Social tipping dynamics for stabilizing Earth’s climate by 2050
Original article by , , , , , , , , , , , , , and
Significance
Achieving a rapid global decarbonization to stabilize the climate critically depends on activating contagious and fast-spreading processes of social and technological change within the next few years. Drawing on expert elicitation, an expert workshop, and a review of literature, which provides a comprehensive analysis on this topic, we propose concrete interventions to induce positive social tipping dynamics and a rapid global transformation to carbon-neutral societies. These social tipping interventions comprise removing fossil-fuel subsidies and incentivizing decentralized 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.
Abstract
Safely achieving the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement requires a worldwide transformation to carbon-neutral societies within the next 30 y. Accelerated technological progress and policy implementations are required to deliver emissions reductions at rates sufficiently fast to avoid crossing dangerous tipping points in the Earth’s climate system. Here, we discuss and evaluate the potential of social tipping interventions (STIs) that can activate contagious processes of rapidly spreading technologies, behaviors, social norms, and structural reorganization within their functional domains that we refer to as social tipping elements (STEs). STEs are subdomains of the planetary socioeconomic system where the required disruptive change may take place and lead to a sufficiently fast reduction in anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. The results are based on online expert elicitation, a subsequent expert workshop, and a literature review. The STIs that could trigger the tipping of STE subsystems include 1) removing fossil-fuel subsidies and incentivizing decentralized energy generation (STE1, energy production and storage systems), 2) building carbon-neutral cities (STE2, human settlements), 3) divesting from assets linked to fossil fuels (STE3, financial markets), 4) revealing the moral implications of fossil fuels (STE4, norms and value systems), 5) strengthening climate education and engagement (STE5, education system), and 6) disclosing information on greenhouse gas emissions (STE6, information feedbacks). Our research reveals important areas of focus for larger-scale empirical and modeling efforts to better understand the potentials of harnessing social tipping dynamics for climate change mitigation.
Preventing dangerous climate change and its devastating consequences is a defining task for humanity (1, 2). It is also an indispensable prerequisite for achieving sustainable development (3, 4). Limiting global warming to 1.5 °C as stipulated in the Paris Climate Agreement (5) scientifically implies a complete net decarbonization of the world’s energy and transport systems, industrial production, and land use by the middle of this century. In their “roadmap for rapid decarbonization,” Rockström et al. (6) highlight that rapid increase of the share of zero-carbon energy within the global energy system would be needed to achieve this objective, likely alongside a considerable strengthening of terrestrial carbon sinks. In one scenario, the zero-carbon share of the energy system doubles every 5 to 7 y for the next several decades (6). Carbon emissions that are currently still on the rise at rates of 0 to 2% per year, despite decades-long efforts in international climate negotiations, would thereby need to pivot to a rapid decline of ultimately 7% per year and more. These emission reduction rates would surpass by far even those experienced only during periods of massive socioeconomic crisis in the 20th century, such as World War II and the collapse of communism (Fig. 1).
The rate of change in annual greenhouse gas emissions required for net decarbonization. Social tipping dynamics in the context of the representative concentration pathways (RCPs) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Paris Agreement. Left and Right exhibit the rate of change in CO2 emission per year between 1930 and 2060, and the increase in global mean temperature by 2100 relative to the preindustrial period, respectively, under the four RCPs. The transition to a new net decarbonized state requires shifting from an incremental rise in emissions of 0 to 2% per year to nonlinear decline at the rate of 7% per year and more (6). The figure was created using the RCP emission projections (153) and Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 5 (CMIP5) temperature projections (154).
Here, the historically decisive question is whether and how such rapid rates of deployment can be collectively achieved. Current deployment rates of low-carbon energy sources are compatible with the required shift but when scaled up are expected to encounter considerable resistance due to the rigidities inherent in political and economic decision making (7, 8), as well as new technological demands (9, 10). Although an increasing number of countries have already introduced or are committed to introducing carbon pricing, the initiatives covered by carbon pricing included only 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2017 (11) and have so far driven only marginal emission reductions (12). It is increasingly recognized that business-as-usual technological progress and carbon pricing alone are not likely to lead to rapid and deep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions (13).
At the same time, there is evidence from various scientific fields demonstrating that rapid rates of change can be observed under certain critical conditions in natural (14⇓–16), socioeconomic (17⇓⇓–20) and social-ecological systems (SESs) (21, 22). Increasing attention is being given to the concept of tipping dynamics as a nonlinear mechanism behind such disruptive system changes. Based on a review on social-ecological tipping points research, Milkoreit et al. (23) propose a common definition of social tipping points (STPs) as points “within an SES at which a small quantitative change inevitably triggers a non-linear change in the social component of the SES, driven by self-reinforcing positive-feedback mechanisms, that inevitably and often irreversibly lead to a qualitatively different state of the social system.” There are historical examples of dynamic social spreading effects leading to a large self-amplification of small interventions: For example, the writings of one man, Martin Luther, injected through newly available printing technology into a public ready for such change, triggered the worldwide establishment of Protestant churches (24). An example in the field of climate policy is the introduction of tariffs, subsidies, and mandates to incentivize the growth of renewable energy production. This has led to a substantial system response in the form of mutually reinforcing market growth and exponential technology cost improvement (25, 26).
In this paper, we examine a number of potential “social tipping elements” (STEs) for decarbonization (27, 28) that represent specific subdomains of the planetary social-economic system. Tipping of these subsystems could be triggered by “social tipping interventions” (STIs) that could contribute to rapid transition of the world system into a state of net zero anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. The results reported in this study are based on an online expert survey, an expert workshop, and an extensive literature review (SI Appendix).
Our results complement the existing shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs) that are used alongside the representative concentration pathways (RCPs) to analyze the feedbacks between climate change and socioeconomic factors, such as world population growth, economic development, and technological progress (29). Our results could be useful for exploring possible transformative pathways leading to scenarios that reach net zero emissions by 2050 (30).