Climate 'tipping points' can be positive too – our report sets out how to engineer a domino effect of rapid changes

By Steven R. Smith, Visiting Research Fellow, Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity (CUSP), University of Surrey
Caroline Zimm, Research Scholar, Transition to New Technologies, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)
Tim Lenton, Director, Global Systems Institute, University of Exeter

A young boy is forced to sit at a dinner table with grown-ups talking endlessly about grown-up stuff. He’s bored. He finds it hard at first, to push with his feet against the table frame, tip his chair onto its back legs, and straighten his legs. But towards the pivot point it becomes an almost effortless, floating experience, requiring only the slightest toe poke, now and then.

And then … disaster. One toe poke too many is all it takes to pass the point of no return and the boy crash lands on his back.

The boy had gone past the “tipping point” after which change became…

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