As global temperatures rise, we risk passing multiple climate tipping points beyond which natural systems will begin to change irreversibly. Yet as Manjana Milkoreit writes, the same dynamics that make climate tipping points dangerous can also be harnessed in social and economic systems to create positive change.
On 13 October, the Global Tipping Points Report 2025 was released – the most comprehensive scientific assessment yet of the risks, opportunities and governance challenges posed by Earth system tipping points. The report, written by more than 160 scientists from over 80 institutions in 23 countries, shows that the planet is entering a new reality.
As global warming will soon exceed 1.5°C, the first tipping point in the Earth system – the warm-water coral reefs – has passed its tipping point. Several other parts of the Earth system – from ocean currents to ice sheets – are also showing signs of crossing irreversible thresholds.
The message is stark: the stability of the planet on which human societies depend is now at risk of self-sustaining and accelerating change. But the report also highlights a different kind of tipping point – the positive social and technological shifts that could still steer us and even accelerate our transition toward a safer, fairer and more resilient future.
Tipping points are not distant threats
Earth system tipping points are thresholds beyond which major natural systems begin to change irreversibly, driven by their own internal dynamics. Crossing one would have major impacts around the world: thawing Arctic permafrost releases more greenhouse gases, amplifying warming; collapsing ice sheets accelerate sea-level rise; the loss of the Amazon’s moisture recycling could destabilise rainfall patterns across continents. Most of these processes are interconnected – meaning that tipping one system can make tipping another more likely.
Figure 1: The risks of Earth system tipping points increase with global warming
Sources: Global Tipping Points Report 2025 and Armstrong McKay et al., 2022.
Scientists warn that many of these thresholds may lie between 1.5°C and 2°C of warming. The longer humanity remains in this danger zone, the greater the chance that self-amplifying feedbacks will take control, pushing more Earth systems into an unstable and unfamiliar state.
Avoiding the irreversible
Avoiding these outcomes means limiting both how high global temperatures rise and how long they stay there, i.e. minimising overshoot of 1.5°C. Every fraction of a degree and every year of overshoot matters.
Thereport shows that preventing climate tipping points requires frontloading emissions reductions in this decade: halving global greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 (compared to 2010 levels), cutting methane and other short-lived pollutants rapidly, and aiming for net negative emissions by the middle of this century.
Sustainable carbon removal technologies and ecosystem regeneration must be scaled to help bring global temperatures back below 1.5°C later this century. Yet current national pledges under the Paris Agreement are not enough. On their present course, they commit the world to more than 2°C of warming – beyond the range where several critical systems are likely to tip.
Europe’s responsibility and opportunity
For Europe, this is not just a scientific warning but a moral and strategic one. The continent is already experiencing the growing costs of climate disruption – floods in Germany, heatwaves in Spain, wildfires in Greece – and its economies are deeply exposed to global instability. But Europe also has unique leverage: its policies, markets and social models shape global norms and technologies.
Europe helped to secure the 1.5°C goal in Paris. Now it must help make it real. That means accelerating the European Green Deal, strengthening carbon pricing, fostering sustainable carbon removal at scale and supporting transitions in other regions, including efforts to prevent the Amazon rainforest from reaching a point of no return.
Governing in a tipping-point world
Governance is key to preventing climate tipping points. Managing tipping points is not only a scientific or technical challenge but a political, institutional and ethical one. Tipping points differ from conventional climate risks because they are non-linear, irreversible and global in consequence. They demand anticipatory governance – acting before thresholds are crossed – and systemic risk governance, which integrates physical, social, economic and ecologic dimensions.
Preventing tipping points requires “frontloaded” global mitigation pathways that limit temperature overshoot, combined with regional and national tipping risk assessments, and measures to strengthen resilience and monitor early warning signs. But governance must also prepare for the human consequences of crossing tipping points and their potential cascading dynamics – including displacement, loss of territory and threats to food and water security.
These risks are not abstract: they touch on the most fundamental rights to life, health, culture and self-determination. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights has already recognised that preventing irreversible harm to the climate system is a legal imperative. Europe’s own courts have similarly ruled on the climate-related obligations of states, embedding climate stability as a precondition for human rights.
Governments should now integrate Earth system tipping points into climate and security risk assessments; establish early-warning and rapid-response mechanisms for vulnerable systems; reform trade, finance and development frameworks to reflect systemic climate risks; strengthen the rights and participation of the most affected communities; and foster global cooperation even amid geopolitical fragmentation.
From dangerous tipping to positive tipping
The same dynamics that make climate tipping points in the Earth system dangerous can also be harnessed for good when they happen in social and economic systems. Positive tipping points – moments when small actions trigger rapid, self-sustaining shifts toward sustainability – are already reshaping key sectors.
Solar and wind power, electric vehicles and plant-based proteins are growing exponentially as costs fall and policies align. Each breakthrough accelerates others: cheaper batteries stabilise renewable grids, clean power drives industrial decarbonisation and social norms shift toward more sustainable consumption.
Governments can accelerate these shifts by designing strategic, predictable policies that support innovation across stages of development: early-stage research funding, stable market incentives and the removal of structural barriers such as fossil fuel subsidies or outdated grid infrastructure. As many researchers have argued, long-term policy consistency – not stop-start cycles of support – is crucial to sustaining positive momentum. And international cooperation is needed to create momentum and scale.
Justice at the centre
Positive tipping points can advance justice by making clean technologies, healthier environments and new livelihoods accessible to all. But if poorly managed, they can deepen divides – leaving vulnerable workers, regions or nations behind.
Ensuring fairness means embedding justice in every transition: protecting those whose livelihoods depend on fossil fuels, ensuring access to clean energy and supporting climate adaptation in the Global South. Europe can lead by linking its climate ambition with solidarity, through fair trade, just transition funds and support for communities already on the frontlines of climate change.
A moment of choice
As world leaders gather for COP30 – the first COP held within a tipping element of the Earth system, the Amazon – the stakes could not be higher. The decisions made in Belém will determine whether we continue down a path of accelerating instability or tip the global system back toward recovery.
For Europe, this is the moment to demonstrate that climate leadership is not only about technology or targets – but about governance, justice and foresight. Acting together, governments, businesses and citizens can still change the story: from one of irreversible loss to one of renewal and shared security.
For more information, see the Global Tipping Points Report 2025.
Note: This article gives the views of the author, not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy or the London School of Economics. Featured image credit: Dudarev Mikhail / Shutterstock.com
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