether or not people will join others in taking action. In recent years, these studies continue to inspire research on how impending norm changes can be identified at both micro and macro levels, as well as experimental studies to determine what causes change (Janas et al., 2025) and how social tipping processes in sociotechnical systems can be predicted and intentionally triggered. Using an experimental method, Centola et al. (2018) tested whether a minority of actors could disrupt an established equilibrium behavior in groups of 20–30 people. The experiment demonstrated that when approximately 25% of the group were committed to change, a social tipping point was triggered, eventually altering the norm. According to the study, this finding showed good correlation with social tipping points identified in qualitative research, which range from 10% to 40%, and also aligned with theoretical expectations.

Another recent example from sustainability research is Mey et al.’s (2024) study, which uses the concept of “socio-technical tipping point” as a framework to analyze whether “positive” tipping points have occurred or are on the verge of occurring for electric vehicles (EVs) and solar panels in Germany and Norway. In 1987, a Nature Commentary explicitly linked historical evidence to potential future abrupt climate shifts, but at that time tipping point was still not used (Russill, 2008). Russill (2008) shows in empirical studies how the concept of tipping points evolved from an informal, “colloquial” expression, in the late twentieth century, that captured a growing scientific risk-awareness about abrupt climate change. After circulating in daily press, the metaphor was fed back to science and policy-making discourses. According to van der Hel et al. (2018), the tipping point metaphor is an example of a rare reverse journey. It initially served as a rhetorical tool, picked up from a best-selling popular book on social change (Gladwell, 2000), to convey the risks of abrupt climate change to the public (from 2005 onward) and later evolved into a theory-forming concept within climate science (from 2007 onward). It should be observed, as well, that before that reverse journey took place, the deployment of the tipping metaphor in social science by Grodzins was in itself an act of cross-disciplinary borrowing, from physics to sociology. Not surprisingly, given this genealogy, there has been a constant conflation between the physical and societal references of the tipping point concept in the twenty-first-century climate science discourse (Russill and Nyssa, 2009).

As mentioned, the tipping point concept was first used in public climate science communication in August 2004 by Schellnhuber, during an interview with the BBC at the European Open Science Forum in Stockholm. He had until then used terms like “switch-and-choke points,” “loaded dice,” “time bomb,” “slippery slope,” or “large scale discontinuities” in less successful ways to convey the message that central natural systems’ stability, like the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), could change abruptly due to climate change (Blaustein, 2015; Russill, 2008). The concept was arguably borrowed from Malcolm Gladwell's best-selling book The Tipping Point (2000) which had popularized stories about when an “idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire.” Science journalist Richard Blaustein summarized the very moment the concept was spontaneously adapted to climate change:

Not surprisingly, Schellnhuber was gaining adherents among some scientists, including within the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of which he was a part, but hardly with the broader public that is so essential if action is to be taken on this issue. Indeed, it was not until the 2004 meeting that he significantly broadened this kind of reach with one phrase he tried out on BBC reporter, Alex Kirby, who was at the Stockholm conference and interviewed Schellnhuber. “I tried to explain to him the switch-and-choke-points of the Earth system—the ice changes, the thermohaline system, and he didn’t quite get it,” recalls Schellnhuber. But “when I said we found practical ‘tipping points’ in the Earth system, then [with his article] this climate change ‘tipping points’ notion was born.” (Blaustein, 2015: 32)

It did not take long for other researchers to take note, and caution, of the obvious rhetorical effectiveness of the concept. Already in 2009, Russill and Nyssa (2009) characterized the climate change tipping point as a generative metaphor, arguing the concept was often used in an attempt to address a policy issue by reshaping public perceptions in a new direction. Before that, in 2006, the editors of Nature (2006) had warned of three dangers in focusing humanity's response to the climate crisis too heavily on tipping points. They argued that (a) such warnings downplay the uncertainties in climate science, (b) distort human responses by emphasizing avoidance over adaptation, and (c) may foster fatalism. Such a focus might lead to the belief that only a complete solution is worthwhile, as any lesser effort might allow the climate system to pass a critical threshold (see also van der Hel et al., 2018). The editors concluded, however, that the tipping point concept could be appropriately applied to the climate crises in the societal sphere, and such applications had already begun at that time.

In a review of the public debate between 2005 and 2014, van der Hel et al. (2018) note that the concept “social tipping point” had already become conventionalized in newspapers by 2005. In this discursive use, it did not actively draw on knowledge of physical motion but simply referred to “big change.” It communicated the threat of abrupt, severe climate change to the public while also serving as a metaphorical and urgent call to action to avert the catastrophic scenario of surpassing climate system tipping points (van der Hel et al., 2018). In an early account of social tipping points in 2007, Moser and Dilling (2007) implied that non-linear change in society, in contrast to ecological tipping points, could be desirable and deliberately activated. Thus, the natural and social tipping point concepts emerged in a discursive process of mutual co-construction.

As the concept has traveled between discourses, its semantics have been intensely debated, and scientists have grappled with the repercussions it would have on the framings of climate change (Russill, 2008). Milkoreit et al. (2018) suggest that the increasing popularity of the tipping point concept in both scholarship and political and social discourse (Russill and Lavin, 2012; Russill and Nyssa, 2009), combined with increasingly diverse conceptualizations of tipping points across multiple disciplines, can limit its scholarly utility. However, Milkoreit et al. (2018) argue that an awareness of the implications of crossing different ontological boundaries and the underlying mechanisms of the studied phenomena still allows for a fruitful use of the concept. On the other hand, Russill and Nyssa (2009) mention that the significance of the term is not exclusively its precision in describing climate systems but in its ability to create an image of crisis that raises public awareness and encourages action (see also van der Hel et al., 2018).

The latter argument highlights an important aspect of the current usage of the tipping point concept. When deployed in the societal realm, it is often used in a way that evokes a sense of agency and control as a trigger of positive feedback mechanisms that will be necessary to reach the Paris Agreement, which is in line with observations in Formanski et al.'s (2022) experimental studies of laypeople's reactions to information about tipping points. However, there are also empirical studies of various samples of the general public that show the opposite—that people who receive information about climate tipping points experience greater resignation and a feeling that the negative changes cannot be prevented (Bellamy, 2023) or adopt an almost fatalistic attitude (Bellamy and Hulme, 2011). A more detailed investigation reveals that the reactions can largely be explained by the individual's worldview, for example, if they can be classified as more egalitarian or collectivist (Bellamy, 2023).

As our paper will reveal, opinion leaders with widely different climate policy views—such as Boris Johnson, George Monbiot, and Johan Rockström—also use the concept of positive tipping points, often referring to a race between negative and positive tipping points. A non-linear, intentionally initiated societal change spurs hope, since it menas that small changes can have a large impact to balance the natural tipping points (see also Lenton, 2020). Before we detail this discourse, however, we will describe our methodological approach.

Method

The study draws on a review of news articles sourced from the Global Newsstream database, which provides access to 3000 global news outlets. The search period was limited to January 1, 2020, to March 7, 2024. Mike Hulme (2023) contends that since 2021, there has been a shift toward more alarmist rhetoric in public climate discourse, which is an observation in line with our ongoing research that shows there was a sharp increase in representations of societal tipping points and climate activism and measures in 2019 in Swedish press (The authors, fc). Hulme argues that this newer discourse prioritizes scientifically defined climate risks as drivers of social action, placing responses to climate change at the forefront of most political agendas. He cautions against a deterministic relationship between climate science and society, where science dictates specific actions—such as achieving temperature targets within limited time frames. Based on these observations, it is reasonable to expect that recent rhetoric increasingly centers on climate emergencies, tipping points, and extensive, depoliticized measures. However, as will be discussed in the concluding sections, we will challenge some of these claims.

The search string used was “tipping point” AND “climate,” restricted to articles written in English, and generated 2000–3000 hits per year. To delimit a sample manageable for qualitative analysis, and also to gain a selection free from our bias, we limited the research to the 10 newspapers or media outlets with the most results, regardless of their location, ownership, type of written format, or political affiliation. This restriction yielded 375 unique news articles, of which 81 (22%) explicitly discussed societal tipping points as responses to climate tipping points. A large proportion of the remaining 78% of the articles, however, implicitly discussed societal tipping points but with different terminology. The search rendered the following 10 media outlets:

The Financial Times, London, UK

The Telegraph, London, UK

The Guardian, London, UK

The Irish Times; Dublin, Ireland

Irish Examiner, Cork, Ireland

The Age, Melbourne, Australia

Evening Report, Auckland, New Zealand

Egypt Independent, Cairo, Egypt

Asia News Monitor, Bangkok, Thailand

The Hindustan Times, New Delhi, India

With a complete selection as a reference point, it inevitably means a certain limitation in being able to make generalizations when only 10 media outlets have been studied. The selection principle also resulted in the geographical distribution being greatly limited, with a clear bias towards the UK and current and former Commonwealth countries. Limiting the selection to only English-language material reasonably also restricts the diversity of articles and may have caused us to miss national nuances. Nonetheless, our selection provided empirical saturation for each category of societal tipping point we identified, and we assess that a fifth exclusive category would not have been found with a more inclusive selection. However, it is noteworthy that no source from the American continent qualified to be included in the selection.

Most articles address climate tipping points in a conventional manner, consistent with van der Hel et al.'s (2018) review, focusing on irreversibility, cascading effects, and fundamental global risks to life on Earth. Common examples include the melting of Greenland's ice sheets, permafrost thaw, the impacts on the Amazon rainforest, coral reefs, and AMOC. Positive tipping points are used to describe crucial shifts in different areas and levels of society. Some commentators use a narrow definition of “social” to connote processes pertaining only to behavior in a limited sense. Others use tipping points in the societal realm as an inclusive category incorporating both behavioral change and socio-technical developments like EV or solar panel consumption. They then often distinguish between different types of such tipping points in terms of “political,” “technological,” “economic,” and “social” tipping points. This is the categorization that we have chosen to follow in our analysis, and we use the concept of “positive societal tipping points” as a general term encompassing all four subcategories. The parallel use in the debate of a narrow and a broad definition of tipping points in the social realm can occasionally cause some confusion. An added value of the study is therefore our clarification that many positive tipping points that are not explicitly termed “social tipping points” are in fact inherently social, and propose the term “societal tipping point” as a general, inclusive term for all such societal events.

One of the authors had the main responsibility for conducting the initial fundamental analysis of all the material to achieve a consistent interpretation. A second author has conducted a larger number of samples to validate the interpretations. ³ The main subcategories of societal tipping points identified in the material include political (25 articles), technological (20 articles), economic (36 articles), and social (21 articles) tipping points. To these, certain subcategories can also be added, such as “market price,” “commercial,” and “behavioral tipping points.” The categories had not been predetermined but were recurring in the material and under the same names that we use in this study. Thus, no significant room was left for interpretation on our part during the empirical structuring of the material. Several articles explain that many different kinds of societal tipping points can interact and lead to societal changes that make it possible to avoid crossing ecological tipping points and prevent climate disasters from occurring. Hence, there is often a described need to coordinate positive tipping points.

Results

Political tipping points

Within this category, the concept of a tipping point encompasses various interpretations. The most common understanding is that international political organizations have reached a decisive and critical point in their policy decisions and commitments. Leading international politicians, such as Al Gore, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Boris Johnson, explicitly declared during events like COP 26 in Glasgow (November 2021) that a political tipping point has been reached. This claim, to achieve net-zero CO₂ emissions by 2050, is supported by significant international agreements among the world's most influential countries in the climate arena—such as the USA, China, Japan, and South Korea. Harris has also emphasized that the White House's climate initiatives represent a political tipping point, while Boris Johnson confidently asserts that he recognizes when such a tipping point has been reached, with “Global Britain” serving as a guarantor of its occurrence. As a vivid example, he points out that it will soon be as politically unacceptable to open a new coal power plant as it is to light a cigar while boarding an airplane (1–5).

Several commentators share a similar analysis, declaring that the actions of major nations at international negotiations have marked a political tipping point, with decisions and commitments that will dramatically alter the conditions for addressing climate change (6–9). Even a researcher like Johan Rockström expresses hope that the world's nations will eventually reach this kind of political tipping point, as they did with the signing of the Montreal Protocol in 1987 to halt ozone layer depletion (10). However, UNEP's Niklas Hagelberg is less optimistic, arguing that the political tipping point will be reached too late to enable a 50% reduction in CO₂ emissions by 2030 (11). In contrast, the multinational company Unilever adopts a much more positive stance, claiming that a political tipping point has already “arrived,” and that companies worldwide must now act accordingly (12).

The term “political tipping point” is also used to describe civic political action. Under this interpretation, every individual involved in mass mobilization against the fossil fuel industry is seen as contributing to efforts to achieve a critical system change. In this context, it is suggested that the time has come for a political tipping point in favor of transformative collective action, rather than more empty rhetoric at international conferences. Here, “political tipping points” refer more to the level of climate activism, evoking the idea that a better future is indeed possible. This stands in contrast to the “doomism” said to permeate the climate debate. Bloomberg News, reflecting this usage, describe the year 2020 as a political tipping point for climate activism (13).

A third way to use the term “political tipping points” is to describe the changing nature of politics. For example, Canada's finance minister declares that “we have reached a tipping point where climate policy truly is economic policy,” emphasizing that the economy and the environment have become inseparable and must progress together (14). Others focus on shifts in security policy, describing 2022 as a tipping point “in international affairs,” highlighting Russia's invasion of Ukraine and China's evolving role in global security as pivotal. Climate crises in the Sahel region and India are referred to as more geographically specific political tipping points (15–17). All of these political tipping points fundamentally depend on the occurrence of technological tipping points.

Technological tipping points

A recurring idea is that tipping points possess a logic that can trigger irreversible progress in technological developments, such as EVs, renewable energy sources, and other technologies aimed at reducing climate emissions. The Financial Times columnist Pilita Clark, for example, highlights “the fact that climate tipping points are now in a race with technological tipping points that could drive spiraling use of electric cars and renewables.” Renewable energy and EVs are emphasized as the foremost examples of technological tipping points, though other technologies are also highlighted in the discussion. Researchers at Exeter University explicitly mention that a cascade of positive tipping points like these could enable humanity to avert climate disaster, particularly focusing on EVs, plant-based proteins, and renewable energy sources (18–20).

The technological tipping point most frequently mentioned in the material concerns renewable energy sources and the phase-out of coal power. Some commentators, for instance, declared 2021 as the tipping point for sustainable energy for all, while others predict that a tipping point will be reached in 2025 when renewables are expected to become the world's leading energy source. Several opinion leaders emphasize that a tipping point for clean power is imminent, with no new coal plants being built. A variation of this theme is the claim that the energy debate has now reached a tipping point for the fossil fuel industry (19, 21–24).

The renewable energy source most frequently mentioned in this context is solar power. For example, Singapore's finance minister states that an irreversible tipping point for solar power has been reached. This sentiment is echoed by several other commentators who argue that crossing this tipping point means the fossil fuel industry must either adapt or face collapse. Such statements have appeared consistently throughout the period covered by the material, from 2020 to 2023 (24–28). Another significant technology is EVs and various forms of electrified transport. Claims frequently surface that a tipping point, where EVs replace vehicles powered by internal combustion engines, is imminent. Canada's transport minister confidently asserts that this tipping point has already been reached, while other commentators predict it will occur in 2023 (18, 20, 29–33). Other sectors where technological tipping points are believed to be on the horizon include construction, food production, fashion, regenerative agriculture, plastic products, smartphones, and aviation fuel (31, 34–35). For instance, a tipping point in smartphones is said to have been achieved, as operators representing over a third of the mobile phone industry have committed to net-zero emissions by 2050 (35).

All of these technological tipping points are perceived to strongly interact with various types of economic tipping points within the broader framework.

Economic tipping points

Economic tipping points appear in various forms within the material—market, commercial, price, investment, and cost tipping points. The most common is the market tipping point, which generally refers to financial markets reaching or approaching a tipping point regarding demands for climate measures (36–39). Several specific “climate innovations” are claimed to have reached market tipping points. In other instances, a long-awaited market tipping point is said to have been achieved by companies that have focused on meeting climate-friendly consumer demands (40–41). Technologies particularly highlighted include offshore wind, EVs, carbon capture and storage (CCS), and hydrogen (42–45).

Some actors also refer to commercial tipping points, which we treat synonymous with market tipping points. For example, Singapore's environment minister emphasizes the need to accelerate the development of climate-friendly technologies to reach their “commercial tipping point,” while other commentators argue that EVs will reach their commercial tipping point as early as 2023, when they are expected to be produced at the same cost as fossil-fueled vehicles but will be cheaper to operate (46–47).

A similar way to discuss economic tipping points is by relating them to price developments. For example, it is argued that climate-friendly products will reach a tipping point before 2030, when they become price-competitive with more polluting alternatives (48–49). Other voices emphasize the urgent need to reach “the tipping point on pricing climate risk” (50).

Specific technologies are also highlighted as particularly significant in this context, mostly the same as previously mentioned. It is considered crucial that the world's major nations collaborate to enable a tipping point where climate-friendly technology becomes cheaper than fossil fuel-based options. Hydrogen, EVs, and renewables are frequently mentioned (51–53). Some suggest that these price tipping points have already been crossed, while others stress the need for collective efforts to reach the tipping point where, for instance, EVs become “affordable” (42, 54).

A third economic tipping point discussed in the material concerns the cost of not taking climate action. The idea here is that the costs to society, the economy, and the environment have crossed a tipping point, making climate action necessary because inaction has become too expensive. The risks of not achieving “net zero” are understood to be significantly greater than the risks of pursuing “net zero now” (55–57). Interestingly, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) chair offers a reverse perspective, arguing that the disproportionate political pressure to curb fossil fuels has reached a tipping point with irreversible consequences (58).

Finally, there are also what are termed investment tipping points. Financial sector actors assert that a tipping point has been reached where climate risks are factored into banking systems and investment decisions, and that consideration of climate impacts in investments is approaching a tipping point. At this tipping point, these actors believe it becomes financially advantageous to invest in renewables rather than fossil fuels (59–62). Examples cited include Cambridge University's decision to divest from oil companies, the claim that climate considerations have reached a tipping point for “family investors,” and the use of public procurement to drive climate-friendly measures (29, 63–64). In line with these views, Canada's finance minister has declared: “We have reached a tipping point where climate policy truly is economic policy” (14).

Social tipping points

A fourth type of tipping point identified in the material is referred to as social tipping points. This category differs somewhat from the others, as it primarily pertains to changes among or within the population in general. While the other tipping points primarily concern changes at a structural level or decisions by central authorities, social tipping points involve shifts in public attitudes and behaviors. Most commonly, the term is used to describe changes in public awareness of the critical importance of climate issues. Opinion leaders emphasize the need to trigger “positive social tipping points” to accelerate the decarbonization of the economy. There is some disagreement about whether social tipping points in global awareness of the necessity for climate action have already been reached. Some commentators argue that such a shift has already occurred and interpret the 2020 Davos conference as a sign of this, while others claim there is an urgent need for a social tipping point “on the climate emergency” to be reached as soon as possible, but that there are no clear signs yet that this is happening. Some also note that it takes only a few voices within a community to initiate a social tipping point. What unites all those discussing social tipping points is the hope that a faster climate transition will be enabled through the achievement of a societal tipping point, which would include demands for a radical transformation of the economic system (65–70).

An influential commentator who has used the term in this way is George Monbiot. He argues that a societal tipping point is reached when 25% of the public has accepted the necessity of taking radical climate action, identifying this as a critical threshold. ⁴ The question he raises is whether this social tipping point can be reached before we encounter an “environmental tipping point.” Monbiot's use of the term has gained traction, and some commentators point out that every individual plays a role in achieving this social tipping point, and that demonstrations around the world indicate that such a social tipping point is approaching. Some opinion leaders also claim that this shift has already taken place and that most of us have already accepted that we must transform society to combat climate change (9, 71–74).

A third way to use the term “social tipping point” focuses on behavioral changes. In this context, it is highlighted that crises, such as the COVID pandemic, can lead to social tipping points in terms of significant behavioral changes. One claim, similar to Monbiot's, made in this regard is that a social tipping point is reached when 10–30% of the population has made such substantial personal behavioral changes that it becomes shameful not to make lifestyle changes for the sake of the climate. Considering this, Catherine Conlon, for example, questions where the political will to bring about a social tipping point for behavioral changes will come from. Examples of such crucial lifestyle changes are often drawn from the transport sector, and some commentators argue that travel habits are currently at a social tipping point (75–79).

Discussion

Like Olsson et al. (2016) have observed before us, the transfer of concepts for ecological and natural systems to the social domain can create tensions. The fundamental reliance on a systems ontology in the natural sciences does not translate easily into analyses of social dynamics (Kopp et al., 2025), and the extent to which systems analytical principles apply in social sciences is often a topic of controversy (Kopp et al., 2025; Smith et al., 2025). To take one example observed in the preceding analysis, the centrality of irreversibility in the earlier usages of the concept in the context of analyzing natural processes and when the concept was popularized (e.g., Gladwell, 2000) is often lost in the present discourse, because the processes referred to—like EV uptake—are hardly irreversible (Milkoreit, 2023). We can therefore concur with van der Hel et al. (2018) that the societal tipping point concept in the public debate connotes “big change” rather than the irreversible and self-reinforcing process of change that the metaphor of a tipping point evokes.

Many of those who speak of positive societal tipping points in the present study, like climate scientists, emphasize irreversibility and cascading effects, concepts borrowed from ecology. They thus emphasize the analogy between ecological and societal tipping points. But different and competing symbolic associations and claims co-exist within the climate policy discourse (Hajer, 1995). Sometimes, notions of irreversible system transformation are evoked, whereas sometimes in the same discourse, and indeed the very same statement, tipping point might be used to describe small changes in peoples’ behavior. As argued by Milkoreit (2023), the analytical scales and system boundaries often become blurred, and as Kopp et al. (2025) put it in a recent critical perspective paper in Nature Climate Change, the tipping point framework often presents an overly simplistic view of the dynamics involved in socio-ecological transitions, which are driven by multiple factors and whose irreversibility or inevitability can only be evaluated in hindsight. The confusion of scales and system boundaries stems, we argue, from an ambiguous systems ontology in the use of the tipping point metaphor. This ambiguity results in a series of discursive tensions regarding the kind of transition, agency and politics, and means for change that are imagined in the public debate.

The first tension concerns the kind of transition that is being envisioned. Especially when political and social tipping points are discussed, like the need for civic action for transformative change, or the necessity of fundamentally changing the economic system, a notion of radical systems change is implied. This notion is tangential to that implied by Lenton and Schellnhuber (2007), quoted earlier, when they clarified that “fast” climate action meant change on the scale of a new industrial revolution. The transformative dimension of the metaphor is, however, offset by connotations with incremental change, most frequently occurring in discussions of technological and economic tipping points, such as the increasing affordability of zero-carbon technologies. What is meant by a societal tipping point then is rather, as Van der Hel et al. (2018) observe, a turning point in the development of specific areas of social life, than a total and irreversible reversal of global living conditions. This also creates confusion as to what kind of societal transition is envisioned. Like Olsson et al. (2016) comment regarding the concept of resilience, it is unclear whether the concept of tipping point now refers to change from or within a state. It therefore manifests an established conflict in climate policy discourse between radical calls for systems change and incremental changes within the established policy paradigm (Biermann, 2022; Levidow, 2023).

The second tension concerns the agency and politics ascribed to acting human subjects when the tipping point metaphor is used. In the categories of political and social tipping points, there occur three types of imagined political change: coordinated efforts by political leaders and civil society pressure on political leaders within the first category, and radical, deliberate behavioral change by individuals in the latter. While differing in focus on collective versus individual political action, all three demand a political will on behalf of acting subjects for transformative change (see further de Moor, 2017; Reuter and Frick, 2024; Zamponi et al., 2022 about the politics of individual versus collective climate action).

On the other hand, the concept sometimes takes on the different meaning of aggregated system effects that result from accumulation of many individual economic decisions. This is often the way societal tipping points are used in the categories of technological and economic tipping points; for example, regarding EV uptake and expansion of solar power. In this usage, markets, innovation, technologies, and legislation change because societal development reaches a certain point, not because of acting subjects. Versus the idea of a coordinated effort by leaders in politics, business, and civil society stands the idea of a deus ex machina that intervenes to steer society through nudging. The non-political version of societal tipping points renders responsible subjects and conflicts invisible by ascribing transformative change to a realm beyond contestation, morality, and conflict (Kenis and Lievens, 2014; Kenis, 2021).

The third tension arises between notions of individual responsibility for behavioral change and the reliance on large-scale technological solutions, and thus concerns the means by which transition is envisioned to occur. Discussions of political and social tipping points typically locate the imperative for change within the sphere of human action, be it on a collective level, in formal or informal political settings, or on the level of the individual. Technological and economic tipping points, instead, tend to change the locus of change to a depersonalized, technological sphere. The reliance on “technofixes” in traditional climate policy has been criticized for many years as a way of commodifying climate mitigation and thereby reinforcing unsustainable production and consumption patterns (e.g., Markusson et al., 2017; McLaren and Markusson, 2020). We note an interesting symmetry between how integrated assessment models represent technological solutions like CCS and EVs, and the way technological and economic tipping points are commonly understood in the public discourse. In both cases, pathways to transformative change are devoid of political agency and conflict and occur because of predetermined technological development (Carton et al., 2021; Haikola et al., 2021).

One way to explain the three discursive tensions is to regard the societal tipping point as a discursive response to ecological tipping points (see also Mey et al., 2024; Milkoreit et al., 2024). Without the possibility of positive, societal tipping points to counterbalance the threat of climate apocalypse, the tipping point concept would by its own discursive logic, as Mike Hulme cautioned in a BBC commentary in 2006, “tip society onto a negative, depressive trajectory” (Hulme, 2006; Russill, 2008). Climate catastrophe would seem all but inevitable. The introduction of societal tipping points opens discursive space for discussions of tipping points in both climate and social systems with the same terminology, about solutions and progress, as well as global threats. However, some skeptics, like Kopp et al. (2025), argue that it is no longer valuable to attempt to link Earth system changes and social changes within a unified tipping points framework. They contend that it is unnecessary to assume in advance that only nonlinear, self-amplifying societal changes are the most appropriate responses to changes in the Earth system. In a recent response to Kopp et al.'s (2025) critique, Smith et al. (2025) agree that some studies place too much emphasis on triggers and thresholds. They argue that the primary focus should instead be on the positive feedback mechanisms that drive system transformation, while acknowledging that both approaches warrant investigation. And they also emphasize the importance of further studies on the effects of how tipping points are communicated.

Also, we noted that the systems ontology that is foundational for the ecological tipping point concept creates confusion (Kopp et al., 2025) and suggested more clarity regarding what kind of transition is envisioned, by what kind of politics and by what means it is to be brought about. The discursive ambivalence diminishes the eschatological aspect that was crucial to the notion of ecological tipping points and instead incorporates the risk of climate breakdown as a factor to be managed within established institutions (Markusson et al., 2017). The notion of a “race” between the negative, ecological tipping points and the positive, societal tipping points reinforces this managerial logic in the discourse, and the seemingly paradoxical co-existence of notions of helplessness and societal catastrophe, on the one hand, and trust in conventional, market-based mitigation options, on the other hand, that has been noticed in previous studies (Bellamy and Hulme, 2011; Formanski et al., 2022).

Conclusion

Two conclusions follow from our preceding analysis and discussion.

First, as ecological and societal tipping points are discussed in the same context, described in similar ways (irreversibility and cascading effects), contrasted with each other, labeled in the same way, and depicted as negative and positive phenomena related to the same problem, they are rhetorically equated in many respects. The breakdown of ecosystems and cryospheric systems, such as in the Amazon and Greenland's icesheets, thus becomes comparable to transitions to electric cars, the price development of solar panels, and behavioral changes. It risks downplaying the climate threat and relativizing the threat to planetary survival. When tipping points are used to describe changes in everyday phenomena, such as price trends, attitude changes, and new modes of transport, there is a risk that the concept of climate tipping points will be diluted and trivialized. In the material, opinion leaders often talk about ecological tipping points in this more trivial sense, as if they were something easily managed (see also Milkoreit, 2023).

Second, we can comment more specifically on the analysis presented by Hulme in his 2023 book “Climate Change Isn’t Everything.” In it, he argues that the prevalence of deterministic and definitive metaphors like tipping point and threshold in climate policy discourse has led to “doomism” (see also Kopp et al., 2025), ⁵ a narrowing of political action space from an impending sense of inevitable climate catastrophe. Our investigation validates his claim that the tipping point metaphor fosters depoliticization, since it is deployed discursively to “hide a cascade of value-laden assumptions which do not emerge from empirical or theoretical science” (Bernstein, 2024: 26; see also Hulme, 2023).

However, we see this depoliticization as only indirectly connected to the “doomism” of the discursive order. Depoliticization, in our reading, occurs not primarily through responses to apocalyptic threats but through the introduction of positive societal tipping points that posits incremental change as adequate. The suggested race between negative (ecological) and positive (societal) tipping points inspires hope in the established political institutions to deliver triumph. Admittedly, it might be said this “positive” depoliticization is merely the other side of the coin of the negative “doomism” identified by Hulme. However, its prevalence shows at the very least that fear is not an overbearing sentiment in the discourse. Whether this should be explained as a collective psychological response to the unimaginable (Gifford, 2011), a failure of scientific communication (Milkoreit, 2023; Russill, 2008; van der Hel et al., 2018), or of political imagination (Lamb et al., 2020), must be left for another discussion.