We need to think about the science and the social when it comes to climate change

I’m a big advocate for interdisciplinary thinking and collaboration. I’ve set up my classes to support this because the reality is that we need people to be thinking about sustainability across many different fields from supply chain to theatre. In addition, it is both natural and social systems that will be impacted by climate change, so it makes sense that both fields need to be involved in combatting, mitigating, and responding to current and future changes.

Sonia Graham and colleagues (2023) published an article regarding the concept of tipping points* and how it might be reframed to integrate both social and environmental transitions in order to get a new understanding of potential tipping points and identify opportunities for action. But what is a tipping point?

The easiest way to think about a tipping point is to think about something standing while riding public transit. If I am standing on the train, I will (hopefully) maintain a stable state. My balance will shift around a bit but I will mostly stay in my original state or position. This is my stable state. A quick note: stable states involve some change or fluctuation for most things. A tipping point might happen though, if the vehicle makes a sharp turn. It throws me off balance and all those small fluctuations aren’t enough to keep me from moving.

Generally, we think about tipping points in relation to natural systems. We are hearing about them already with climate change. Things like melting ice in Greenland or oceanic currents slowing down. Once these systems reach a point, they will be thrown off balance and start a process of reinforcing feedback where small changes lead to bigger and bigger changes. But Graham et al. (2023) argue that we should be including social systems in our understanding of tipping points as well.

They provide the following definition:

A social-climatic tipping point is one for which intentional actions have the potential to trigger abrupt changes in social-environmental systems that are sustained or amplified as a result of feedback mechanisms and that, by addressing erversibility, lead to a qualitatively different and desirable state of the interlinked systems. The drivers, feedbacks and impacts result from interactions between antural and social systems.

Graham et al (2023, p. 6)

What this means is that humans can do actions intentionally, such as a government subsidizing renewable energies and removing subsidies for fossil fuels, or agricultural communities switching to regenerative practices that could trigger abrupt changes in social-environmental systems. Further, these changes are maintained or amplified through feedback. The result is a different state. An example of this is the number of places that are putting in single-use plastic bans in order to reduce plastic production, recycling needs, and waste production. This will hopefully result in less plastic production and waste overtime. In addition, as people get used to not having access to single use plastics they may also be willing to reduce their use of disposables in other areas.

To me, this makes sense. It is fine to identify points when natural systems will change, but the reality is that we do have the ability to impact when these changes will occur by taking intentional actions. By combining natural science and social elements, we have the ability to identify opportunities for action that can potentially prevent some of the devastating future scenarios that are currently on the horizon.

*An additional outcome from my reading of this paper is learning that the term tipping points has racist origins. It is not my intention to support this background or to trigger any harm. I will be researching this background over the next few days.