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Tipping Points

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TIPPING POINTS | February 10. 2020. 8:00

And while climate records are being routinely broken, the cumulative impact of these changes could also cause fundamental parts of the Earth system to change dramatically and irreversibly.

These "tipping points" are thresholds where a tiny change could push a system into a completely new state.

This article is part of a week-long special series on "tipping points", where a changing climate could push parts of the Earth system into abrupt or irreversible change

Imagine a child pushing themselves from the top of a playground slide. There is a point beyond which it is too late for the child to stop themselves sliding down. Pass this threshold and the child continues inevitably towards a different state - at the bottom of the slide rather than the top.

In this article, Carbon Brief explores nine key tipping points across the Earth system, from collapsing ice sheets and thawing permafrost, to shifting monsoons and forest dieback.

Along with this explainer, Carbon Brief has published guest articles from experts in four of the tipping points covered here.

Tipping towers

A glance at the news media on any given week will likely highlight all sorts of climate change impacts. From declining Arctic sea ice and record-breaking heatwaves to melting glaciers and worsening droughts, the increase in global average temperature is being felt around the world.

Broadly, these impacts reflect gradual changes caused by a climate that is steadily warming. Scientists have estimated, for example, that for every tonne of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere, summer sea ice cover in the Arctic shrinks by three square metres.

"A climate tipping point, or any tipping point in any complex system, is where a small change makes a big difference and changes the state or the fate of a system."

So, rather than a bit more warming causing slightly hotter heatwaves or more melting of glaciers, it causes a dramatic shift to an entire system.

That extra bit of warming would be, as the saying goes, the straw that breaks the camel's back. Or, to use a more animal-friendly metaphor, a game of Jenga - where a particular component within the Earth system, such as an ice sheet, circulation pattern or ecosystem, is represented by the tower of blocks.

Animation by Tom Prater for Carbon Brief.

The gradual increase in global temperature sees block after block removed from the tower and placed on top. As time goes on, the tower becomes more and more misshapen and unstable. At some point, the tower can no longer support itself and it tips over.

In the game of Jenga, the tower collapses in a split second. For a component of the Earth system, the shift to one physical state to another may take many decades or centuries. But the feature they have in common is that once the collapse has started, it is virtually impossible to stop.

It is worth noting that a tipping point can be caused by natural fluctuations in the climate as well as by an external forcing, such as global warming. These are called " noise-induced" tipping points and include, for example, periods of abrupt change during the last ice age called " Dansgaard-Oeschger (D-O) events ".

"As you approach the edge of the cliff, a small random gust of wind is more likely to blow you over the edge. This is more prevalent in biological systems. A strong marine heatwave in one year can wipe out a large coral ecosystem for many decades - or, perhaps, even permanently. The heatwave is a result of natural fluctuations, but becomes more likely and more extreme with an increasing average trend."

Irreversible change?

The term "tipping point" itself was popularised by journalist and author Malcolm Gladwell in his book of the same name, published in 2000. Gladwell describes tipping points as "the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point", and explores examples throughout human society:

"There was a tipping point for [declining] violent crime in New York in the early 1990s, and a tipping point for the reemergence of Hush Puppies, just as there is a tipping point for the introduction of any new technology."

In the years since, the term has been used increasingly in scientific circles. However, this has not been without controversy. There are, for example, many different views on how the term should be defined and used, explains Collins:

"There has been an intensive debate in the field of tipping points, abrupt change and irreversibility about the definitions of these terms. They range from the very mathematical to those which are intended to be understood by policymakers."

In Hansen's talk - a tribute to scientist Prof Charles Keeling, given at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting - Hansen warned that "we are on the precipice of climate system tipping points beyond which there is no redemption".

By its Fall Meeting of 2008, the AGU had an entire half-day session dedicated to climate tipping points. A Science briefing about the meeting declared that "tipping points, once considered too alarmist for proper scientific circles, have entered the climate change mainstream".

"Technically, an abrupt climate change occurs when the climate system is forced to cross some threshold, triggering a transition to a new state at a rate determined by the climate system itself and faster than the cause."

The IPCC's definition in its fifth assessment report ("AR5", pdf), published in 2013-14, gives more detail:

"We define abrupt climate change as a large-scale change in the climate system that takes place over a few decades or less, persists (or is anticipated to persist) for at least a few decades, and causes substantial disruptions in human and natural systems."

Typically, definitions for a tipping point fall into two categories, says Dr Ricarda Winkelmann, junior professor of climate system analysis at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). She explains to Carbon Brief:

"One is simply that one vital part of the climate system shows some kind of threshold behaviour and that means that a small perturbation around that element can cause a huge qualitative change. And then there's another definition that actually says there needs to be a positive feedback mechanism associated with the element. So that means there is something that's self-reinforcing and then that could lead to irreversible changes as well."

Passing an irreversible tipping point would mean a system would not revert to its original state even if the forcing lessens or reverses, explains Dr Richard Wood, who leads the Climate, Cryosphere and Oceans group in the Met Office Hadley Centre. He tells Carbon Brief:

"In some cases, there is evidence that once the system has jumped to a different state, then if you remove the climate forcing, the climate system doesn't just jump back to the original state - it stays in its changed state for some considerable time, or possibly even permanently."

This is known as "hysteresis". It occurs when a system undergoes a "bifurcation" - which means to divide or fork into two branches - and it is subsequently difficult, if not impossible, for the system to revert to its previous state.

For example, part of the reason that Greenland has an ice sheet today is that it has had that ice sheet for hundreds of thousands of years. If the Greenland ice sheet were to pass a tipping point that led to its disintegration, simply reducing emissions and lowering global temperatures to pre-industrial levels would not bring it back again. It would probably require another ice age to achieve that.

Similarly, returning to the Jenga analogy, the amount of energy required to rebuild the tower once it collapsed is significantly greater than the energy used to tip it over.

The extent to which the tipping points considered in this article are irreversible is just one of the many uncertainties that researchers are still exploring. Nonetheless, each of the nine - explained below - are examples of where seemingly small changes have the collective potential to pack a potent punch.

Shutdown of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is a system of currents in the Atlantic Ocean that brings warm water up to Europe from the tropics and beyond.

The illustration below shows the two main features of the AMOC: the first is the flow of warm, salty water in the upper layers of the ocean northwards from the Gulf of Mexico (red line). This is made up of the "Gulf Stream" to the south and the "North Atlantic Current" further north. The second is the cooling of water in the high latitudes of the Atlantic, which makes the water more dense. This denser water then sinks and returns southwards towards the equator at much deeper depths (blue line).

Climate change affects this process by diluting the salty sea water with freshwater and by warming it up, he says:

"The dilution happens through increased rainfall and also melting of continental ice in the vicinity of mainly the Greenland ice sheet. And that makes the water lighter and, therefore, unable to sink - or at least less able to sink - which, basically, slows down that whole engine of the global overturning circulation."

Recent research suggests that the AMOC has already weakened by around 15% since the middle of the 20th century. This is in line with projections by climate models, says Dr Richard Wood. However, the question remains at what point a weakening tips over into a complete shutdown, he explains:

"Perhaps a much less likely, but larger cause for concern is whether there's a threshold beyond which the AMOC becomes unsustainable and at that point - if you pass that threshold - then over some period of time, the AMOC might reduce to zero or even potentially a reversed circulation. And that would have big impacts on the climate of, well, the whole northern hemisphere, but particularly Europe."

This shutdown could happen because the AMOC is a self-reinforcing system, explains Rahmstorf:

"The circulation itself brings salty water into the high-latitude Atlantic and the salty water increases the density. And so we can say the water is able to sink because it is salty and it is salty because there is this circulation. So it's like a self-reinforcing system."

Such a system can only be pushed "up to a limit", says Rahmstorf, after which the self-reinforcing system actually works to further weaken the circulation. Too much freshwater in the North Atlantic slows the circulation, preventing it from pulling salty water up from the south. Thus, the North Atlantic freshens even more and the circulation weakens further - and so on. It "really is an on-off system", he adds.

There is still a lot of uncertainty about where exactly this tipping point is, says Rahmstorf. To the extent that "nobody really knows", he adds:

"But, I would say, most people think that to trigger a real shutdown would require substantial global warming - like 3C or 4C [above pre-industrial levels]. And we could pretty well minimise this risk by limiting the warming to below 2C. So, if we actually take the Paris Agreement seriously, then I would feel relatively relaxed about the risk of a shutdown. But if we continue on the current path and heading for three or more degrees, then this becomes a really serious concern."

(According to Climate Action Tracker, current global climate policies put the world on track for around 3C of warming.)

And it is "important to emphasise that climate models are not suggesting a complete shutdown of the AMOC in the next 100 years or so", adds Wood: "We're looking at what we call a 'low-probability, high-impact' event".

The IPCC's special report on 1.5C of warming, for example, concludes that while "it is very likely that the AMOC will weaken over the 21st century", there is "no evidence indicating significantly different amplitudes of AMOC weakening for 1.5C versus 2C of global warming, or of a shutdown of the AMOC at these global temperature thresholds".

Were the AMOC to cross a tipping point, models suggest it would trigger a "quick decline that takes decades and then a kind of slower decline which might take even hundreds of years", says Wood.

This would be "practically irreversible" on human timescales, notes Rahmstorf:

"Depending on the exact nature of the stability of the circulation, it could be shutdown basically indefinitely for thousands of years into a new stable shutdown state. Or it could eventually recover - both things we observe in different models. But, on a timescale if you're just interested in what happens in the next 200-300 years or so, that doesn't actually make a difference because it does stay off then once it dies for quite a long time."

This "shutdown" state is an example of hysteresis, explains Wood in the video below. It means that once you go over the tipping point, even if global warming is stopped or reversed, the AMOC does not necessarily switch back on again immediately.

As the AMOC plays a crucial role in bringing heat up from the tropics, a shutdown would cause "widespread cooling around the whole of the northern hemisphere, but particularly around western Europe and the east coast of North America", says Wood. This could be in the order of "several degrees, possibly 5C", he adds.

This cooling would have knock-on impacts for rainfall patterns as there would be less evaporation from the North Atlantic, says Wood. This could either offset or magnify the changes caused by global warming, he says:

"In northern parts of Europe, we might expect from global warming to see wetter winters and then the drying would compensate. In other regions, more in southern Europe, where we would already be expected to see a drying signal from the global-warming signal, so paradoxically, the cooling would give you a further drying. So it would actually reinforce the climate-change signal."

The knock-on impacts would be considerable. For example, a recent study in the new journal Nature Food suggests that an AMOC shutdown would cause "widespread cessation of arable farming" in the island of Great Britain with "losses of agricultural output that are an order of magnitude larger than the impacts of climate change without an AMOC collapse".

In addition, there will be implications for the ocean itself, notes Rahmstorf:

"The whole North Atlantic ecosystem is adapted to the existence of this overturning circulation, which really sets the conditions - the seasonal cycle, the temperature, the nutrient conditions - in the North Atlantic, and so the intricate web of the Atlantic ecosystem will be substantially disrupted if allow such a massive change in the ocean circulation to happen."

Finally, research suggests that the collapse of the AMOC could itself trigger other tipping points. As the SROCC explains:

"For example, a collapse of the AMOC may induce causal interactions like changes in ENSO [ El Niño-Southern Oscillation] characteristics, dieback of the Amazon rainforest and shrinking of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet due to seesaw effect, ITCZ [ Intertropical Convergence Zone] southern migration and large warming of the Southern Ocean."

However, the SROCC notes that "such a worst-case scenario remains very poorly constrained" as a result of the large uncertainties around how systems such as AMOC will respond to warming.

West Antarctic ice sheet disintegration

The West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) is one of three regions making up Antarctica. The other two are East Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula, with the Transantarctic Mountain range dividing east from west.

Although much smaller than its neighbour to the east, the WAIS still holds enough ice to raise global sea levels by around 3.3 metres. Therefore, even a partial loss of its ice would be enough to change coastlines around the world dramatically.

Aerial view over Pine Island Bay, West Antarctica. Credit: Universal Images Group North America LLC / Alamy Stock Photo.

The long-term stability of the WAIS is of particular concern because it is a "marine-based" ice sheet. As the IPCC's special report on the ocean and cryosphere in a changing climate ("SROCC") explains, this means that it sits "upon bedrock that largely lies below sea level and [is] in contact with ocean heat, making [it] vulnerable to rapid and irreversible ice loss".

The map below shows the elevation of Antarctic bedrock; the greens, yellows and reds indicate areas above sea level, while the whites and blues show areas below it - by as much as 2.5km. The WAIS itself is more than 4km thick in places.

Acting under the force of gravity, the ice of the WAIS gradually flows out from its interior towards the coast and into the Southern Ocean. Fresh snowfall on the interior of the ice sheet replenishes the lost ice. If the ice sheet loses more ice to the ocean than it gains in snow, it adds to global sea levels.

For example, analysis published in Nature in 2018 showed that the rate of ice loss from the WAIS had tripled from 53bn tonnes a year during 1992-97 to 159bn tonnes a year in 2012-2017.

Where the ice meets the ocean, floating ice shelves form. These ice shelves have a "buttressing" effect, holding back the glaciers on land that flow into them.

Sitting on the ocean surface, ice shelves are at risk of melting from above and below from warm air and water, respectively. In the Antarctic Peninsula, for example, research has shown that the collapse of the Larsen B ice shelf in 2002 was primarily driven by warm air temperatures. While the Larsen C ice shelf, which is " thinning rapidly ", is being melted from above and below.

Because ice shelves float on water, their collapse does not directly cause sea level rise. But thinning and/or collapse of the WAIS's ice shelves could trigger a positive feedback loop that sees rapid and irreversible loss of land ice into the ocean - which would add to sea levels. This theory is called "marine ice sheet instability" (MISI).

The illustration below shows how it works. As an ice shelf thins, more ice lifts off the seafloor and begins to float. This pushes back (see blue arrows) the "grounding line" - the transition point between grounded and floating ice (indicated by dashed lines). Floating ice flows more rapidly than grounded ice and so the rate of ice flow near the grounding line increases (black arrows). Faster flow means thinning, which may in turn cause more ice to lift off and float. And because greater thickness also causes the ice to flow faster, grounding-line retreat into deeper sections of the ice sheet can also produce faster flow.

What makes this a positive feedback loop is the retrograde slope of the WAIS's bedrock. Not only is much of the bedrock beneath the ice sheet below sea level, large portions of it slope downwards away from the coast. This means that once ice sheet retreat reaches this point, it is self-sustaining.

(There is also an additional feedback loop mechanism that could further endanger the WAIS. This is called Marine Ice Cliff Instability (MICI), which would see towering cliffs of glacier ice collapse into the ocean under their own weight. The theory is still under debate.)

Research indicates that glaciers in this sector are "undergoing a marine ice sheet instability that will significantly contribute to sea level rise in decades to centuries to come".

For example, model simulations in a 2014 study in Science have suggested that the "process of marine ice-sheet destabilisation is already under way on Thwaites Glacier". The study notes:

"Although [ice] losses are likely to be relatively modest over the next century (<0.25 mm/year of sea level equivalent, SLE), rapid collapse (>1 mm/year of SLE) will ensue once the grounding line reaches the basin's deeper regions, which could occur within centuries."

This rapid collapse "would probably spill over to adjacent catchments, undermining much of West Antarctica", the study adds.

The SROCC is also a little more circumspect in its conclusions. It says that rapid mass loss due to glacier flow acceleration in this region "may indicate the beginning of MISI". However, it also notes that "observational data are not yet sufficient to determine whether these changes mark the beginning of irreversible retreat".

Prof Tim Lenton tells Carbon Brief that whether all or part of the WAIS has already passed a tipping point for irreversible loss is "the big concern at the moment" because of the sea level rise it would cause.

Overall, the SROCC assessment of "partial West-Antarctic Ice sheet collapse" is that it is potentially abrupt and would be "irreversible for decades to millennia". It ascribes "low confidence" to a collapse during the 21st century.

A Nature Climate Change review paper published in 2018 concluded that "under sustained warming, a key threshold for survival of Antarctic ice shelves, and thus the stability of the ice sheet, seems to lie between 1.5 and 2C mean annual air temperature above present".

This temperature threshold refers to regional warming in Antarctica, rather than a global average figure. However - as lead author Prof Frank Pattyn explains to Carbon Brief - because the poles warm more quickly than the global average, 2C of warming on Antarctica from present is approximately equivalent to 2C of global warming since pre-industrial levels.

Pattyn, a glaciologist and co-director of the Laboratoire de Glaciologie at the Université libre de Bruxelles, also notes that a tipping point for the WAIS "is not sharply defined". Referring to the different " Representative Concentration Pathway " emissions scenarios, he adds:

"Studies show that under RCP2.6 the ice sheets continue to lose mass but seem stable, while for RCP4.5, in some cases irreversible mass loss is encountered. However, only a few studies consider the full range of RCPs and most of them only compare RCP2.6 to RCP8.5."

Evidence from Earth's distant past also suggests the WAIS has collapsed before. For example, a Nature Geoscience review paper from 2011 notes:

"The palaeo record strongly suggests that the WAIS largely disappeared, perhaps during the past few hundred thousand years and more confidently during the past few million years, in response to warming similar to or less than that projected under business-as-usual CO2 emission scenarios for the next few centuries."

Amazon rainforest dieback

The Amazon rainforest is the largest rainforest in the world. Spanning nine countries in South America, it is twice the size of India. The lush vegetation is a haven for millions of species of plants, insects, birds and animals.

As its name suggests, a rainforest is sustained by very wet conditions. But the forest itself plays a critical role in the local climate. As the forest is saturated with heavy rains, much of this moisture is returned to the atmosphere through evaporation. In addition, transpiration of moisture from plant leaves transfers water from the soil into the atmosphere. These two processes combined are called "evapotranspiration".

These processes keep the atmosphere moist, but also help drive convection - strong upward motion of the air - which, ultimately, creates clouds and more rainfall. Research published in the 1970s showed that the Amazon generates around half of its own rainfall.

The result is that either reducing the amount of rainfall or the amount of forest can shift the climate into a drier state that cannot support a rainforest. There are three potential causes of this, explains Prof Richard Betts, head of climate impacts at the Met Office Hadley Centre and chair of climate impacts at the University of Exeter.

The first is a decline in rainfall in response to a warming climate. Model projections suggest this would be a result of "particular patterns of sea surface temperature (SST) change in the tropical Atlantic and Pacific", says Betts, but there is a lot of variation between models as to how strong the impact would be on the Amazon. The second is a response to reduced transpiration in response to higher CO2, Betts says:

"Microscopic pores in plant leaves open less widely under higher CO2. So the plants lose less water and less transpiration means less water going back into the atmosphere."

Finally, the third cause would be the direct impact of deforestation - fewer trees mean less evapotranspiration and less moisture entering the atmosphere.

There is only so much drying the Amazon could tolerate before the rainforest would no longer be able to support itself. Beyond this point, the forest would see widespread "dieback" and transition to savannah - a drier ecosystem dominated by open grasslands with few trees.

In the clip below, Betts summarises how the Amazon could be pushed "beyond the point of no return".

Dr David Lapola - a research scientist at the University of Campinas in Brazil - cautions that, while it is "reasonable to think that deforestation and fire could of course contribute to reach that [Amazon dieback] tipping point", the hypothesis is predominantly based on model simulations. He tells Carbon Brief:

"It happens that the same model simulations show that if the so-called 'CO2 fertilisation effect' - as a basic input to photosynthesis, when atmospheric CO2 increases it theoretically enhances plant productivity - really exists and expresses itself in the Amazon, then it would counteract the bad effects of higher temperature and lower rainfall, leaving the forest basically the way it is now. The problem is that we don't have experimental evidence proving the existence, magnitude and duration of such CO2 fertilisation effect in the tropics."

If there is indeed a threshold, where might it lie? Betts says that "3C is the lowest level of warming that might trigger it, but it might need much higher warming".

One of those contributing factors is deforestation, which could hasten a shift to savannah as a "fragmented forest is probably more sensitive to rainfall reductions driven by global heating", says Betts.

In a recent interview with Yale Environment 360, Nobre explains that he "published a paper about this in Science in 1990 that said if we deforest parts of the Amazon, it will become a savannah". He adds:

"The post-deforestation climate will no longer be a very wet climate like the Amazon. It will become drier, it will have a much longer dry season, like the long dry seasons in the savannahs in the tropics in Africa, South America and Asia."

Without global warming, a tipping point for Amazon dieback could be reached "if you exceed 40% total deforested area in the Amazon", says Nobre:

"About 60 to 70% of the Amazon forest would turn into a dry savannah, especially in the southern and northern Amazon, areas that now border savannahs. Only the western Amazon near the Andes, which is very rainy, the forest will still be there."

Reports suggest that a change in policy under Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro is encouraging development at the expense of the rainforest.

Factoring in climate change and "widespread use of fire" brings the tipping point closer, say Lovejoy and Nobre in their editorial. They estimate that a "tipping point for the Amazon system to flip to non-forest ecosystems in eastern, southern and central Amazonia [lies] at 20-25% deforestation". Nobre recently told the Guardian that this could happen "in 15 to 20 years".

There is "no point in discovering the precise tipping point by tipping it", their editorial says, but instead to "build back a margin of safety...by reducing the deforested area to less than 20%".

New research published in Nature Communications suggests that, once tipped, the Amazon rainforest could shift to savannah within around 50 years. This finding, which is based on an empirical model, is "broadly in line with the multidecadal shift durations projected by expert judgement and process-based models", the authors say.

The impacts of losing the Amazon rainforest would be felt locally and globally. As well as being an ecological " catastrophe" for wildlife, the socioeconomic damage to the region could amount to $0.9-3.6tn over a 30-year period.

"The reduced evaporation and reduced convection would alter atmospheric circulation worldwide," says Betts, which would influence weather patterns around the world.

Amazon dieback would also make it more difficult to tackle climate change, he notes:

"Increased release of CO2 from forest fires and tree death would accelerate CO2 rise, and with the forest gone we would also have lost an important carbon sink which would mean that deeper emissions cuts would be needed to stop the rise in atmospheric CO2."

Unpublished results from a new study by Nobre, seen by BBC's Newsnight programme, suggest that the south-eastern part of the forest - around 20% of the Amazon basin - has become a net source of CO2.

There are already "ominous signals" of changes in the Amazon, say Lovejoy and Nobre in another Science Advances editorial published in December 2019:

"Dry seasons in Amazonian regions are already hotter and longer. Mortality rates of wet climate species are increased, whereas dry climate species are showing resilience. The increasing frequency of unprecedented droughts in 2005, 2010 and 2015/16 is signaling that the tipping point is at hand."

Lapola agrees that "we may be already observing" a shift in the Amazon system. He explains:

"First evidence: a study has shown that the dry season is already getting longer - by a few days in the last decade - in south Amazonia (Mato Grosso and Rondonia). Second evidence: a recent study showed that forest composition is already changing towards tree species that are more resistant to drought. This suggests that the dieback may be more subtle than previously thought, but not less catastrophic."

The IPCC's fifth assessment report ("AR5", pdf) describes dieback of tropical forests as "potentially abrupt", but "reversible within centuries". Whereas in a recent Nature "world view" piece, Nobre writes that a recovery from an Amazon tipping point would be "probably impossible".

Whether a reversal would be achievable, at the very least it would be slow, adds Betts:

"Reforestation or natural regrowth in places with less severe drying could help increase rainfall levels again. Loss of forests on passing the tipping would be quicker though - forest loss can be quite rapid through fire and tree death, but return is slower because it is limited by how fast new trees grow."

West African monsoon shift

The term "monsoon" in its strictest sense refers to the seasonal reversal of winds and its accompanying rainfall. Along with India, West Africa is one of the few places on Earth where this happens.

The West African monsoon (WAM) brings rainfall to West Africa and the Sahel - a band of semi-arid grassland sandwiched between the Sahara desert to the north and tropical rainforests to the south. The Sahel stretches from the Atlantic coast of Mauritania and Senegal through to Sudan, Eritrea and the Red Sea.

"When the system reverses, the low pressure over the Sahara - or the land [more generally] - drives winds from the southwest inland and those are moist winds because they're from the ocean."

The moisture that the winds bring to the region is part of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), a huge belt of low pressure that encircles the Earth near the equator. Ultimately, the monsoon is being driven by insolation, says Giannini, as the ITCZ wanders north and south across the tropics each year, roughly tracking the position of the sun through the seasons.

(Giannini emphasises that, while the ITCZ and monsoon are "part of the same season and the same latitudinal migration of the rain band", some researchers prefer to "distinguish between the ITCZ over the ocean from the monsoon inland" and so do not use the terms interchangeably.)

The Sahel marks the ITCZ's most northerly position and the monsoon brings rain to the region from around June to September.

But the West African monsoon is notoriously unreliable. Between the late 1960s and 1980s, a lack of rain hit much of the Sahel, with average rainfall declining by more than 30% over most of the region compared to the 1950s. This plunged the region into an extended drought, contributing to a famine that killed tens of thousands of people and triggering an international aid effort.

Sahel precipitation index for June to October over 1901-2017 (where Sahel = 20-10 degrees N and 20 degrees W to 10 degrees E). Shown as precipitation anomalies from a 1901-2017 baseline. Credit: Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean at the University of Washington.

The warm ocean temperatures reduced the temperature contrast between the continent in the hot summer and the cooler surrounding waters. This saw the monsoon rains shift southwards away from the Sahel, causing drought. The effect was reinforced by the " climate-vegetation feedback ", where drier conditions saw less vegetation growth, a reduction in evapotranspiration and even less rainfall.

Subsequent research by Giannini has shown the combination of warming of the tropical oceans (in response to rising greenhouse gases) and cooling in the North Atlantic (as a result of air pollution from northern hemisphere countries) led to drying of the Sahel.

Rainfall in the Sahel has since shown a partial recovery. This is due, in part, to a warming climate and a reduction in air pollution rates. These changes show that the WAM is a "very sensitive system", says Giannini and the Sahel is most at risk because it is at the edge of the monsoon.

The past also hints that a tipping point "is in the [WAM] system", says Giannini:

"So the past shift - the abruptness of the onset of drought in the late 60s-early 70s - is an indication that the system is sensitive and so it could happen again."

Theory suggests that a warming climate could actually bring more rainfall to the Sahel. As land heats up faster than the water, rising global temperatures could strengthen the land-sea contrast that helps drive the WAM northwards each year. This could bring more rain to the Sahel and, perhaps, see vegetation return to some southern parts of the Sahara.

Research has suggested that the "onset and termination of this humid period were very abrupt, occurring within decades to centuries", although this is still debated.

But the AHP is some distance from being an analogue for the modern day. The changes were being driven primarily by the sun, not large increases in greenhouse gases. Therefore, it provides limited insight into how the WAM will be affected by climate change.

The response to recent warming has actually been more variability in the WAM, Giannini says:

"In some ways, we are seeing the wetting already, but it's a wetting that is different also from the past in that it seems to be made up of more extreme events - so more extreme rains and maybe longer periods of dry spells interspersed."

Research has also indicated a mix of impacts. A 2018 study using a high-resolution climate model, for example, simulated "decreasing precipitation over the southern Sahel and increase of precipitation over the western Sahara" by the end of the century under the very high emissions RCP8.5 scenario.

As a result, the IPCC's special report on 1.5C concludes that there is "low confidence" in projections of a "strengthening of monsoon and wetting and greening of Sahel and Sahara". It also notes that while there are "uncertain changes" associated with a 1.5C or 2C warmer world, it is "unlikely" that a tipping point would be reached that these temperature levels.

Even if a 3C temperature rise did bring significantly more beneficial rainfall to the region, the IPCC says "it should be noted that there would be significant offsets in the form of strong regional warming and related adverse impacts on crop yield, livestock mortality and human health under such low mitigation futures".

Why AMOC slowdown, which occurs in the high latitude North Atlantic, leads to WAM weakening is "still an open question", says Chiang:

"There are two schools of thought. One is that colder conditions in the high-latitude North Atlantic can be transmitted via the atmosphere to the WAM, mainly through the cold conditions permeating into North Africa and affecting the monsoon...The other is that ocean circulation changes resulting from the AMOC slowdown 'rewires' the currents around the tropical Atlantic, leading to a warmer South tropical Atlantic and thus causing a weakening of the WAM."

So, another potential mechanism complicates the future for the WAM even more, says Chiang:

"The question is which influence will win out for West Africa in the future - the direct influence of warming, which wettens, or the AMOC influence, that dries West Africa."

Permafrost and methane hydrates

This frozen ground holds a vast amount of carbon, accumulated from dead plants and animals over thousands of years. There is around twice as much carbon in permafrost than is currently in the Earth's atmosphere.

As the climate warms, there is an increasing risk that that permafrost will thaw. This brings microbes in the soil out of hibernation, allowing them to break down the organic carbon in the soil. This process releases CO2 and - to a lesser extent - methane. Thus, large-scale thawing of permafrost has the potential to cause further climate warming.

Permafrost thaw in Svalbard, Norway. Credit: blickwinkel / Alamy Stock Photo.

There is already evidence of permafrost warming. The IPCC's special report on the ocean and cryosphere in a changing climate ("SROCC"), for example, says that there is "very high confidence" that record high temperatures at ~10-20m depth in permafrost have been "documented at many long-term monitoring sites in the northern hemisphere circumpolar permafrost region". In some places, these temperatures are 2-3C higher than 30 years ago.

Meanwhile, the 2019 Arctic Report Card from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) concluded that thawing permafrost across the Arctic "could be releasing an estimated 300-600m tonnes of net carbon per year to the atmosphere".

"These observations signify that the feedback to accelerating climate change may already be underway."

The SROCC says there is "high confidence" in projections of "widespread disappearance of Arctic near-surface permafrost...this century as a result of warming, with important consequences for global climate". It notes:

"By 2100, near surface permafrost area will decrease by 2-66% for RCP2.6 and 30-99% for RCP8.5. This is projected to release 10s to 100s of billions of tonnes [or gigatonnes, GtC], up to as much as 240 GtC, of permafrost carbon as CO2 and methane to the atmosphere with the potential to accelerate climate change."

The report also warns (pdf) that degradation of permafrost thaw is "expected to be irreversible on timescales relevant to human societies and ecosystems". It also notes:

"Ice melt or the thawing of permafrost involve thresholds (state changes) that allow for abrupt, nonlinear responses to ongoing climate warming."

This effect could have its own tipping point, he adds:

"In one study, a tipping point for this internal heat production occurred by the time local mean [absolute] annual air temperature reached around 1.2C, which is when organic decomposition became significant in their model. However, this process depends on how wet, insulated and organic-rich the soil is - all major sources of uncertainty - and will be localised rather than across the whole permafrost simultaneously."

Dr Andy Wiltshire, terrestrial carbon cycle manager at the Met Office Hadley Centre, agrees. At the COP25 climate talks in Madrid, he told Carbon Brief:

"Tipping points relate to the fact that you have a change and then that change almost drives itself, so it means you go from one state into another. Now, we don't tend to see that kind of behaviour in permafrost - at least in the large scale. So what we're seeing with permafrost in the kind of modelling we're doing is there's been more of a gradual response."

Permafrost thaw is, however, irreversible, Wiltshire notes. The carbon contained in the soils has built up over "incredibly long periods of time". Once it is lost to the atmosphere, there is no getting it back. He explained:

"If we stop warming, then we should see the emissions from permafrost stop, but in terms of that carbon going back into permafrost, pragmatically that's not possible."

Related to permafrost are methane hydrates, or "clathrates". This is an ice-like substance formed when methane and water combine at low temperatures and moderate pressure. It is almost exclusively found under the seafloor on continental shelves - areas of seabed immediately surrounding a land mass, where the sea is relatively shallow compared to the open ocean beyond it.

Methane hydrates have been central to claims in recent years of a potential " methane bomb " in the Arctic. The theory suggests that ocean warming could melt these ice crystals, releasing vast amounts of methane into the atmosphere.

(For comparison, global emissions from fossil fuels and industry in 2019 amounted to around 10bn tonnes of carbon.)

Indeed, any bubbles of methane coming from the seafloor are more likely to be coming from permafrost than hydrates, adds Armstrong McKay:

"It has been suggested that methane bubble plumes detected in shallow Arctic seas are from destabilising methane hydrates, but most scientists believe that most of this methane is actually from submerged permafrost which has been gradually decaying since the last glacial maximum, but may be gradually accelerating now."

In addition, while permafrost soils are in direct contact with a warming atmosphere, methane hydrates occur in sediments at great depths below the seafloor. As a result, research indicates that it will "barely be affected by warming over even 10,000 years".

Overall, "this makes permafrost thawing the bigger concern to us now", concludes Armstrong McKay, "with most methane hydrates likely to remain relatively stable over the next few centuries".

Coral reef die-off

Coral reefs are often cited as one of the ecological systems most sensitive to global warming. As a paper published in Science in 2007 puts it:

"Atmospheric CO2 concentration is expected to exceed 500 parts per million (ppm) and global temperatures to rise by at least 2C by 2050 to 2100, values that significantly exceed those of at least the past 420,000 years during which most extant [i.e. existing] marine organisms evolved."

The algae provide the corals with energy through photosynthesis. Without them, the corals can slowly starve. Although corals can reacquire their zooxanthellae if conditions turn more favourable, persistent thermal stress can kill off the coral communities of entire reefs.

Coral bleaching in the northern Great Barrier Reef, Queensland, Australia, March 2017. Credit: Nature Picture Library / Alamy Stock Photo.

Mass coral-reef bleaching events have become five times more common worldwide over the past 40 years. The first global mass-bleaching event was recorded in 1998. This has been followed by the second and third in 2010 and 2014-17, respectively. These events were caused by marine heatwaves - extended periods of unusually high temperatures that were themselves boosted by human-caused warming and El Niño.

The map below, from the IPCC's special report on the ocean and cryosphere in a changing climate ("SROCC"), shows how coral reefs around the world were affected in 2015-16. The shading on the map indicates the annual maximum "degree heating week" (DHW) over 2015 and 2016. (DHW is a measure of cumulative heat stress that "describes how much heat has accumulated in an area over the past 12 weeks by adding up any temperatures that exceed 1C above the maximum summertime mean".) The dots highlight reefs that experienced severe (purple), moderate (mauve) and no substantial (white) bleaching.

Map shows the Degree Heating Week (DHW) annual maximum over 2015 and 2016. Symbols indicate where severe bleaching affected more than 30% of corals (purple dots), moderate bleaching affected less than 30% of corals (mauve dots) and no substantial bleaching was recorded (white dots). Source: IPCC SROCC ( 2019) Fig 6.3

This lethal cocktail has already seen "persistent shifts from the original dominance by corals to a preponderance of fleshy seaweed or other weedy assemblages" in coral reefs around the world, says a review paper from 2010.

"Coral reef ecosystems have been observed to undergo dramatic and sometimes abrupt shifts in community state from one dominated by reef-forming coral to one where other space holders predominate. The alternative space holder often, but not always, is fleshy macroalgae."

Such transitions "have been observed on tropical reefs worldwide, and particularly in the Caribbean", the study adds. It is typical of ecosystems to show "threshold, rather than linear, responses to slowly building drivers of change such as fishing pressure, added nutrients and rising global temperatures", says another review paper.

For example, after the 1998 mass-bleaching event, average coral cover in the Cousin Island marine reserve in the Seychelles declined to less than 1% by 2005, while macroalgae cover increased by as much as 40%.

A 2020 study in Nature Communications suggests that, once tipped, Caribbean coral reefs could collapse within 15 years. Such "decadal timescales" are "coherent with the observations that coral cover across the Caribbean declined by 80% from 1977 to 2001 and may completely disappear by 2035, depending on rates of further overfishing, climate change and ocean acidification", the authors note.

It is worth noting that heat stress has the same destructive effect on seaweed, such as kelp, in temperate systems, says Dr Maria Beger, an academic fellow in marine conservation science at the University of Leeds. She tells Carbon Brief:

"They then also get replaced by macroalgae and/or corals - this is called 'tropicalisation' of higher latitude temperate reefs. What both have in common is that the habitat engineering species are being killed."

"While ecologically intact reefs can bounce back from events such as hurricanes or even severe bleaching, when they lack their herbivores they just can't bounce back."

A 2007 study explains that herbivores "play an important role in promoting reef resilience and in reef recovery" by removing algae. Thus, they are crucial for a reef returning to a "coral dominated states if disturbance has occurred".

However, the study also warns that it is "naive to assume that the protection of herbivorous species...will result in the reversal of a phase shift once macroalgae have become established". This is because "most herbivorous fishes avoid macroalgae", the authors say.

The key here is to have healthy numbers of herbivores that "can graze the algae and thus prevent their establishment", Beger adds. It is once the algae are big that they are less likely to be eaten, she tells Carbon Brief:

"What we consider as normal coral reef herbivores mostly eat the filamentous algae that establish first once a coral is dead. Once the algae establish past being tiny, they are less palatable."

Other factors can also affect how well a reef recovers after bleaching. A 2015 Nature study of the Seychelles after the 1998 bleaching event found that, of 21 reefs studied, 12 recovered and "nine reefs underwent regime shifts to fleshy macroalgae". It explains:

"Recovery was favoured when reefs were structurally complex and in deeper water, when density of juvenile corals and herbivorous fishes was relatively high and when nutrient loads were low."

Recovery still depends on there being sufficient time for corals to reestablish themselves. A healthy reef can "bounce back in 10-15 years" after bleaching, says Eakin, with "regrowth of rapidly growing corals". However, "many reefs have shown little to no recovery after severe mortality events", he adds:

"In a recent paper, we showed that severe bleaching occurred every 25-30 years in the 1980s. Now it recurs in less than six years. That is far too fast when 10-15 years to start recovery is the best case scenario."

In 2016, the first study to compare the widespread impacts of climate change at 1.5C and 2C of warming warned that 90% of tropical reefs would be "at risk of severe degradation due to temperature-induced bleaching from 2050 onwards" in a 1.5C warmer world. For 2C, this risk rose to 98% of reefs, the study says, indicating that the extra 0.5C of warming "is likely to be decisive for the future of tropical coral reefs".

The study notes:

"Our analysis reiterates earlier findings that the risk of coral reefs to suffer from long-term degradation eventually leading to an ecosystem regime shift will be substantial as early as 2030."

The researchers even note that their findings are likely to be "rather conservative" because they only consider the impacts of rising CO2 and not other coral reef stressors.

The findings of the IPCC's special report on 1.5C are only very slightly less bleak. It says:

"Even achieving emissions reduction targets consistent with the ambitious goal of 1.5C of global warming under the Paris Agreement will result in the further loss of 70-90% of reef-building corals compared to today, with 99% of corals being lost under warming of 2C or more."

As experts in Australia told Carbon Brief last year, some of the more heat-resistant corals may be more resilient than these estimates suggest, but what the remaining reefs "will look like - and what the consequences will be for the other reef inhabitants, such as fish - remains to be explored".

Eakin says "we've already reached" a tipping point for corals on a global basis because of climate change:

"We are already seeing severe bleaching around the world and the recent 2014-17 global coral bleaching event has been devastating for many reefs around the world. For example, the Great Barrier Reef lost half of its corals in just two years."

A 2018 Nature paper describes the recent bleaching as "a watershed for the Great Barrier Reef, and for many other severely affected reefs elsewhere in the Indo-Pacific Ocean".

The study warns that "the most likely scenario" is that "coral reefs throughout the tropics will continue to degrade over the current century until climate change stabilises, allowing remnant populations to reorganize into novel, heat-tolerant reef assemblages".

The 2016 marine heatwave "has triggered the initial phase of that transition on the northern, most-pristine region of the Great Barrier Reef", the study says, "changing it forever as the intensity of global warming continues to escalate". It concludes:

"The large-scale loss of functionally diverse corals is a harbinger of further radical shifts in the condition and dynamics of all ecosystems, reinforcing the need for risk assessment of ecosystem collapse, especially if global action on climate change fails to limit warming to 1.5-2C."

The widespread loss of coral reefs would be devastating for ecosystems, economies and people. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), "despite covering less than 0.1% of the ocean floor, reefs host more than one quarter of all marine fish species". Coral reefs also "directly support over 500 million people worldwide, who rely on them for daily subsistence, mostly in poor countries", the IUCN adds.

Indian monsoon shift

The Indian monsoon - also known as the South Asian monsoon - is a sub-system of the wider Asian monsoon, along with the south-east Asian monsoon and the western North Pacific monsoon. (Some consider the Asian monsoon to have more than three parts.)

The word "monsoon" originates from the Arabic word for season. It describes a seasonal shift in winds - specifically a 180-degree reversal that triggers the change from the dry to the wet season.

This shift is driven by the movements of the sun through the seasons, explains Dr Andrew Turner, associate professor in monsoon systems at the University of Reading. In the northern hemisphere winter, the focus of the sun's energy is over the southern hemisphere. This causes a prevailing wind over India from the north-east, bringing dry air from across the Asian landmass.

The transition to the wet season arrives as the sun moves north of the equator in spring and early summer. Here, "northern India, the Tibetan Plateau and surrounding regions heat up rapidly", Turner explains to Carbon Brief:

"They heat up more quickly than nearby oceans - for example, the northern Indian Ocean - since land (soil) has a much lower heat capacity than water."

The contrast in heating between the land and ocean causes a pressure gradient that drives southwesterly winds across India. "This air travels northward from the Indian Ocean," says Turner, picking up moisture as it goes. The rains typically begin in June - the official start date of the monsoon season is 1 June - moving north through India. The rains continue until the monsoon starts to withdraw from northern India by the end of August, as the strength and duration of the summer sun decreases. The rains then peter out for most of the country through September and October.

The maps below show the average monsoon onset (left) and withdrawal (right) dates across India.

Average dates of onset and withdrawal of the monsoon. Reprinted by permission from Springer. Gadgil ( 2018) The monsoon system: Land-sea breeze or the ITCZ?, Journal of Earth System Science.

"At a fundamental level, the pressure gradient between the Indian Ocean and Asian continent determines the strength of the Asian monsoon", says the IPCC's special report on 1.5C. And so, in theory, "anything which alters either the north-south temperature gradient, or the amount of moisture evaporated from the ocean, could change the monsoon rains", notes Turner.

With land areas warming faster than oceans, a strengthening of this pressure gradient and the monsoon itself "may be expected under global warming", says the 1.5C report. In addition, as a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, this may also result in "modest increases in rainfall", says Turner.

However, a review study in 2012 - led by Turner - concludes that "the evidence for such trends in observations is unpersuasive". While the observed record for the strength of the Indian monsoon shows a lot of variability, it does "suggest a negative trend since 1950", the paper says. This amounts to a rainfall decline of around 10% in central India, adds Turner.

A potential cause could be air pollution - from India itself and the wider region, Turner says:

"Air pollution comes in several forms, but most of it is in the form of sulphur compounds - for example, emissions of sulphur dioxide from industry and transport - that form sulphates in the atmosphere. These particles have reflective properties, which act to reflect solar radiation and prevent some of it reaching the surface."

This pollution "will preferentially cool the northern hemisphere region over Eurasia relative to the equator or southern Indian Ocean - where there are no pollution emissions", says Turner. Increasing trends in air pollution in South Asia could explain "why seasonal mean rainfall over India has not shown increases in the recent observed record despite increasing CO2", his paper says. Another study says the aerosol cooling in South and East Asia "may have masked up to 1C of greenhouse-gas-induced surface warming since the pre-industrial era ".

The mix of influences resulting from human activity is one of the reasons that making projections for the monsoon is tricky. Another is that climate models can struggle to simulate the monsoon system, in part because of the intricate interplay of circulation, temperature and topography that drives it.

Some papers have suggested the possibility for more abrupt changes in the Indian monsoon. A 2005 study, for example, used a simple model to identify the possibility of the monsoon having two stable states: wet (as it is now) and second state characterised by low rainfall.

Key to these two states is the so-called "moisture‐advection feedback". This, the paper explains, is where "the land‐to‐ocean pressure gradient, which drives the monsoon circulation, is reinforced by the moisture the monsoon itself carries from the adjacent Indian Ocean".

In other words, a significant factor in maintaining the monsoon is the heat released when the water vapour it holds condenses to form rain. Another paper, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) in 2009, suggests this feedback acts as an "internal amplifier" for the monsoon.

The implication is that this feedback magnifies anything that affects the air pressure gradient generated by warm air rising over the Asian landmass. Thus "relatively weak external perturbations" could lead to "abrupt changes" in the monsoon, the PNAS paper says.

The model simulations in the 2005 study suggest how a switch between states could be triggered. This includes cooling of the land surface through large amounts of air pollution, cooling through very low CO2 levels in the atmosphere, or a combination of the two.

However, a 2006 study also shows that the albedo changes required to push the monsoon into a dry state - as in the 2005 study - are a long way from modern conditions. Therefore, the authors conclude, "we can be very certain that we will not reach this point in the near future".

Nonetheless, the existence of the "moisture‐advection feedback" is still disputed. In an illustration of how contested the theory of potential abrupt shifts in the Indian monsoon is, PNAS have since published a response to the original 2009 paper, a reply to that response and a reply to that reply.
Dr William Boos, associate professor at the University of California, Berkeley and author of the PNAS response paper, tells Carbon Brief:

"The key phrase here is 'abrupt shift' - monsoons may change a lot, but there simply is no evidence for them being here one year and gone the next in response to human-induced climate change."

The "vast majority of studies on abrupt changes in monsoons focus on changes that are 'abrupt' relative to the past evolution of the climate system that occurred over tens of thousands to millions of years", adds Boos:

"Palaeo changes are important, but their relevance to human-caused climate change is unclear; feedbacks that take hundreds to thousands of years to operate - involving large changes in ice sheets or continental vegetation and soil types - may not be relevant if we are interested in changes taking place over a few years or a few decades."

"All the evidence from proxy data in the past shows that when there is less insolation [incoming solar radiation], less radiative forcing, the monsoons are weaker, and when there's more, they're stronger - but it's a very linear relationship. There are no thresholds seen where there are two stable states in the monsoon."

Overall, the IPCC's 1.5C report concludes that there is "low confidence" in any projected changes in the Indian monsoon under warming of 1.5-2C, but that increases in the intensity of monsoon rainfall are "likely" in a 3C warmer world.

For the IPCC's fifth assessment report ("AR5"), published in 2013, all the models assessed "project an increase in mean precipitation as well as its interannual variability and extremes" ( pdf), the report says.

While for monsoon systems more generally, the AR5 summary for policymakers (pdf) says:

"Globally, it is likely that the area encompassed by monsoon systems will increase over the 21st century. While monsoon winds are likely to weaken, monsoon precipitation is likely to intensify due to the increase in atmospheric moisture. Monsoon onset dates are likely to become earlier or not to change much. Monsoon retreat dates will likely be delayed, resulting in lengthening of the monsoon season in many regions."

Greenland ice sheet disintegration

The Greenland ice sheet is the second largest mass of ice on Earth. It holds enough water to raise global sea levels by 7.2 metres and, as a result, its disintegration would change the shape of the world's coastlines.

Aerial view of the Greenland ice sheet. Credit: imageBROKER / Alamy Stock Photo.

Melting of the Greenland ice sheet is accelerating and it is currently adding around 0.7mm to global sea levels each year.

A tipping point for Greenland ice melt is unlikely to be abrupt, says climate scientist Dr Ruth Mottram of the Danish Meteorological Institute, but it is clear that there will be a threshold beyond which its eventual collapse is irreversible.

Around half of the melt that the Greenland ice sheet experiences occurs at the surface. The remainder occurs through melting at the ice sheet base and via the breaking off, or "calving", of icebergs from its edge.

Surface melt is likely to involve a number of different self-reinforcing feedback loops that can speed up melting, explains Mottram. She tells Carbon Brief:

"Probably the most important 'tipping point' feedback though are elevation feedbacks - as the ice sheet gets lower via melting, more are areas are at lower and warmer altitudes, leading to further melting."

In the clip below, Dr Ricarda Winkelmann of PIK outlines the processes involved in a tipping point for the Greenland ice sheet.

Also important is the "snowline" - the elevation at which the ice sheet is covered in snow. Bright white snow has a higher albedo than dark, bare ice - which means it reflects back much more of the sun's energy. So if the snowline migrates to higher elevations as the ice sheet warms, it means the ice will be absorbing more of the incoming solar radiation, causing more melting.

Research published in 2019 found that snowline migration accounted for more than half of the year-to-year variations in how much of the sun's energy was available for melting.

In addition, as meltwater trickles down into the snowpack, it fills the pores in the snow and gives off more heat when it refreezes. This "makes it harder for the snowpack to hold further meltwater, so any additional meltwater will run off directly into the sea", Mottram says.

The combination of these processes means that a tipping point in Greenland ice melt is "very much related to how much melting is happening at the surface and how much of a snowpack there is to absorb that meltwater", says Mottram. This has "cascading consequences as the meltwater can affect ice sheet flow speeds and calving processes".

The lPCC's most recent full assessment report - AR5, published in 2013 - concluded that (pdf) it is "exceptionally unlikely" that the Greenland ice sheet will suffer near-complete disintegration in the 21st century - equivalent to a 0-1% likelihood of it happening.

However, more recent research suggests that the ice sheet is at risk on longer timescales. A review paper in Nature Climate Change in 2018 concluded that 1.8C (with a range of 1.1-2.3C) of warming above pre-industrial levels would be enough to trigger feedback loops of decline in parts of the ice sheet in summer.

This could set in motion a pattern of melt that takes thousands of years, the paper concluded:

"Thus, crossing the limit of 1.5C global warming this century may impose a commitment to much larger and possibly irreversible changes in the far future."

The IPCC's special report on 1.5C - published in 2018 - noted that a "useful indicator" for the elevation feedback mentioned above is the "threshold at which annual mass loss from the ice sheet by surface melt exceeds mass gain by snowfall".

(This means a negative surface mass balance (SMB) over the course of the year. As an example, the SMB for 2019 was 169bn tonnes of ice, the seventh lowest on record. Total mass balance - which includes the ice lost through calving and ocean melt - switched from overall gains to overall losses between the 1970s and 1980s.)

The most recent studies suggest that this threshold "sits between 0.8C and 3.2C, with a best estimate at 1.6C", the special report says, adding:

"The continued decline of the ice sheet after this threshold has been passed is highly dependent on the future climate and varies between about 80% loss after 10,000 years to complete loss after as little as 2000 years (contributing about six metres to sea level rise)."

The fate of the Greenland ice sheet is, therefore, still strongly dependent on the rate of greenhouse gas emissions in future. A 2019 modelling study published in Science simulated the Greenland ice sheet out to the year 3000 under different emissions scenarios. It found:

"In a thousand years, the Greenland ice sheet will look significantly different than today. Depending on the emission scenario, the Greenland ice sheet will have lost 8 to 25% ( RCP2.6), 26 to 57% ( RCP4.5), or 72 to 100% ( RCP8.5) of its present-day mass, contributing 0.59 to 1.88 metres, 1.86 to 4.17 metres, or 5.23 to 7.28 metres to global mean sea level, respectively."

This is illustrated in the maps below, taken from the paper, which show the observed state of the ice sheet (A) and the projected ice cover by the year 3000 under the three different scenarios (B to D). The shading in the maps shows the likelihood of future ice cover, with dark blue areas indicating areas with remaining ice in 16% of model runs, blue for 50% of model runs and white for 84%.

Greenland ice sheet maps showing the observed extent in 2008 (A) and the projected extent in the year 3000 under RCP2.6 (B), RCP4.5 (C), and RCP8.5 (D) across 500 model simulations. Shading indicates likelihood (in percentiles from model simulations) of ice cover remaining by the year 3000: Dark blue (16%), blue (50%) and white (84%). Likelihoods less than the 16th percentile are not shown. Credit: Aschwanden et al ( 2019) Reproduced under Creative Commons 4.0.

Following a relatively low emissions pathway, such as RCP2.6 - which is consistent with a 1.5-2C warmer world - may, therefore, be regarded as "representing moderate risk, in that it may trigger...irreversible loss of the Greenland ice sheet", concludes the IPCC 1.5C report.

The IPCC's special report on the ocean and cryosphere in a changing climate ("SROCC") also notes that decay of the ice sheet would not be abrupt. It does say, however, that the decay would be "irreversible for millennia" once underway. This is the same phrasing as used in AR5.

While it is possible that the ice sheet could stabilise at some intermediate point during its collapse, it would not regain its previous vast size until the next ice age, says Mottram:

"It is clear from even very early work that the ice sheet is only there because it is already there - if there was no ice sheet in Greenland under today's climate we would not be able to build it up again. So once it's gone it's gone until at least the next glacial period - and we'll be waiting some tens of thousands of years given current climate change and the slow rate of carbon removal by natural means."

Boreal forest shift

Boreal forests are found in the cold climates of the northern hemisphere high latitudes. They lie just to the south of the Arctic tundra, where tree growth is restricted by year-round freezing or near-freezing temperatures and a lack of rain.

Known as the "taiga" in Russia, boreal forests are characterised by species that can cope with the cold, such as pine, spruce and larch. They cover vast stretches of North America and northern Europe and Asia.

Boreal forests are the largest "biome", or ecosystem, anywhere on the Earth's land surface and account for 30% of the world's forests. They are a very important store of carbon. While there is a lot of uncertainty around the precise amount of carbon they hold, estimates suggest it is more than one third of all terrestrial carbon.

And about a third of the boreal biome is underlain by permafrost.

However, the boreal zone, along with the tundra, is warming rapidly - approximately twice as quickly as the global average. Continued temperature rise could generate rapid changes in boreal forests, including dieback. A 2012 study explains:

"Increasingly warm summers becoming too hot for the currently dominant tree species, increased vulnerability to disease, decreased reproduction rates and more frequent fires causing significantly higher mortality, all contribute."

A 2017 Nature Climate Change review paper concluded that rapid warming and "naturally lower tree species diversity" could put boreal regions at particular risk of natural forest "disturbances" by factors such as drought, fire, pests and disease. When compared to other ecosystems around the world, the study finds that "future changes in disturbance are likely to be most pronounced in coniferous forests and the boreal biome".

For example, a 2014 study finds that "continued summer warming in the absence of sustained increases in precipitation" brought about a "turning point" around the mid-1990s that "shifted western central Eurasian boreal forests into a warmer and drier regime". Research also indicates that "rather than showing gradual responses", boreal ecosystems "will tend to shift relatively sharply between alternative states in response to climate change".

"An example of a tipping point in boreal forests is a situation where an extreme fire event or repeated severe events render the system incapable of regenerating as a forest ecosystem and instead shifts the system to a sparsely wooded or grassland ecosystem."

This is more likely to occur at the hotter and drier southern margins of the forest, says Goetz. But a "similar tipping point could occur without fire when extreme drought events kill a large proportion of the trees and composition shifts to other species", he adds. A new modelling study shows these changes will result in much reduced "aboveground" biomass - i.e. all the living biomass above the soil, including branches, bark and foliage.

The IPCC's special report on 1.5C notes that "increased tree mortality would result in the creation of large regions of open woodlands and grasslands, which would favour further regional warming and increased fire frequencies, thus inducing a powerful positive feedback mechanism".

As a result, says Dr Brendan Rogers, assistant scientist at the Woods Hole Research Center, "in places that may transition to grasslands, recurring fire regimes may keep the system in a perpetual treeless state".

At the southern margins of boreal forests, "aspen and spruce species are most at risk", says Goetz and, therefore, most likely to be replaced:

"Pine species, shrubs and grasses, as well as more temperate tree species - oaks and maples - will be those most likely to fill the gaps the boreal species leave behind, at least in North America. In northern Eurasia, we'd expect pine species to dominate areas of the currently widespread larch forests."

A 2012 study of forests in Alaska, for example, identified "a widespread shift from coniferous to deciduous vegetation [that] began around 1990 and will continue over the next several decades".

But while trees at the southern edge of the boreal zone risk dieback, research suggests that forests at the northern edge could move into tundra under climate change. A 2018 modelling study finds that, even if the Paris warming limits are met, "boreal forests are simulated to expand into the tundra, while on the other hand tree composition shifts toward temperate species along their warm edge".

Under the existing Paris emissions reduction pledges, the study projects "major climate change effects for more than 80% of the tundra and more than 40% of all boreal forests".

The graphic below, published in the IPCC's fifth assessment report in 2014, illustrates the factors involved in a northwards shift of the boreal biome into the tundra.

Illustration of the potential tundra-boreal biome shift under a warming climate. Credit: IPCC ( 2014) WG2 Fig4-10.

There is already evidence of boreal forests shifting. The IPCC's 1.5C reports concludes that it has "high confidence" that "woody shrubs are already encroaching into tundra and will proceed with further warming".

It also says that abrupt increases in tree cover are "unlikely" at 1.5-2C of warming. Above 2C of warming, there is "potential" for abrupt increases, the report says - albeit with "low confidence".

For the boreal biome, the report says there is "medium confidence" of "further increases in tree mortality" at the southern boundary at 1.5C and 2C of warming. While "a drastic biome shift from tundra to boreal forest is possible" beyond 2C, it says there is "low confidence" in this projection.

It further notes that a potential "tipping point has been estimated to exist between 3C and 4C of global warming (low confidence), but given the complexities of the various forcing mechanisms and feedback processes involved, this is thought to be an uncertain estimate".

Significant changes in boreal forests are made more likely by the rapid rate of warming, says Goetz:

"I don't know that anyone has put a number on a species-specific tipping point, but we have high confidence that with global temperature increases of 1.5 or 2C, which in the boreal will translate into about double those temperature increases, we will see widespread changes in tree species composition and fire regimes."

Such changes could occur within decades, he adds:

"Fire frequency and severity is the big factor here. With more severe fires and especially with more frequent severe fires, which burn off the organic soil layer, we'd expect to see a shift in forest species over the next two-to-three decades that would persist for many decades to come."

Shifts in vegetation cover will affect the reflectivity of the land surface - known as its "albedo", says Prof Colin Prentice, chair in biosphere and climate impacts at Imperial College London. He tells Carbon Brief:

"Northward expansion of the boreal forest is certainly expected as a result of warming and, indeed, there is evidence that it is happening already. Similarly, shrub tundra is expanding into colder regions as a result of warming and this process will continue...There will be, as a result, a decrease in vegetation albedo - especially in spring - which will amplify the warming locally. This is well attested both from first principles and climate model experiments."

This "would lead to increased heat absorption in the Arctic and more rapid permafrost thaw", says Goetz:

"Obviously great permafrost degradation means a lot more carbon emitted to the atmosphere, which would have the effect of increasing the cycle of warming and even more degradation, with global implications."

Rogers agrees that the change in albedo is a key impact of shifting boreal forests. He tells Carbon Brief:

"We know from palaeoclimate literature that northward forest and tall shrub migration is a major Earth system feedback, mostly because of the darkened surface. This is particularly important in the late winter and spring due to the combination of high snow cover and moderate incoming solar radiation."

In fact, he adds, "the full extent of ice ages [in Earth's history] is impossible without this feedback". For the modern day, "we expect this to be a warming effect, and we're already witnessing shrubs getting denser and taller, and trees migrating north", he says.

Carbon emissions from permafrost thaw and dieback of forests at the southern edge of the boreal biome would be a "double-whammy", says Rogers.

However, the uncertainties in predictive models mean that scientists cannot be sure of when these shifts will happen across boreal forests, notes Rogers. And it is still not clear whether it "represents a true 'tipping point' or more of a gradual transition", he adds:

"Certainly for any one location, there likely exists a tipping point beyond which the forest will be fundamentally altered - and wildfire can facilitate and exacerbate these transitions. But the boreal is a vast zone, with variation in climates and landscapes that may 'tip' at different times."

Prentice argues that a gradual shift is more likely. "There are thresholds," he notes, in terms of the conditions required for particular tree species to thrive at certain latitudes or elevations. But, he says, "the effect of warming is simply to gradually shift the geographic location of the threshold".

He also says that neither the northward expansion of boreal forests nor their contraction in the south are likely to be irreversible:

"Cooling would send them into reverse. It is worth noting also that very large shifts in the distribution of the boreal forests have happened in the relatively recent geological past in response to natural climate changes that are reasonably well understood."

However, Goetz points out that "fire is the wildcard and can shift forests much more rapidly than from warming effects on tree growth alone". And Rogers adds that while "forest composition may be reversible", the carbon emitted from thawing permafrost "would take much, much longer" to reaccumulate:

"That carbon took millennia to be sequestered by the land and gradually accumulate in frozen soil layers."

Other tipping points

The nine tipping points described above do not constitute an exhaustive list - indeed there are a number of other parts of the Earth system that have the potential to display tipping point behaviour.

"Less sea ice in one year implies more absorption of solar heat by the ocean, thus more warmth available to melt ice further, thus causing less sea ice the year after."

However, the theory has not been supported by the latest research, Serreze tells Carbon Brief:

" More recent work argues that the trajectory to a seasonally ice-free ocean will be pretty much along the path that we are observing - a downward trend with strong ups and downs from year to year (and over multiple years) reflecting the influences of natural variability."

Research by Notz and colleagues, for example, has shown that large declines in summer sea ice are reversible. Notz explains:

"After a year with anomalously little sea ice, the sea ice usually recovers somewhat in the year afterwards. This is because in addition to the amplifying ice-albedo feedback, there are dampening feedbacks that stabilise the ice cover from one year to the next."

For example, less ice in summer means more open water going into winter. Without the insulating effect of the ice, the Arctic Ocean subsequently loses a greater amount of heat, which means it sees more ice growth in winter. In addition, thin ice in winter grows faster than thick ice, giving the chance for some degree of recovery after a small extent in summer.

Arctic sea ice breaking apart. Credit: Jenna Chamberlain / Alamy Stock Photo.

These feedbacks "imply that the memory of the sea ice cover is largely reset during winter", says Notz, making the ice loss approximately linear in response to rising greenhouse gases.

However, while sea ice itself might not be a tipping element, ecological systems associated with it might well be, adds Notz:

"If the ice is gone completely in a given summer, any ecosystem that needs the continuous existence of sea ice might be wiped out 'forever'."

Another concern around tipping points is the potential for one to trigger a " cascade" effect on others. A Nature commentary from November 2019, for example, argues that "cascading effects might be common" in the Earth system, warning that this would be "an existential threat to civilization".

It references a 2018 Science paper that assessed how 30 different potential social-ecological "regime shifts" could interact with one another through "domino effects" or "hidden feedbacks". The researchers found that, while some regime shifts are more interconnected than others, 45% of these links were possible. It explains:

"Domino effects occur when the feedback processes of one regime shifts affect the drivers of another, creating a one-way dependency. Hidden feedbacks rise when two regime shifts combined generate new (not previously identified) feedbacks; and if strong enough, they could amplify or dampen the coupled dynamics."

Examples of these links "are starting to be observed", the commentary says:

"Arctic sea-ice loss is amplifying regional warming, and Arctic warming and Greenland melting are driving an influx of fresh water into the North Atlantic. This could have contributed to a 15% slowdown since the mid-twentieth century of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC)."

In addition, rapid Greenland melting and further slowdown of the AMOC could "destabilise the West African monsoon, triggering drought in Africa's Sahel region", the authors say, as well as "dry the Amazon, disrupt the East Asian monsoon and cause heat to build up in the Southern Ocean, which could accelerate Antarctic ice loss".

Finally, in addition to the physical tipping points in the Earth system, the term is often also applied to transforming human society in a positive way. Lenton explains:

"I think we also need to be looking at tipping points in human, social and technological systems - this time, tipping points for the good. Cases where a little bit of policy intervention or incentive could tip us onto a path towards a more sustainable future that essentially avoids the worst of the climate tipping points."

A groundswell of demand can push a behaviour, product or technology from the fringe and into the mainstream, often as a result of falling prices. An article published in January this year by the thinktank Carbon Tracker, for example, described how a "political tipping point is coming" on renewable power generation:

"The falling costs of renewables are driving a political tipping point where politicians move from expensive support for renewables to embrace the sector and to tax fossil fuel externalities."

There are tipping points across society that could lead to a rapid global transformation, recent research in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) argues. For example, the study identifies six "social tipping interventions" that could help lead to a carbon-neutral society by 2050:

"These social tipping interventions comprise removing fossil-fuel subsidies and incentivising decentralised energy generation, building carbon-neutral cities, divesting from assets linked to fossil fuels, revealing the moral implications of fossil fuels, strengthening climate education and engagement, and disclosing greenhouse gas emissions information."

While the term "tipping point" is often applied quite loosely regarding political and societal change, it is clear that a number of them will need to be crossed - and quickly - to avoid toppling those in the Earth system.

Carbon Brief would like to thank all the scientists who helped with the preparation of this article.

Update: This article was updated on 12/03/2020 to add two references - in the Amazon and corals sections - to a new study in Nature Communications.

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Explainer: Nine 'tipping points' that could be triggered by climate change - Carbon Brief

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TIPPING POINTS | February 10. 2020. 8:00 And while climate records are being routinely broken, the cumulative impact of these changes could also cause fundamental parts of the Earth system to change dramatically and irreversibly. These "tipping points" are thresholds where a tiny change could push a system into a completely new state.

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Leo Murray's video on tipping points

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Wake Up, Freak Out - then Get a Grip from Leo Murray on Vimeo.

Tipping Point Ahead

It turns out that the way we have been calculating the future impacts of climate change up to now has been missing a really important piece of the picture. It seems we are now dangerously close to the tipping point in the world's climate system; this is the point of no return, after which truly catastrophic changes become inevitable.

Many translations are now available, including the following dubs:

1. Français/French

2. Deutsch/German

3. Italiano/Italian

4. Español/Spanish

5. Magyar nyelv/Hungarian

Show subtitles using the 'CC' button on the main English version embedded above. If you can't see your language, try making it full-screen - we have too many to fit in a small box at once! So far we have English, Spanish/Español, Portuguese/Portugués, Dutch/Nederlands, Swedish/Svenska, Arabic/العربية, Russian/русский язык, Ukrainian/українська мова, Finnish/suomi, Polish/Polski, Czech/čeština, Croatian/Hrvatski, Danish/Dansk, Basque/Euskara, Japanese/日本語, Korean/한국말 and Simplified Chinese/简化字. We are still interested in more translations - the film's message is as urgent as ever!

Alternatively you can access the script with time codes as a text document, or as a Google spreadsheet.

Read the full script with extensive references from peer-reviewed scientific journals, and other links

The above as a pdf document

Share this film:

Email Leo@wakeupfreakout.org

Download the film as a high-definition MOV file

Back to front page

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Wake Up, Freak Out - then Get a Grip (Tipping Point Ahead)

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Wake Up, Freak Out - then Get a Grip from Leo Murray on Vimeo. It turns out that the way we have been calculating the future impacts of climate change up to now has been missing a really important piece of the picture.

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Students from partner schools are invited to additional international events on top of those open to everyone. In our events, teams solve real-world problems in a fun and collaborative environment.

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5 short films about natural warming loops & how we have less time than we think

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The Earth is warming the Earth. In this series of five short films, learn why natural warming loops have scientists alarmed-and why we have less time than we think. Subtitled in 20 languages.

Official launch with the Dalai Lama and Greta Thunberg
more info

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The Earth is warming the Earth. In this series of five short films, learn why natural warming loops have scientists alarmed-and why we have less time than we think. Subtitled in 20 languages. Official launch with the Dalai Lama and Greta Thunberg more info

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BBC Radio 4 - The Climate Book created by Greta Thunberg, Book of the Week: Ep 1 - How Climate Works

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Selections from one book containing the wisdom of over 100 experts on the climate crisis.

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Greta Thunberg and two climate scientists address extreme weather and increases in global warming in today's selected essays. Greta Thunberg, Kelly Burke and Fiona Skinner read

Greta Thunberg and the climate scientists Katherine Hayhoe, Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor at Texas Tech University, and Tamsin Edwards, climate scientist at King's College, London, and IPCC lead author, address extreme weather and increases in global warming. In their essays they explore what this means for the future of our planet. Greta Thunberg, Kelly Burke and Fiona Skinner read.

Greta Thunberg's school strikes and speeches shook the world and inspired leaders and people around the world address the urgency of climate change.

Now, with The Climate Book she has created a deep understanding of how the problems we face are all interconnected and what's at stake, by partnering with more than a hundred scientists, engineers, philosophers, journalists, activists and writers. Alongside them Greta shares her own views on what she's learned and what's next.

The Climate Book is a portrait of a planet on the brink of a climate catastrophe. It shows us what needs to be done so that our world can remain habitable for all of humanity for generations to come.

You can watch Amol Rajan interview Greta Thunberg on Tuesday, 18th October on BBC2.

Abridged by Katrin Williams
Produced by Elizabeth Allard

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BBC Radio 4 - The Climate Book created by Greta Thunberg, Book of the Week: Ep 2 - Our Changing Planet

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Greta Thunberg and two climate scientists address extreme weather and increases in global warming in today's selected essays. Greta Thunberg, Kelly Burke and Fiona Skinner read Greta Thunberg and the climate scientists Katherine Hayhoe, Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor at Texas Tech University, and Tamsin Edwards, climate scientist at King's College, London, and IPCC lead author, address extreme weather and increases in global warming.

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Greta Thunberg together with journalists & activists take us to countries where global warming is already a reality. Greta Thunberg, Kyle Soller, Fiona Skinner & Weruche Opia read.

Selected essays from Greta Thunberg's collaborative book take us to countries where the effects of global warming are already a harsh reality. We hear Greta Thunberg read from her piece, and then we turn to the investigative reporter Abrahm Lustgarten, the Sami journalist Elin Anna Labba and Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, an indigenous woman, geographer and UN Sustainable Development Goals advocate. The readers are Kyle Soller, Fiona Skinner and Weruche Opia.

Greta Thunberg's school strikes and speeches shook the world and inspired leaders and people around the world address the urgency of climate change.

Now, with The Climate Book she has created a deep understanding of how the problems we face are all interconnected and what's at stake, by partnering with more than a hundred scientists, engineers, philosophers, journalists, activists and writers. Alongside them Greta shares her own views on what she's learned and what's next.

The Climate Book is a portrait of a planet on the brink of a climate catastrophe. It shows us what needs to be done so that our world can remain habitable for all of humanity for generations to come.

You can watch Amol Rajan interview Greta Thunberg on Tuesday, 18th October on BBC2.

Abridged by Katrin Williams
Produced by Elizabeth Allard

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BBC Radio 4 - The Climate Book created by Greta Thunberg, Book of the Week: Ep 3 - Climate Change and Us

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Greta Thunberg together with journalists & activists take us to countries where global warming is already a reality. Greta Thunberg, Kyle Soller, Fiona Skinner & Weruche Opia read. Selected essays from Greta Thunberg's collaborative book take us to countries where the effects of global warming are already a harsh reality.

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Greta Thunberg, scientist Kevin Anderson and writer Amitav Ghosh reflect on actions taken so far to limit climate change. Read by Greta Thunberg, David Hounslow and Vincent Ebrahim

Greta Thunberg reads from her essay, and then we turn to Kevin Anderson, the Professor of Energy and Climate Change at the Universities of Manchester, Uppsala and Bergen, and Amitav Ghosh, the award winning author of sixteen books of fiction and non-fiction, look at the actions taken so far to limit change. Read by David Hounslow and Vincent Ebrahim.

Greta Thunberg's school strikes and speeches shook the world and inspired leaders and people around the world address the urgency of climate change.

Now, with The Climate Book she has created a deep understanding of how the problems we face are all interconnected and what's at stake, by partnering with more than a hundred scientists, engineers, philosophers, journalists, activists and writers. Alongside them Greta shares her own views on what she's learned and what's next.

The Climate Book is a portrait of a planet on the brink of a climate catastrophe. It shows us what needs to be done so that our world can remain habitable for all of humanity for generations to come.

You can watch Amol Rajan interview Greta Thunberg on Tuesday, 18th October on BBC2.

Abridged by Katrin Williams
Produced by Elizabeth Allard

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BBC Radio 4 - The Climate Book created by Greta Thunberg, Book of the Week: Ep 4 - Action Taken

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Greta Thunberg, scientist Kevin Anderson and writer Amitav Ghosh reflect on actions taken so far to limit climate change. Read by Greta Thunberg, David Hounslow and Vincent Ebrahim Greta Thunberg reads from her essay, and then we turn to Kevin Anderson, the Professor of Energy and Climate Change at the Universities of Manchester, Uppsala and Bergen, and Amitav Ghosh, the award winning author of sixteen books of fiction and non-fiction, look at the actions taken so far to limit change.

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https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001ddw5

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Greta Thunberg, Wanjira Mathai and Robin Wall Kimmerer explore ways to create a more hopeful future for our planet. Read by Greta Thunberg, Werchue Opia and Nancy Crane.

Today's selected essays on climate change are by Greta Thunberg, the Kenyan environmentalist and activist, Wanjira Mathai and Robin Wall Kimmerer, writer and founder and director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment in the US. Here they explore ways to create a more hopeful future for our planet. We also Greta Thunberg, Weruche Opia and Nancy Crane read.

Greta Thunberg's school strikes and speeches shook the world and inspired leaders and people around the world address the urgency of climate change.

Now, with The Climate Book she has created a deep understanding of how the problems we face are all interconnected and what's at stake, by partnering with more than a hundred scientists, engineers, philosophers, journalists, activists and writers. Alongside them Greta shares her own views on what she's learned and what's next.

The Climate Book is a portrait of a planet on the brink of a climate catastrophe. It shows us what needs to be done so that our world can remain habitable for all of humanity for generations to come.

You can watch Amol Rajan interview Greta Thunberg on Tuesday, 18th October on BBC2.

Abridged by Katrin Williams
Produced by Elizabeth Allard

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BBC Radio 4 - The Climate Book created by Greta Thunberg, Book of the Week: Ep 5 - What Next?

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Greta Thunberg, Wanjira Mathai and Robin Wall Kimmerer explore ways to create a more hopeful future for our planet. Read by Greta Thunberg, Werchue Opia and Nancy Crane. Today's selected essays on climate change are by Greta Thunberg, the Kenyan environmentalist and activist, Wanjira Mathai and Robin Wall Kimmerer, writer and founder and director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment in the US.

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The authoritative information on the status of approval, acceptance, accession and ratification of the Agreement is provided by the Secretary-General of the United Nations, on the respective internet page of the United Nations Treaty Depositary under: Paris Agreement.

The Paris Agreement is a legally binding international treaty on climate change. It was adopted by 195 Parties at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP21) in Paris, France, on 12 December 2015. It entered into force on 4 November 2016. Currently, as of 27 January 2026, there are 194 Parties to the Paris Agreement.

Its overarching goal is to hold "the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels" and pursue efforts "to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels."

However, in recent years, world leaders have stressed the need to limit global warming to 1.5°C by the end of this century.

That's because the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change indicates that crossing the 1.5°C threshold risks unleashing far more severe climate change impacts, including more frequent and severe droughts, heatwaves and rainfall.

To limit global warming to 1.5°C, greenhouse gas emissions must peak before 2025 at the latest and decline 43% by 2030.

The Paris Agreement is a landmark in the multilateral climate change process because, for the first time, a binding agreement brings all nations together to combat climate change and adapt to its effects.

How does the Paris Agreement work?

Implementation of the Paris Agreement requires economic and social transformation, based on the best available science. The Paris Agreement works on a five-year cycle of increasingly ambitious climate action -- or, ratcheting up -- carried out by countries. Since 2020, countries have been submitting their national climate action plans, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs). Each successive NDC is meant to reflect an increasingly higher degree of ambition compared to the previous version.

Recognizing that accelerated action is required to limit global warming to 1.5°C, the COP27 cover decision requests Parties to revisit and strengthen the 2030 targets in their NDCs to align with the Paris Agreement temperature goal by the end of 2023, taking into account different national circumstances.

Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs)

In their NDCs, countries communicate actions they will take to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions in order to reach the goals of the Paris Agreement. Countries also communicate in their NDCs actions they will take to build resilience to adapt to the impacts of climate change.

Long-Term Strategies

To better frame the efforts towards the long-term goal, the Paris Agreement invites countries to formulate and submit long-term low greenhouse gas emission development strategies (LT-LEDS).

LT-LEDS provide the long-term horizon to the NDCs. Unlike NDCs, they are not mandatory. Nevertheless, they place the NDCs into the context of countries' long-term planning and development priorities, providing a vision and direction for future development.

How are countries supporting one another?

The Paris Agreement provides a framework for financial, technical and capacity building support to those countries who need it.

Finance

The Paris Agreement reaffirms that developed countries should take the lead in providing financial assistance to countries that are less endowed and more vulnerable, while for the first time also encouraging voluntary contributions by other Parties. Climate finance is needed for mitigation, because large-scale investments are required to significantly reduce emissions. Climate finance is equally important for adaptation, as significant financial resources are needed to adapt to the adverse effects and reduce the impacts of a changing climate.

Technology

The Paris Agreement speaks of the vision of fully realizing technology development and transfer for both improving resilience to climate change and reducing GHG emissions. It establishes a technology framework to provide overarching guidance to the well-functioning Technology Mechanism. The mechanism is accelerating technology development and transfer through its policy and implementation arms.

Capacity-Building

Not all developing countries have sufficient capacities to deal with many of the challenges brought by climate change. As a result, the Paris Agreement places great emphasis on climate-related capacity-building for developing countries and requests all developed countries to enhance support for capacity-building actions in developing countries.

How are we tracking progress?

With the Paris Agreement, countries established an enhanced transparency framework (ETF). Under ETF, starting in 2024, countries will report transparently on actions taken and progress in climate change mitigation, adaptation measures and support provided or received. It also provides for international procedures for the review of the submitted reports.

The information gathered through the ETF will feed into the Global stocktake which will assess the collective progress towards the long-term climate goals.

This will lead to recommendations for countries to set more ambitious plans in the next round.

What have we achieved so far?

Although climate change action needs to be massively increased to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement, the years since its entry into force have already sparked low-carbon solutions and new markets. More and more countries, regions, cities and companies are establishing carbon neutrality targets. Zero-carbon solutions are becoming competitive across economic sectors representing 25% of emissions. This trend is most noticeable in the power and transport sectors and has created many new business opportunities for early movers.

By 2030, zero-carbon solutions could be competitive in sectors representing over 70% of global emissions.

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The authoritative information on the status of approval, acceptance, accession and ratification of the Agreement is provided by the Secretary-General of the United Nations, on the respective internet page of the United Nations Treaty Depositary under: Paris Agreement. The Paris Agreement is a legally binding international treaty on climate change.

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Download, print, complete and send to parliament

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Edmund Rice Schools Lobbying Postcards -5

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Download and complete
send to parliament / local MPs

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Download, complete and send to your local MP

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Adapt these and use them to lobby your politicians

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3 example letters to lobby your MP on climate change

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Film about Laudato Sihttps://youtu.be/Rps9bs85BII

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BBC One - Our Changing Planet, Series 1, Episode 1

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How damaged ecosystems are recovering due to intervention, restoration and conservation

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Steve Backshall, Chris Packham and Ella Al-Shamahi visit the Maldives, Iceland and Cambodia, charting the fight to save the planet's most endangered ecosystems.

The launch of the BBC's ambitious seven-year natural history project, in which six presenters visit six of the planet's most threatened ecosystems to meet the people fighting to restore the Earth's delicate balance.

In this first episode, Steve Backshall, Chris Packham and Ella Al-Shamahi visit the Maldives, Iceland and Cambodia.

Steve Backshall travels to the Maldives, an area facing significant challenges because of climate change. Warming seas and the acidification of the oceans have led to coral bleaching on a massive scale, destroying the surrounding ecosystem. The biodiversity of the reefs provides food security, income and other benefits to the people of the Maldives, and Steve finds that they are working hard to try to stem the tide of destruction. He also goes diving off the reefs to check on a group of manta rays, whose presence offers a clear indication of the health of the reef.

In Iceland, Chris Packham learns more about the effects of global warming. Temperatures in the Arctic are rising at more than twice the annual global average. Snow and ice are melting at an increasing rate, which contributes to rising sea levels and is likely to provoke extreme temperature events beyond the Arctic. As one of the eight Arctic States, Iceland is being dramatically affected by rising temperatures, with the lives and livelihoods of many islanders being threatened. Chris also discovers that melting sea ice is opening the Arctic to navigation. These seas are home to many species of whales, so Chris joins a team of young scientists monitoring the impact of increased commercial shipping on humpback whales.

On the other side of the world, Ella Al-Shamahi visits Cambodia in Southeast Asia, an area experiencing increasing economic growth. However, growth is putting massive pressure on natural resources, with ever-expanding cities and devastating overexploitation of the natural world. The Mekong river is the lifeblood of this region, but whole sections of it are under pressure. Ella meets a fishing community living on the Tonle Sap lake. The lake used to offer rich fishing grounds for local communities, but the construction of many dams along the wider Mekong is now threatening to destroy the biodiversity of this once abundant lake.

The building of new roads has given poachers easier access to forests, and the illegal wildlife trade is big international business. Ella visits a project in Cambodia that rescues and rehabilitates illegally trafficked wildlife, including pangolins, the most trafficked mammal on Earth.

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BBC One - Our Changing Planet, Series 1, Episode 1

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Steve Backshall, Chris Packham and Ella Al-Shamahi visit endangered ecosystems.

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Here is a pledge that your school can adopt or adapt and then adopt to make big, lasting behaviour changes to ensure a more sustainable future

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an amazing resource shared by PRATYEK / NineisMine India for young climate justice advocates

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNbq9m72JXE

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A Reason for Hope from Sir David Attenborough - Our Planet

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The science of 'carbon budgets'

Climate science is clear that to a close approximation, the eventual extent of global warming is proportional to the total amount of carbon dioxide that human activities add to the atmosphere.

So, in order to stabilise climate change, CO ₂ emissions need to fall to zero. The longer it takes to do so, the more the climate will change. Emissions of other greenhouse gases also need to be constrained. In the Paris Agreement, governments agreed to keep global warming 'well below' 2 degrees Celsius, and to 'make efforts' to keep it below 1.5ºC. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report in October 2018 on the 1.5ºC target; it concluded that global emissions need to reach net zero around mid-century to give a reasonable chance of limiting warming to 1.5ºC.

In many sectors of the economy, technologies exist that can bring emissions to zero. In electricity, it can be done using renewable and nuclear generation. A transport system that runs on electricity or hydrogen, well-insulated homes and industrial processes based on electricity rather than gas can all help to bring sectoral emissions to absolute zero.

However, in industries such as aviation the technological options are limited; in agriculture too, it is highly unlikely that emissions will be brought to zero. Therefore some emissions from these sectors will likely remain; and in order to offset these, an equivalent amount of CO ₂ will need to be taken out of the atmosphere - negative emissions. Thus the target becomes 'net zero' for the economy as a whole. The term 'carbon neutrality' is also used.
Negative emissions
Sometimes a net zero target is expressed in terms of greenhouse gas emissions overall, sometimes of CO ₂ only. The UK Climate Change Act now expresses its net zero emissions target by 2050 in terms of greenhouse gases overall.

The only greenhouse gas that can easily be absorbed from the atmosphere is carbon dioxide. There are two basic approaches to extracting it: by stimulating nature to absorb more, and by building technology that does the job.
Who is moving to net zero?
Plants absorb CO ₂ as they grow, through photosynthesis. Therefore, all other things being equal, having more plants growing, or having plants growing faster, will remove more from the atmosphere. Two of the easiest and most effective approaches for negative emissions, then, are afforestation - planting more forest - and reforestation - replacing forest that has been lost or thinned. Technical options include BioEnergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) and Direct Air Capture (see our Negative Emissions briefing.)

A number of countries have already set targets, or committed to do so, for reaching net zero emissions on timescales compatible with the Paris Agreement temperature goals. They include the UK, Germany, France, Spain, Norway, Denmark, Switzerland, Portugal, New Zealand, Chile, Costa Rica (2050), Sweden (2045), Iceland, Austria (2040) and Finland (2035). The tiny Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan and the most forested country on earth, Suriname, are already carbon-negative - they absorb more CO ₂ than they emit.

In addition, the European Union recently agreed to enshrine its political commitment to be climate neutral by 2050 in its European Climate Law.

The principle that rich nations should lead on climate change is enshrined in the UN climate convention that dates back to 1992, and was reconfirmed in the Paris Agreement. Therefore, if the science says 'global net zero by mid-century', there is a strong moral case for developed countries adopting an earlier date.
In the UK
So far, the UK, France, Sweden, Norway and Denmark have enshrined their net zero targets in national law. Other nations including Spain, Chile and Fiji are looking to do so.

Immediately after the IPCC published its Special Report on 1.5°C in October 2018, the governments of the UK, Scotland and Wales asked their official advisers, the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), to provide advice on the UK and Devolved Administrations' long-term targets for greenhouse gas emissions.

The CCC had previously indicated that the UK should be aiming for net zero emissions by 2045-2050 in order to be compatible with the 1.5ºC Paris Agreement goal.

For the UK, a new target: net-zero greenhouse gases by 2050 (up from the existing emissions reductions target of 80% from 1990 levels by 2050);

For Scotland, a net-zero date of 2045, 'reflecting Scotland's greater relative capacity to remove emissions than the UK as a whole';

For Wales, a 95% reduction in greenhouse gases by 2050, reflecting it having 'less opportunity for CO2 storage and relatively high agricultural emissions that are hard to reduce'.

The CCC delivered its advice in May 2019. Its recommendations were:

The governments of Wales and Scotland swiftly accepted the CCC's advice, and on 12 June 2019, the UK government laid a statutory instrument to amend the 80% target in the Climate Change Act 2008. Just two weeks later, the new net zero target (100% from 1990 levels by 2050) was formally signed into law.

Only a matter of days before France could complete the feat, the UK had pipped them to it and become the first G7 country to legislate for net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

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The science of 'carbon budgets' Climate science is clear that to a close approximation, the eventual extent of global warming is proportional to the total amount of carbon dioxide that human activities add to the atmosphere. So, in order to stabilise climate change, CO 2 emissions need to fall to zero.

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Edmund Rice International & Brother Brian Bond 

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Edmund Rice International & Brother Brian Bond 

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Video from Br Brian about the work of ERI and focus on Climate Emergency

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An iceberg melts in the Arctic; saltwater seeps into the Florida Everglades, the sun bakes a lakebed in Bolivia, trees die in the mountains of Germany, and bush fires sweep across southwest Australia. Although thousands of miles apart, these events are connected: they have all been intensified by climate change primarily caused by our burning of fossil fuels. Since ancient times, humans have burned wood, peat, and oil for heating, cooking, and light. In the U.S., as elsewhere, coal powered the industrial age until the discovery of vast amounts of underground petroleum in the mid-19th century. American industrial might was built on energy derived from fossil fuels-the decomposed remains of plants and animals found in the Earth's crust. These fuels contain carbon and hydrogen, and it is carbon that is the problem.

When fossil fuels are burned, they release carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that trap heat in our atmosphere, making them the main contributors to climate change―and global warming. Coal accounts for 44 percent of the world's carbon dioxide emissions, with nearly two billion tons a year emitted from coal plants in the U.S. alone. Petroleum is responsible for about a third of carbon emissions globally, and the natural gas industry contributes a fifth of global emissions. In little over a century the world has grown more than 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit warmer with temperatures expected to rise even higher; now the goal is to keep the rate of warming below a potentially catastrophic increase. But not everyone wants to change. In the U.S., the oil and gas industries contribute over $200 billion to the economy, and vast fossil fuel reserves exist with enough unextracted coal to last as long as 250 years. There are powerful economic interests pitched against renewable energy, and even consumers used to more inexpensive energy options and incentives can be reluctant to make a switch.

However, there is a growing awareness that the price we will pay for continuing to use fossil fuels will far outweigh the cost of switching to sustainable sources of energy. This has stimulated the development of renewables, such as solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal, that do not emit greenhouse gases when they generate energy. Renewable energy is the most viable solution to powering the planet without destroying the environment, and there is a growing global movement for a transition that is supported by national and international commitments, including the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the 2015 Paris Agreement, and driven by powerful voices, such as 17-year-old Greta Thunberg from Sweden.

Like many social movements in history, the cultural change to renewable energy will likely be driven by the younger generation. A recent survey showed that young adults in the UK are most prepared to go green, with over 60 percent willing to pay more for their electricity if it came from renewable sources.

The momentum for change is building, and it is urgently needed. Despite increased deployment of renewables, they contribute just over 30 percent of global power capacity. While significant technological advances are making renewables viable, a meaningful transition will only come when they are fully accepted and adopted by society. Raising awareness of the importance of switching to renewable energies, their benefits and their potential is central to ensuring that the public and key stakeholders appreciate, accept, and support their adoption.

Education can bring about a fundamental shift in how people think and act; knowledge has the power to reshape thinking and priorities to recognize the importance of sustainability and renewable energy. Schools are engaging a new generation of environmentally conscious citizens who support the shift to renewable energy and will carry it ever further as sustainability becomes a familiar theme in school curriculums and college courses. At a practical level, schools are also crucial for imparting the skills students will need as adults and professionals in a greener economy, from designing resource-efficient cities to working in renewable energy.

This is the reality that sustainable energy company Enel Green Power (EGP) has taken to heart. EGP works closely with the communities in which it operates, and with 10 wind farms helping to revitalize rural Oklahoma, they are seizing the opportunity to support schools and educate students about generating energy sustainably. In addition to actively raising much-needed public awareness about clean energy, EGP is helping to train the workforce required to run it, including retraining oil and gas workers for new careers in renewables. EGP is also supporting schools, from providing technology and educational material, to educating teachers and stimulating student interest in the STEM subjects that are invaluable to developing sustainable energy solutions. EGP has even established a scholarship at Oklahoma Panhandle State University for students pursuing majors in wind energy or education.

One key program supported by EGP is the KidWind Challenge for middle- and high-school students. Through this innovative program, a KidWind ambassador visit classrooms and communities where, with the hands-on help of Enel technicians, students design and test their own wind turbines. As fun as it is educational, KidWind inspires students to get excited about wind power and renewable energy.

A World Wildlife Fund report projects that by 2050 all of the world's energy needs could be met by renewable sources. For that to happen we need to inspire and equip today's generation to be tomorrow's renewable energy experts―education and programs like KidWind are doing just that.

This content is brought to you by our partner. It does not necessarily reflect the views of National Geographic or its editorial staff.

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Making the change: breaking our fossil fuel habit

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An iceberg melts in the Arctic; saltwater seeps into the Florida Everglades, the sun bakes a lakebed in Bolivia, trees die in the mountains of Germany, and bush fires sweep across southwest Australia. Although thousands of miles apart, these events are connected: they have all been intensified by climate change primarily caused by our burning of fossil fuels.

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the importance of tress, peat bogs + other ecosystems in carbon capture

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Woods and Wildlife

One of the most heartening aspects of our work is seeing and hearing about the benefits of our partners' woodlands for local wildlife. Whether it's a landowner telling us how many woodcock they found enjoying the sanctuary of their new birchwood or discovering bird nests for ourselves when out verifying, it is all immensely gratifying.

How to release income from Woodland Carbon

The Woodland Carbon Code exists to make financially unattractive woodland creation projects attractive. In doing this, it enables trees to be planted that otherwise wouldn't be, and additional carbon sinks to be created in the UK. But how does woodland carbon improve a project's economic prospects in practise? And how can the carbon income actually be released?

Natural regeneration - The good, the bad and the scrubby

Woodland creation through natural regeneration offers big rewards. It preserves soil carbon stocks, promotes greater biodiversity and limits the use of plastic tree tubes. But it also poses challenges, especially from a carbon accounting perspective, that have limited its use in the past.

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Forest Carbon | Planting UK Woodlands for Carbon Capture and ecosystem services

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Forest Carbon leads the way in voluntary carbon woodland creation in the UK. Through the planting of 5.2 million new trees in the UK since 2006 our partners' projects are removing over 1,200,000 tonnes of CO2 from the nation's air, as well as providing a host of other benefits to society, including flood mitigation, river improvement and public access.

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Farmers helping to heal nature

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video

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Biodiversity is collapsing worldwide. Here's why.

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The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals 

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The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals 

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Consume less to save the Earth

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Refuse, reduce, reuse, repair & recycle | 52 Climate Actions

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Recycling gets a lot of attention, but it's the least effective of the 5Rs. We need to be doing more refusing, whether it's excess packaging, cheap goods that won't last, or just simply something we don't need. Take what you have already and make it last, or give it a new lease of life.

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Catholic Church Campaign to encourage members to live sustainable lives

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The live simply award is an opportunity for Catholic communities - parishes, schools, religious orders and chaplaincies - to respond to Pope Francis' invitation in Laudato Si' to "work with generosity and tenderness in protecting this world which God has entrusted to us".

What is the livesimply award?

It is awarded to communities who can show how they have been living:

* simply

* in solidarity with people in poverty

* sustainably with creation.

Some live simply award communities have encouraged people to walk or cycle to church or school, install solar panels, start recycling schemes, join a climate change campaign, support Fairtrade stalls or donate to a local food bank. The award celebrates what you have already done and inspires you to do more. It helps your community to live, not just more simply, but also more fully.

How can we apply for a livesimply award?

"An important part of our faith is to care for creation and to develop respect for other people in the world. Becoming a lives imply parish helps you go deeper and to take action."

Paul Kelly, St Joseph's parish, Lancaster diocese

1. Sign up using the form below to express your interest.

2. Next, develop a simple plan, using this action plan template, based on current activities and new projects you'd like to undertake, and send it to CAFOD. When we receive your form, we will send you a livesimply award registration certificate to display in your community.

3. We'll support you with an email group, resources and the opportunity to share ideas and experience.

4. When you're ready, let us know and we'll come and visit your community, find out what you've been doing and help you celebrate and share your achievements.

Get started

Check out our step-by-step guide, visit our , or sign up below to get started.

You need the backing of your parish priest or head teacher, and a small enthusiastic group to encourage people to get started.

Any questions? Contact livesimplyaward@cafod.org.uk

Livesimply sign up form

Livesimply resources

Livesimply award communities

Arundel and Brighton Diocese

St Mary of the Angels, Worthing
Holy Angels, Ash
St Clement's, Ewell West
Catholic Parish of Bognor Regis and Slindon consisting of:
- Our Lady of Sorrows, Bognor Regis
- St Anthony of Viareggio, Rose Green, Bognor Regis
- St Richards, Slindon
St John the Evangelist Parish, Horsham

Birmingham Archdiocese

St Mary's, Harborne
St Peter's, Leamington Spa
St. John's, Tamworth
Newman University, Birmingham
Sacred Heart, Rugby
Holy Trinity, Newcastle under Lyme
Christ the King and Our Lady of Lourdes, Coventry
St Mary of the Angels and Aldridge Parish, Walsall
Sacred Heart Parish, Coventry
Our Lady of Lourdes, Wheatley
St Mary Immaculate, Warwick, and St Charles Borromeo Parish
St Elizabeth's Parish, Coventry
St Thomas More, Coventry

Brentwood Diocese

Cathedral Parish of St Mary and St Helen, Brentwood
Our Lady of the Rosary and St Patrick, Walthamstow
Knights of Saint Columba Council 192, Southend-on-Sea
St Joseph's, Upminster

Clifton Diocese

St Stanislaus, Dulverton
St Bonaventure, Bristol
St Francis, Nailsea
St John the Evangelist, Bath
St Augustine's Parish, Bristol
St Catharine's School, Chipping Campden
St Edwards School, Romsey

East Anglia Diocese

Our Lady's Parish, Stowmarket
St Laurence, Cambridge
St Henry Morse, Diss
St John the Baptist Cathedral, Norwich
Sacred Heart, North Walsham

Hexham and Newcastle Diocese

All Saints, Newcastle upon Tyne
St Oswald's Primary School, Newcastle upon Tyne
St. Cuthbert's High School, Newcastle upon Tyne

Lancaster Diocese

St Josephs Ansdell, Lytham St Anne's
Our Lady and St Edwards Fulwood, Preston
St Joseph's Parish, Cockermouth
St Wilfrid's Parish, Preston

Leeds Diocese

St Benedict's, Garforth
St Joseph's Primary School, Wetherby
Our Lady of Kirkstall Parish, Leeds
St Mary Menston Catholic Voluntary Academy, Ilkley
St Mary's and St Michael's Parish, Settle

Liverpool Diocese

Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Nursery and Primary School, Southport
St Anne's, Ormskirk
Our Lady and All Saints Primary School, Parbold
St Michael and Our Lady Primary School, Kirkby
St Bede's Primary School Widnes
St Wilfrid's Parish, Widnes
Our Lady's Bishop Eton, Liverpool

Middlesbrough Diocese

St Mary's Middlesbrough Cathedral, Middlesbrough

Northampton Diocese

St Bernadette's Primary School, Milton Keynes

Nottingham Diocese

Our Lady and St Edward's, Nottingham
Holy Trinity Catholic Academy, Newark
Blessed Robert Widmerpool Academy, Clifton
Holy Spirit Parish West Bridgford, Nottingham
St Anne's Parish Buxton, Nottingham

Plymouth Diocese

Christ the King (Holy Family Parish), Kinson
Our Lady Queen of Martyrs and St Joseph, Wool
Blessed Sacrament Parish, Exeter

Portsmouth Diocese

St. John Bosco, Woodley
St Joseph, Havant
Hampshire Downs, Winchester
Our Lady and St Edmund, Abingdon
Immaculate Conception Parish, Southampton

Salford Diocese

St Joseph's Primary School, Todmorden
St Mary's and St John Fisher Parish, Denton
St Joseph and St Bede Primary School, Bury

Shrewsbury Diocese

St John the Evangelist, Bridgnorth

Southwark Diocese

Our Lady of Lourdes, Lee
St James the Great, Petts Wood
St Augustine's, Tunbridge Wells
Holy Innocents, Orpington

Westminster Diocese

Our Lady Immaculate Hitchin
St John Vianney, West Green, Tottenham
Sacred Heart of Jesus and St Joseph, Ware
Holy Apostles, Pimlico
Mary Immaculate and St Peter, New Barnet
Our Lady of Lourdes, Harpenden
Mount Carmel Catholic Primary School, Ealing

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The live simply award is an opportunity for Catholic communities - parishes, schools, religious orders and chaplaincies - to respond to Pope Francis' invitation in Laudato Si' to "work with generosity and tenderness in protecting this world which God has entrusted to us".

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Aim Hi Course  Understand the Climate Crisis and How to Male a Difference 

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Aim Hi Course  Understand the Climate Crisis and How to Male a Difference 

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a four-lesson course for anyone interested in learning more & sharing their knowledge on the climate crisis

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Understand the

climate crisis

(and how to make a difference)

Understand clear explanations of key climate crisis concepts and feel empowered. In 4 short lessons, we will inspire you and show you how you can make a difference.

Supported and made possible by...

Outcomes

At the end of this course, you will be aware of the gravity of what we face, but rather than feeling anxious and hopeless, you will feel energised and empowered.

We believe that if we're going to face this crisis together, everyone needs to understand it, and feel enabled to weave their understanding into everyday conversations, actions and future plans.

Four live lessons (+ optional Q&As)

Carbon, tipping points and our simplest solutions.

Nature, soil and the future of food.

Population, pollution and finding a balance.

How do we fix this? Making the impossible possible.

Not for profit

We are running this course as a not-for-profit project. At AimHi, our mission is to make world class live learning accessible to everyone, and this is why most of our live lessons are free. If you want to help us to make this course free for everyone, then please donate to AimHi so that we can make it happen!

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Understand the climate crisis (and how to make a difference) Understand clear explanations of key climate crisis concepts and feel empowered. In 4 short lessons, we will inspire you and show you how you can make a difference. Supported and made possible by...

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LABC is a company based in Torino (IT). LABC is a learning community, aiming to share and build upon the experience of professionals in the field of individual and community wellness, group-work, education and training, reintegration into labour market, project management.

LABC is enriched by pan-European collaborations, always adopting and promoting the principles of:

- collaborative learning: we exchange, improve and share experiences, resources and skills, in order to optimize international and intermodal collaborations, develop and transfer of methodologies and praxis

- generativity: we establish, support and guide the ability to create, generate and produce new psychological, social and educational tools, models and praxis, with the aim of spreading them freely throughout the community

LABC is active and experienced in:

# care work, individual and community well-being through a widespread range of activities, including group work sessions, supervisions, training, consultancy on management, organization of public events, lectures and seminars

# Education and Research by designing learning methodologies and implementing training materials and tools dedicated to improve the awareness of participants and recipients on topics of particular interest in psychological, educational, social and environmental fields.

Website: www.labcentro.it

mail projects@labcentro.it

facebook: www.facebook.com/LABCsrl/

linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/labc-srl

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LABC is a company based in Torino (IT). LABC is a learning community, aiming to share and build upon the experience of professionals in the field of individual and community wellness, group-work, education and training, reintegration into labour market, project management.

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Human Rights, Technological, Scientific, Medical and Earth Justice progress reported here - updated fortnightly

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If we want to change the story of the human race in the 21st century, we have to change the stories we tell ourselves.

7 SEPTEMBER 2019 - 20 SEPTEMBER 2019

Coal shipments to the United States have fallen to their lowest since 1983 - and the dramatic reduction of coal in the country's energy mix has reduced deaths from air pollution and cut the cost of damages by more than $200 billion. Ars Technica

The number of cigarettes being smoked in the UK fell by nearly a quarter between 2011 and 2018 - meaning 1.4 billion fewer cigarettes smoked every year. Cancer UK

Saudi Arabia says women may now travel overseas, register births, marriage & divorce, receive family documents and be eligible as guardians to minors. Reuters

Indonesia has lifted the minimum legal age for marriage to 19. Previously, girls of 16 could be married (and there was no minimum age if parents requested it). Reuters

The United States' poverty rate has reached its lowest point since 2001. There were 1.4 million fewer people living in poverty in 2018 than in 2017. US Census

The Canadian government has lifted almost 900,000 people out of poverty since 2016, including 300,000 children. CBC

The Asian Development Bank says that Pakistan's extreme poverty rate fell from 28.6% of total population in 2001 to 3.9% in 2015. APP

California has banned the operation of private prisons - a major victory for criminal justice reform because it removes the profit motive from incarceration. Guardian

Four years after the WHO declared Delhi the world's most polluted city, the government has announced that pollution has dropped by 25%. Indian Express

A year ago, Chile began a campaign to ban plastic straws. Since then, 200 million fewer straws have been delivered to shops and restaurants. Emol

20 JULY 2019 - 10 AUGUST 2019

Electricity generation from coal power stations across Europe fell by nearly one fifth in the first half of 2019, the steepest decline ever recorded. New Scientist

In the second quarter of 2019 the Tesla Model 3 was not only the best selling car in its segment in the United States, but outsold all of its petrol and diesel powered equivalents combined. Elektrek

Last year, Japan saw its population decrease by over 444,000 people, the tenth straight year of declines, and the largest annual decrease since the end of World War Two. Mercatornet

Sri Lanka has been declared free of measles, the fourth country in south-east Asia to reach this milestone after Bhutan, Maldives and Timor-Leste. The country reported its last homegrown case of the virus in May 2016. WHO

Americans are becoming more tolerant. A major survey of attitudes towards sexuality, race, skin tone, age, disability and body weight has shown that explicit bias has decreased in all six categories since 2007; ranging from 49% (sexuality) to 15% (body weight). Implicit bias also decreased-33% for sexuality, 17% for race and 15% for skin tone. Scientific American

A decade ago, Scotland adopted a nationwide ban on indoor smoking. Over the next decade there was a 13% reduction in heart attacks for people over the age of 60. Reuters

Panama has become the first Central American nation to ban single-use plastic bags, joining more than 60 other countries that have passed total or partial bans, or introduced taxes to reduce their use. Reuters

Ethiopia has smashed the world record for tree planting. Led by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, millions of Ethiopians planted more than 350 million trees in 12 hours on the 29th July. BBC

Since 1990, thanks to better protection and a decline in farming, France's wooded or forested areas have increased by nearly 7%. Forests now cover 31% of the country. Economist

The population of tigers is recovering in India. The tiger population has risen from 2,226 in 2014 to 2,967 in 2018, an increase of over one third. This is a major conservation success. BBC

4 MAY 2019 - 17 MAY 2019

Last year, more global coal capacity was closed than approved for the first time since the 19th century, and the UK just had its first coal-free week since 1882. BBC

Chile has reached its 2025 clean energy targets six years ahead of schedule, and says it's now on track for 70% electricity from renewables by 2030. BN Americas

The world's largest car supplier, Bosch, says it will be fully carbon neutral by 2020, making it the first major industrial company to take that step. Reuters

Big new dataset here, we've been waiting for this for a while. The proportion of people in extreme poverty has fallen from 36% in 1990 to 8.6% in 2018. Absolute numbers are down from 1.9 billion in 1990 to 610 million in 2018. ODI

The 2019 election in India is on track for the highest turnout in history, driven by unprecedented numbers of women voters, who may be the majority this year. Quartz

The number of people incarcerated in American prisons has declined again, to 1.48 million people, down from 1.61 million in 2009. Washington Post

New Global Burden of Disease Report says that between 1990 and 2017, deaths of kids and teenagers decreased by 51.7%, from 13.77 million to 6.64 million. CNN

The United Nations says that 187 countries have agreed to control the movement of plastic waste between national borders, in an effort to curb waste. CNN

Tanzania has become the latest country to implement a plastic ban. From the 1st June, no one will be allowed to produce, import, sell or use plastic bags. WWF

California, the United States' most productive agricultural state, has banned a widely used pesticide blamed for harming brain development in babies. Associated Press

Costa Rica has doubled its forest cover in the last 30 years; half its land surface is now covered with trees, a huge carbon sink and a big draw for tourists. NYT

25 JANUARY 2019 - 8 FEBRUARY 2019

9 NOVEMBER 2018 - 30 NOVEMBER 2018

A little perspective. Global suicide rates have dropped by 38% since 1994, saving 4 million lives, four times the number killed in combat during that time. Economist

Cigarette useamong Americans has dropped to its lowest level since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention started collecting data in 1965. CNN

In the DRC, doctors are winning the war on sleeping sickness. At the turn of the century there were 30,000 cases. Last year, there were 1,100. Guardian

More ammo for fun conversations with population-obsessed baby boomers. The global fertility rate (average number of children a woman gives birth to) has halved since 1950. Half the world's countries are now below replacement levels. BBC

Scotland is the first country in the world to include teaching of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex rights into its state schools curriculum. The Scotsman

Officials in South Korea are bulldozing the country's largest dog slaughterhouse. The reason? Years of campaigning by activists, and shifting tastes in millenials. BBC

The Republic of Congo has created its fifth national park, protecting western lowland gorillas, chimpanzees, elephants and other threatened wildlife. MongaBay

13 APRIL 2018 - 10 MAY 2018

30 MARCH 2018 - 12 APRIL 2018

Portugal generated enough renewable energy to power the entire country in March, and the government has also just suspended all fossil fuel subsidies. C'mon Australia. Quartz

More bad news for fossil fuels. New Zealand just banned new oil and gas exploration, and only half of the United States' coal plants earned enough to cover their costs last year.

Around the world, the number of people dying due to insufficient calorie or protein intake has fallen from almost half a million in the 1990s to roughly 300,000 today. OurWorldinData

The global media went into a frenzy over Cape Town's water shortages and Day Zero. Strangely, nobody is reporting how the Mother City successfully averted the crisis. apolitical

A cryptocurrency startup just funded all 35,647 open projects on public school crowd-funding platform DonorsChoose.org, reaching more than 16,500 schools in the US. Fast

A new report says that, thanks to shifting tastes amongst millenials, 70% of the world's population is reducing meat consumption or leaving meat off the table altogether. Forbes

Four years after imposing a 5p levy, the United Kingdom has used 9 billion fewer plastic bags, and the number being found on the seabed has plummeted. Independent

Colombia has been ordered by its courts to protect the Amazon, in Indonesia they're cleaning up the world's dirtiest river, and in Mumbai, turtles are returning to the beaches.

9 MARCH 2018 - 29 MARCH 2018

23 FEBRUARY 2018 - 8 MARCH 2018

There are now more than 100 cities around the world that get at least 70% of their electricity from renewable sources such as hydro, geothermal, solar and wind. CDP

Canada has just announced $3.1 billion in new funding for science, "the single largest investment in basic research in Canadian history." Nature

Dolly Parton's Imagination Library, which sends free books to children from birth until their start of school, has just delivered its 100 millionth book. Mashable

Since 2010, South Africa, the country with the world's largest concentration of people with HIV/AIDS, has halved the infection rate and decreased deaths by 29 percent. Borgen

Taiwan has announced a ban on single-use plastic items. Straws, cups and bags will be eliminated by 2030 and restaurants will face restrictions from 2019. Channel News Asia

Rome, one of Europe's most traffic-clogged cities, has announced plans to ban all diesel cars from its center by 2024. That follows similar, recent announcements from Milan and Turin

The Seychelles has created a new 130,000 square kilometre marine reserve in the Indian Ocean, protecting their waters from illegal fishing for generations to come. National Geographic

26 JANUARY 2018 - 8 FEBRUARY 2018

94% of net new electricity capacity in the United States came from renewables last year, and the country lowered its total emissions by 1%. Electrek

In 2017, for the first time, the EU generated more clean energy than coal (five years ago coal generated twice as much as renewables). Carbon Brief

China brought 12.89 million people out of poverty in 2017, dropping the rate to 3.1%. About 70 million rural people have climbed out of poverty since 2012. Channel News Asia

Despite rising air pollution, respiratory disease death rates in China have fallen by 70% since 1990. The reason? Rising incomes, cleaner cooking fuels, better healthcare. Twitter

India has announced plans to create the world's largest government-funded healthcare programme, covering more than 100 million of the country's poor. BBC

A massive new study on three quarters of all the cancer cases around the world from 2000 to 2014 has shown that survival rates are increasing in most countries. Jamaica Observer

A new report says democracy is more widespread than ever. Six in ten of the world's countries are now democratic - a post war record. Pew Research

13 JANUARY 2018 - 25 JANUARY 2018

10 NOVEMBER 2017 - 23 NOVEMBER 2017

The fossil fuels divestment stories are coming fast and thick now. Norway's sovereign wealth fund is officially out, and the global insurance industry has pulled $20 billion.

A new report from the EU says that between 1990 and 2016 the continent cut its carbon emissions by 23% while the economy grew by 53%. C'mon Australia. CleanTechnica

Thanks to government welfare policies, the child-poverty rate in the United States has reached an all time low, dropping to 15.6 percent in 2016. The Atlantic

According to the World Health Organisation, global efforts to combat TB have saved an estimated 53 million lives since 2000 and have reduced the TB mortality rate by 37%.

Two weeks ago, Germany's top court ruled that lawmakers must legally recognize a third gender from birth. This will make it the first European nation to pass this kind of law. CNN

Victoria is poised to become the first Australian state to legalise euthanasia, after historic laws passed the upper house yesterday. The Age

Hot on India's heels, the Italian parliament has voted to ban the use of all animals in circuses and traveling shows. It joins 40 other nations with similar bans in place. Inhabit

Bowing to overwhelming scientific evidence, and pressure from environmental groups, the UK government has agreed to an extended ban on neonicotinoid pesticides. BBC

And finally... we know everyone heard about it, but we're including it anyway. AUSTRALIA VOTED YES TO GAY MARRIAGE (and had a serious party to celebrate it). About bloody time. Welcome to the 21st century everyone!

29 SEPTEMBER 2017 - 12 OCTOBER 2017

1 SEPTEMBER 2017 - 28 SEPTEMBER 2017

The cost of solar plants in the United States has dropped by 30% in one year and in the United Kingdom, the price of offshore wind has dropped by half in less than two years.

France will pass legislation later this year to phase out all oil and gas exploration and production by 2040, becoming the first country to do so. Bloomberg

Women now occupy 23% of parliamentary seats around the world, up from 12% in 1997. The Middle East and North Africa have seen a fourfold increase in that time. World Bank

Heckler & Koch, the world's deadliest arms manufacturer, has announced it will end gun sales to countries falling short of corruption and democracy standards. Deutsche Welle

September has been a great month for the war on plastic. Kenya became the 9th country to ban plastic bags, then Western Australia announced a ban starting in 2018, and now Chile says it will be the first country in the Americas to ban plastic bags in coastal cities.

The Minamata Convention, the first global treaty on mercury pollution, was ratified six weeks ago, and 156 countries are meeting this week to discuss further action. Swiss Info

One of the world's largest marine parks has just been created off the coast of Easter Island, and will protect 142 species, including 27 threatened with extinction. Guardian

In more than 60 regions across the globe, more populations of large sea turtles are improving than declining, a big change from a decade or two ago. Nice. Associated Press

18 AUGUST 2017 - 31 AUGUST 2017

4 AUGUST 2017 - 17 AUGUST 2017

Following in China's footsteps, India is on track to double its solar installations this year, installing more in the first half of 2017 than in all of 2016. C'mon Australia. Clean Technica

JPMorgan Chase has just announced it will source 100% of its energy from renewables by 2020 and will facilitate $200 billion in clean financing through 2025. PV Tech

Rhode Island has become the fourth state in the United States to make community college free, following similar initiatives in New York, Oregon and Tennessee. CNN

The World Health Organisation has declared Somalia polio free, after confirming there have been no new recorded cases in the last three years. Arab News

Nepal has passed a law criminalising an ancient Hindu practice called chhaupadi that banishes women from the home during menstruation and after childbirth. Al Jazeera

The British government has unveiled new plans to require compulsory CCTV cameras in all slaughterhouses, in order to enforce laws against animal cruelty. Guardian

A province in Pakistan has planted a billion trees in the last two years as part of an effort to restore forests and protect against natural disasters such as floods. Independent

In Germany, the total area of land under organic agriculture increased by 15% in 2016, reaching 3.09 million acres, or 7.5% of all arable land. Deutsche Welle

Inuit groups and the Canadian government just signed a deal to protect the 'Serengeti of the Arctic,' creating by far the largest marine reserve in the country's history. Globe & Mail

30 JUNE 2017 - 13 JULY 2017

16 JUNE 2017 - 29 JUNE 2017

Sweden's largest pension fund has divested all investments from six companies that violate the Paris Agreement, including Exxon, Gazprom and TransCanada. CleanTechnica

France will stop granting all licences for oil and gas exploration in a major transition towards clean energy being driven by the new Macron government. Independent

Since 2010, tobacco use by young people in India has fallen by 33%, and for high school students in the United States it's dropped by almost half since 2011.

Not that you'd know it from the evening news, but the homicide rate in Australia has dropped to one victim per 100,000 people, the lowest ever recorded. Guardian

The gender pay gap in the US has narrowed from 36% in 1980 to 17% in 2015. For young women the gap has narrowed even further, and now stands at 10%. Pew Research

Hot on the heels of Ireland's appointment of its first gay Prime Minister, Serbia has achieved a double first, with the appointment its first female and gay Prime Minister. BBC

Pakistan has started issuing passports with a separate gender category, X, for transgender citizens who don't identify as male or female. Vox

Five remote Pacific islands are once again safe havens for four of the world's rarest bird species following one of the most ambitious island restoration projects of all time. BirdLife

19 JANUARY 2017 - 1 FEBRUARY 2017

Since 1980 the US has been a beacon of freedom for refugees, taking in 2.5 million people. Not one of them has been responsible for an act of domestic terror. The Age

86% of children now receive the DTP3 vaccine. That means the number of vaccinated humans on the planet has risen from 1 to 6 billion in two decades. Our World in Data

Since 2008, the rate of violent crime in the US has been lower than at any point since 1976. And thanks to better education and contraception techniques, abortion rates have reached their lowest level since Roe vs. Wade in 1973.

Unilever, one of the world's largest consumer goods companies, has committed to making all of its packaging fully reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2025. Plastics News

Delhi has introduced a city-wide ban on disposable plastic, prohibiting the use of cutlery, bags and other plastic items amid concern over pollution of the sea and air. Independent

Brazil has pledged to rehabilitate 22 million hectares of forests, croplands and pastures, the largest restoration commitment ever made by a single nation. Pacific Standard

Deutsche Bank has $2 trillion in assets and is one of the coal industry's biggest financiers - and it's just announced it will stop financing all new coal projects. Ouch. Mining.com

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If we want to change the story of the human race in the 21st century, we have to change the stories we tell ourselves. Coal shipments to the United States have fallen to their lowest since 1983 - and the dramatic reduction of coal in the country's energy mix has reduced deaths from air pollution and cut the cost of damages by more than $200 billion.

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Greta Thunberg speech at the London Literature Festival

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Greta Thunberg speech at the London Literature Festival

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Have your say and help create the United Children's Global Charter on Child Rights and Climate change - second online survey opens November 2022

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General Comment No. 26 on Children's Rights and the Environment

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From December 2021 - 2023, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child is hosting a series of offline and online consultations and workshops with the global community, including specific consultations with children and young people, to inform the General Comment on Children's Rights and the Environment with a Special Focus on Climate Change (General Comment No. 26) launching in 2023.

Consultations inform the content and shape the draft of the General Comment, specifically on the obligations of States to uphold children's rights in the environmental context. They help fill gaps in our current understanding of certain key issues and clarify difficult concepts (e.g. rights of future generations). They most importantly, integrate the voices of children and young people and the most impacted by the issue.

The findings will also be used to create a Children's Global Charter , an inspirational message from children around the world on their vision for a safe, healthy and sustainable world that respects their rights. This will be made up of children's own words and artwork and be launched alongside General Comment No. 26 to raise awareness of why it is so important for children.

Consultations take the form of:

Online consultations: The public is invited to share their views on the content and first draft of the General Comment. This will be done through two types of online questionnaires and open submission forms that will be circulated widely. The first seeks answers on a broad set of topics on children's rights and the environment that will inform the creation of the General Comment first draft. The second will request feedback on the first draft of the General Comment. Both questionnaires will have a child and youth version in order to collect their specific perspectives.

Thematic workshops: We will bring together experts, young and old, to discuss specific topics related to children's rights and the environment, including intergenerational equity, the right to a healthy environment and climate change. These discussions will help form the content that will be included in the first draft of the General Comment.

Regional and local workshops: Once the first draft of the General Comment is developed, workshops will be hosted with children and young people and the global community across regions and sectors. These workshops will provide the Committee with opportunities to ensure regional priorities are considered in the final version. It will also ensure children and young people from marginalised backgrounds are supported to participate in the drafting process.

CONSULTATIONS ON CONTENT

ONLINE CONSULTATION + THEMATIC WORKSHOPS

17 December 2021 - 15 February 2022: Global Community

31 March 2022 - 30 June 2022: Children and Young People

CONSULTATIONS ON DRAFT

ONLINE CONSULTATION + REGIONAL & LOCAL WORKSHOPS

November 2022 - February 2023: Global Community

November 2022 - February 2023: Children and Young People

LAUNCH

2023: General Comment No. 26 Launch

Learn about the key findings from consultations with children and young people informing General Comment No. 26.

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Consultations | General Comment No. 26 on Children's Rights and the Environment

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From December 2021 - 2023, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child is hosting a series of offline and online consultations and workshops with the global community, including specific consultations with children and young people, to inform the General Comment on Children's Rights and the Environment with a Special Focus on Climate Change (General Comment No.

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Global North and Global South - Climate Change injustice 

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Global North and Global South - Climate Change injustice 

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2020 has been the warmest year on record, shows. The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amount of snow and ice has diminished , and sea levels have risen globally. According to the Human Development Report of 2020 , the causes of global warming can be identified in human economic activities, which release enormous amounts of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere and as such contribute to climate change. Yet, when talking about our human responsibility in inducing climate change, it is very important to be aware of the different historical contributions of every country to today's greenhouse gas emissions.

The most affluent countries of the world, also referred to as the " Global North ", are responsible for around half of all emissions since the Industrial Revolution, as estimated by the World Inequality Database . Privileged lifestyles in Europe, North America and other nations in the Global North produce a carbon footprint 100 times greater than that of the world's poor nations combined. I n 2019, the top 10% of global emitters (771 million individuals) were responsible for about 48% of global CO2 emissions, while the bottom 50% (3.8 billion individuals) were responsible for almost 12% of all emissions . This does not only mean that least developed countries, often located in the " Global South ", have contributed far less to global warming. It also implies that least developed countries have had a less equal share in the direct benefits of fossil fuel use, including energy consumption.
The ecological crisis brings global inequalities to the surface
Events over the past years have made clear that no one can escape the impacts of climate change. However, at the global level, climate effects are not uniform. The Global Climate Risk Index 2021 indicates that the poorest countries of the world, whilst registering the lowest industrial pollution levels, are most susceptible to the damage produced by climate change. In fact, evidence indicates that the initial inequality experienced by countries of the Global South puts them in a position of disadvantage , where they are particularly vulnerable to climate change impacts. As a consequence, climate change widens already-existing global inequalities, thereby undermining efforts of poverty reduction. A report of the World Bank estimates that the ecological crisis might drive up to 135 million people into poverty by 2030.

Looking at the national level, climate change further deepens within-country inequalities by hitting the poorest communities, including Black, Indigenous and People of Colour communities ( ), as well as women and children, hardest. T hese most vulnerable groups face the effects of global warming on a daily basis; Even though smallholder farmers in rural economic areas provide up to 75% of the food supply in many developing countries , they are undermined by floods, droughts and other natural disasters. Notwithstanding, vulnerable groups are often the ones who are actively involved in the protection and conservation of natural habitats, as in the case of indigenous environmental defenders . In addition to being exposed to the most direct adverse effects of climate change and global warming, these groups are facing extreme violent attacks for defending their home and the planet. In fact, as reported by Global Witness , 227 environmental and land defenders were killed in 2020 in the Global South.
The need for more active inclusion of Global South actors and voices
Rather than suffering the most from climate change, communities at the forefront of climate change should be at the centre of the world's fight against global warming, and should be given way more space to raise their voices. This means that, in order to reduce global inequalities, Global South actors need to be actively included in the decision-making of global action and partnerships, especially on climate related issues.

This also means that people in the Global North need to support the more active inclusion of Global South actors. Today, the voices of the Global South remain too often unheard. A recent study points out that climate change academics from some of the worst-hit regions are struggling to be published - a challenge that is even harder for female authors. The lack of diverse voices means that key views are missing. Moreover, ​​BIPOC communities of the Global South possess unique practical and ancestral knowledge about nature and ways to live in harmony with it. Their inclusion can indeed widen the knowledge on climate change and help shape policies.
Other essentials to reduce global inequalities
Firstly, when it comes to climate change, it is crucial to recognise that the Global South and the Global North face different realities, which imply different capacities, resources as well as different priorities on the political agenda. Hence, acknowledging the different climate realities amongst different countries and communities, as well as the different responsibilities based on historic pollution , is a first valuable step to act upon the climate crisis.

Secondly, it is paramount to reconsider history, and to decolonise the climate narrative. This comes with the recognition that the solution to the problems posed by climate change might lie in other perspectives, which do not necessarily belong to the same mindset that created them in the first place. Decolonising the narrative means recognising that climate change is a consequence of the unprecedented acceleration in human production and consumption, which started with colonialism . It means understanding that the modern idea of economic progress that harms the environment and its people is no longer considered the most suitable option for the well-being of the Earth, and it needs to be challenged. This is also why actively including the voices of the Global South is so important.

While we cannot undo historic pollution, we can focus on dealing with climate change in a more inclusive and equitable manner; Every action counts; from increasing the representation of Global South authors in climate research, to opening debates upon production patterns and changing your consumption patterns. What small step can you begin with today?

Written by Erika Strazzante, Stéphanie Rycken, Vanessa Winkler
27/10/2021

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Global North and Global South: How Climate Change Uncovers Global Inequalities - Generation Climate Europe

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The climate crisis is a global one. Yet some communities of the world are more vulnerable to its effects than others. Differences between the Global North and the Global South in the impacts of climate change, and the capacities and resources available to deal with these impacts, reveal how climate change is widening global inequalities.

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What does this mean? a quick guide.

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How NDCs are falling short of the targets

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Download, print and complete and send to your MPs

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As the #COP27 climate summit began, some activists expressed concern that the gathering was already shaping up to be a disappointment.
https://t.co/uuDCBw9SSm

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‘We cannot have COP27 become a sham’: Activists voice worries over how effective the talks will be.

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World leaders posing for a “family photo” at the COP27 climate conference in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, on Monday. Credit... Mohammed Salem/Reuters SHARM EL SHEIKH, Egypt — As presidents and prime ministers from around the globe gathered on Monday to tell the world what they are doing to tackle climate change, the United Nations secretary-general delivered a characteristically dire message about the rapidly warming planet, warning: “We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator.” The

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As the #COP27 climate summit began, some activists expressed concern that the gathering was already shaping up to be a disappointment.
https://t.co/uuDCBw9SSm https://t.co/TmpEQVt1kP

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As the #COP27 climate summit began, some activists expressed concern that the gathering was already shaping up to be a disappointment.https://t.co/uuDCBw9SSm pic.twitter.com/TmpEQVt1kP
— The New York Times (@nytimes) November 7, 2022

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As the #COP27 climate summit began, some activists expressed concern that the gathering was already shaping up to be a disappointment.
https://t.co/uuDCBw9SSm https://t.co/TmpEQVt1kP

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‘We cannot have COP27 become a sham’: Activists voice worries over how effective the talks will be.

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World leaders posing for a “family photo” at the COP27 climate conference in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, on Monday. Credit... Mohammed Salem/Reuters SHARM EL SHEIKH, Egypt — As presidents and prime ministers from around the globe gathered on Monday to tell the world what they are doing to tackle climate change, the United Nations secretary-general delivered a characteristically dire message about the rapidly warming planet, warning: “We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator.” The

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.original_text
As the #COP27 climate summit began, some activists expressed concern that the gathering was already shaping up to be a disappointment.
https://t.co/uuDCBw9SSm https://t.co/TmpEQVt1kP

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As the #COP27 climate summit began, some activists expressed concern that the gathering was already shaping up to be a disappointment.
https://t.co/uuDCBw9SSm

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.entities.urls[].title
‘We cannot have COP27 become a sham’: Activists voice worries over how effective the talks will be.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.entities.urls[].description
World leaders posing for a “family photo” at the COP27 climate conference in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, on Monday. Credit... Mohammed Salem/Reuters SHARM EL SHEIKH, Egypt — As presidents and prime ministers from around the globe gathered on Monday to tell the world what they are doing to tackle climate change, the United Nations secretary-general delivered a characteristically dire message about the rapidly warming planet, warning: “We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator.” The

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A Video

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If flame is a necessary part of our life for the moment but we need to douse it as soon as possible, then not building new bonfires is a sensible first step.

Source: Build Nothing New That Ultimately Leads to a Flame | The New Yorker

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Edmund Rice International- Care of Earth

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If flame is a necessary part of our life for the moment but we need to douse it as soon as possible, then not building new bonfires is a sensible first step. Source: Build Nothing New That Ultimately Leads to a Flame | The New Yorker

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You may have noticed the world becoming more eco-friendly in recent years - or at least, so it would appear. But if you've ever picked up a product because the packaging had the word "natural" on it or looked recycled, you may have been a victim of greenwashing.

Greenwashing is the practice of making brands appear more sustainable than they really are. It may involve cynical marketing ploys, misguided PR stunts, or simply changing the packaging of an existing product while continuing to use unsustainable ingredients or practices. It's a way for companies to appear like they care while also increasing their profit margins, as they're fully aware that eco-conscious people are willing to part with more money for sustainable products.

You might remember the controversy back in 2019 when McDonald's introduced paper straws that turned out to be non-recyclable. Aside from the questionable practice of cutting down trees to make disposable straws, this was a classic example of a corporate giant pretending to address an issue - in this case, plastic pollution - without actually doing anything.

Another cynical greenwashing move is to slap a green label on something to make it appear more sustainable or healthy, as Coca-Cola did with Coca-Cola Life - that with 6.6% sugar was far from a healthy drink. You'd probably get less Life if you drank a lot of it.

Unfortunately, greenwashing seems to be a trend that's here to stay. Companies are constantly coming up with new and brilliant ways to tell us lies. One of the best things people can do to protect themselves from these corporate cons is to get familiar with recent greenwashing examples. Awareness of the tricks they use can help you spot other talented greenwashers more easily, so let's take a look at some greenwashing lowlights from the last couple of years.

Greenwashing examples: recent stand-out cases

And before getting started, here's a graphic that explains ways to spot greenwashing outside of the cases shown here. Skip over to get straight to those examples though.

When greenwashing, companies project an eco-friendly image which is untrue. Sometimes the disguise is hard to detect but in other cases the veneer strays so far from the truth that you begin to question the sobriety of the PR & Marketing teams behind the greenwash. Did they really think that would work?

Innocent Drinks is a prime example of the implausible approach. The company is owned by Coca Cola, the worst plastic polluter in the world. The company also uses single-use plastic - which is terrible for the environment. Yet, someone, somewhere, thought it'd be a convincing idea to release twee TV cartoon adverts - featuring cute animals singing songs about recycling and fixing the planet. In an effort to connect the brand with these contradictory causes.

It's greenwashing, pure and simple. It'd be funny if it weren't for the dire consequences of all that plastic pollution.

Luckily, the ASA stepped in and banned the ludicrous ads after they were reported by Plastic Rebellion.

The global coffee capsule market is worth over $10billion and growing fast. But the mountain of discarded capsules remains difficult to recycle. The problem is you typically have to use specialist recycling services instead of local recycling bins.

As a case in point of how the recycling process can go badly wrong. Keurig led Canadian buyers to believe they could recycle their single-use plastic coffee pods by simply breaking open the top, emptying out the coffee, and throwing the empty carcass into recycling bins. Easy right?

Wrong. The capsules weren't accepted in most Canadian provinces, except for Quebec and British Columbia. And even then the instructions didn't go far enough. The City of Toronto had to revert 90 tonnes of plastic pods from recycling bins last year because of this kind of capsule carnage.

Keurig were fined $3million and ordered to change the misleading recycling claims on the packaging.

Pro tip: at Akepa we find a coffee from our attentive local baristas is way, way better than a mediocre coffee from a pod!

IKEA is the largest consumer of wood in the world, and its timber consumption has doubled in the last decade. An investigation by Earthsight found that IKEA has been making beechwood chairs using illegally sourced wood from the forests of Ukraine's Carpathian region, an area home to endangered beasts such as bears, lynxes, wolves, and bison.

Perhaps the most shocking thing about this case is that the illegal timber was certified by the Forest Stewardship Council. This oversight raises serious questions about the ethics and transparency of the FSC accreditation, which according to Earthsight, is not limited to Ukraine. They describe "rampant illegal logging" across the globe under the watchful eye of the FSC.

In spite of this, IKEA is among the best in the world in terms of its sustainability credentials, and FSC is considered the gold standard of forest accreditation.

The glass cleaner by SC Johnson claimed its bottles were made from 100% "ocean plastic". But before you start imagining intrepid teams of Windex employees out on boats salvaging plastic from the sea, let me stop you right there - because that's not what happened.

In fact, the plastic used to make the bottles was never in the ocean. It was pulled from plastic banks in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Haiti. This type of plastic is known as ocean-bound plastic because it would have otherwise ended up in the ocean.

But the problematic marketing doesn't end there. Windex also claims to be non-toxic, but a lawsuit was filed against SC Johnson in 2020, claiming that Windex products contain ingredients that are harmful to people, animals, and the environment.

5. H&M & Fast Fashion

The fast fashion industry is notorious for its environmental impact, so a level of greenwashing is to be expected there. But you might be surprised at the sheer amount of greenwash that was revealed in a 2021 report from the Changing Markets Foundation.

They looked at clothing from major high-street fashion brands to check the truthfulness of their sustainability claims and found 60% of claims overall were misleading. That's bad but H&M were found to be the worst offenders with a shocking 96% of their claims not holding up.

Put simply, virtually all of the Scandinavian Fashion Giant's claims were designed to trick people concerned about their environmental impact into buying.

So, the next time you consider buying from a major retailer like H&M because of imprecise green-tinged language like 'conscious', reconsider. The percentages say we're likely being lied to.

6. Hefty Recycling Bags

In May 2021, a class-action lawsuit was filed against Hefty Recycling Bags for the claim that its bags are "designed to handle all types of recyclables". According to the lawsuit, not only are Hefty bags not recyclable but they also contaminate waste that would otherwise have been recyclable. This means many items that could have been recycled end up in landfills instead.

Hefty bags are therefore no different from ordinary bin bags (and possibly even worse), and the lawsuit claims their misleading branding violates California's anti-greenwashing laws.

Mid-flight ads, misleading luggage charges, uncomfortable seats. These are just a few of the reasons why people dislike flying Ryanair - and now you can add another complaint to the list: greenwashing.

In early 2020, Ryanair audaciously announced itself to the British public as Europe's "lowest emissions airline". The claim was more or less made up and the Advertising Standards Authority promptly banned the ads.

It's a reminder that in environmentally sensitive sectors like aviation, you need to be extra careful as brands are all too eager to promote their green credentials to win more customers. Often the claims made just aren't true.

8. Quorn Foods Thai Wonder Grains

Quorn Foods advertised their new product, the Thai Wonder Grains lunch pot, as a way to address climate change. The advert claimed it "helps us reduce our carbon footprint", but what wasn't clear was who exactly they meant by "us".

It turns out they were referring to Quorn Foods, and not ordinary folk, who should avoid buying products that come in single-use plastic if they want to reduce their carbon footprint.

An inquiry by the Advertising Standards Authority ruled that the ad was misleading. It also noted that since the product in question was new, it was impossible to determine whether it could reduce Quorn's carbon footprint.

Shell's got some balls. The company is responsible for around 1-2% of global CO2 emissions from its activities every year, while it continues to plough ahead and invest billions in oil and gas. And yet, despite this, their marketing team thought it appropriate to ask their followers on Twitter what they were "willing to change to help reduce emissions"? Really?

The poll attracted a modest 199 responses but still went viral due to the wave of vitriol it received in response, including high-profile rejoinders from the likes of Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and Greta Thunberg.

This truly was one of greenwashing's most egregious examples. But only a few months later, some karma was served when a European court ordered Shell to reduce their carbon emissions by 45% by 2030 compared to 2019 levels. It's the first time that a private company has been ordered to reduce its emissions by a fixed amount with a defined time frame.

If that wasn't enough, here's another case that took a whole year before reaching its end. Are we surprised that Shell has engaged in greenwashing more than once? Not really.

In June 2022, the gas and oil giant launched a marketing campaign - featuring billboard posters, a YouTube ad, and a TV commercial - to promote their clean energy business in Bristol and the UK as a whole. The advertisements included misleadings claims about Shell's involvement in providing clean energy and e-vehicle charging stations. In the physical billboards, they actually dared to say, "In the South West 78,000 homes use 100% renewable electricity from Shell Energy." In reality, it's coming from the country's National Grid - a fact that was mentioned, albeit in much smaller writing.

Campaign group Adfree Cities filed a complaint to the ASA, arguing the commercials failed to give information on Shell's total environmental impact. The company does engage in clean energy, but their business resulted in CO2 emissions of 1.2 billion tonnes last year alone. Spending on gas and oil production is still expected to increase. Somehow, their net-zero target is set for 2050.

The campaign was finally banned a year after its launch, but doubts remain. Stricter regulation is needed to stop false messaging where fossil fuels are concerned.

What else is next, Shell?

10. Unilever

Unilever's cleaning brand Persil is one of the UK's most popular, with its washing-up liquid and dishwasher tablets used by millions of people each year. Many of those buyers are becoming concerned about the environment, so it's not surprising that Unilever has upped its efforts to appear eco-friendly. Nevertheless, Persil's 'Dirt is Good' TV ads have been banned by the Advertising Standards Authority for unsubstantiated claims to be 'kinder on the planet'.

It's the kind of perfunctory statement that's not unusual from greenwashers, although in this case adorned by flimsy supporting scenes, such as a woman hashtagging #plantmoretrees on social media - and kids collecting plastic garbage from rivers and beaches. None of which explained why Persil was kinder on the planet.

The ASA took umbrage with the 'various strands' for being 'unclear'. Kinder on the planet than what exactly? Meteorites, maybe. But all considered it's fair to conclude that Persil, a typical laundry detergent, can't be all that kind on the planet.

What to learn from this? It's a case that shows if you are going make environmental claims these days then they need to be backed up. Someone tapping out an appropriate hashtag won't do at all.

According to lots of credible sources, the world's biggest banks are funding the climate crisis, mainly through investments with a significant impact on greenhouse gas emissions - especially fossil fuels.

HSBC ranks 13th for the top banks financing fossil fuels in the UK. And still finances carbon-heavy industries like thermal coal mining. Yet, a bit of progress in greenwashing awareness was seen when 45 people complained to the Advertising Standards Authority that HSBC's advertisements were misleading. The offending ads were then banned but you can still see them in the image below.

HSBC argued that they're financing many of these industries to help them eventually transition to net zero, and it would be impractical to terminate funding. But while they highlighted their climate-friendly initiatives in their adverts, they failed to mention their considerable contribution to the climate crisis at the same time - an estimated $8.7 billion into new oil and gas in 2021.

It's an environmental nuance that was absent in the ads - and that, our friends, is greenwashing.

An irony of all this is that the day before the adverts were banned, HSBC were running workshops on how to spot and deal with greenwashing. They might need to take their own advice...

12. Delta Airlines

It's not a sin to enjoy travelling, to want to discover new places and visit worldly wonders. But let's be honest, it's extremely difficult, if not impossible, to make a trip carbon-neutral when flights are involved. Airplanes burning fossil fuels are one of the biggest contributors to CO2 emissions. So while engineers and scientists search for alternative solutions, it's nothing more than a reality we should be aware of and think twice about.

Which begs the question: exactly how delusional was Delta Air Lines when they thought it was okay to send this message in consumer-facing advertising?

Back in 2020, Delta pledged $1 billion - for a plan including carbon offset credits and supposed reduced use of jet fuel - to cut the emissions created by its business. It's generous, sure.

But now, California's residents are trying to sue the company over their statement, "the world's first carbon-neutral airline".

The case is proof of the power of marketing, showing how deceptive such a claim can be. Even when facts aren't there to back it up. But more than that, it speaks to the long overdue need for greenwashing regulation.

13. Active Super

What does it say when financial institutions are largely responsible for the obscene jump in greenwashing scandals this year? When money (and profit) is on the table, the truth always seems to be a bit more open to interpretation.

Active Super (AS), one of Australia's biggest superannuation funds, has been linked to sustainability and responsible investments for years. It was even named Money Magazine's ESG Super Fund Leader for 2022. This sparkling reputation is now being investigated by Australia's Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) for greenwashing.

AS said they would stop investments that were harmful to the environment and community, including tobacco manufacturing, oil tar sands and gambling. Russia, because of the invasion of Ukraine, was also supposed to be off-limits. Yet ASIC has found evidence that says otherwise: holdings in the very type of businesses that aren't people- or planet-friendly. And in Russian securities, too.

For now, Active Super has taken down the misleading claims from its website. But the case has only just begun, and we're keeping tabs on what's to come.

With a bit of luck, greenwashing's days will be numbered. People are getting tired of the same old corporate tricks and want to support brands that are truly sustainable. That's why at Akepa, we're committed to helping sustainable brands with their marketing so that consumers can make better, more informed, and more sustainable choices. Get in touch with us to learn more about our sustainable marketing agency.

greenwashing

Akepa | Digital marketing agency for sustainable brands

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Greenwashing examples for 2022 & 2023 | Worst products & brands

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Awareness of greenwashing tricks can help you spot other talented greenwashers more easily, so let's take a look at some recent examples.

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our actions over the last year to become more sustainable 

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our actions over the last year to become more sustainable 

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BBC Costing the Earth COP27 Meeting the Promises 

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BBC Costing the Earth COP27 Meeting the Promises 

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Costing the Earth - COP27: Meeting the Promises - BBC Sounds

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Catch up on your favourite BBC radio show from your favourite DJ right here, whenever you like. Listen without limits with BBC Sounds.

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Country Briefing by Gumley House School 

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Country Briefing by Gumley House School 

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I expect our world leaders to listen to us and to take these things seriously. They don’t count climate change as a serious matter.

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We should all be able to have a say.

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1. Worrie

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This makes me horrified to think what could happen if this happened everywhere.

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Colegio Stella Maris, Montevideo, Uruguay

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passcode: y+!+2mWs

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Video Conferencing, Web Conferencing, Webinars, Screen Sharing

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Zoom is the leader in modern enterprise video communications, with an easy, reliable cloud platform for video and audio conferencing, chat, and webinars across mobile, desktop, and room systems. Zoom Rooms is the original software-based conference room solution used around the world in board, conference, huddle, and training rooms, as well as executive offices and classrooms. Founded in 2011, Zoom helps businesses and organizations bring their teams together in a frictionless environment to get more done.

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all sides as used by Ann and Paul

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successful climate activism in schools

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Here are Niamh's notes so you can remind yourselves of her great advice

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10th November,2022.

Edmund Rice Students' partake in COP 27- 'Instruments of Hope'. COP stands for 'Conference of the Parties'. It is the 27th annual UN meeting on climate- giving it the name COP 27.
Zoom meeting was conducted to collate our line of thought based on the refinement of crapshoot climatic conditions. Five students of classes IX and XI got the chance to represent St. Vincent's High and Technical school, and their country- India which made them go through a heuristic process.
Many countries came together to take action towards achieving world's collective climate goals as agreed under the Paris Agreement and the Convention, 2015.
Four students from different countries- including 'Kripa Agarwal' from our school, got a chance to deliver a one-minute statement about their respective countries and it's progress on addressing climate change.
Thanks and regards to Ann, Paul and Kevin for conducting such a useful and highly engaging session. It was certainly in the spirit we intended. The buzz in the session was a great sign - it was just what we wanted to have people elucidate to one another and getting back to Greenhouse emission reduction targets.
Every student who took part in the session was so proud that they were a tiny piece of mammoth pie called COP 27- 'Instruments of Hope'. And no doubt the session gained success to empower youth and formally bring their voices to the UNFCCC processes to shape the intergovernmental climate change policies.