World leaders must act with “immediate, unprecedented” urgency to prevent cascading climate tipping points that could have catastrophic consequences for billions of people, according to a joint statement released at the Global Tipping Points Conference held last week at the University of Exeter.

The statement, endorsed by nearly 200 scientists and experts, warns that global warming is on track to exceed 1.5°C within the next few years – a level that would activate irreversible shifts in critical Earth systems. “Already tropical coral reefs have crossed their tipping point and are experiencing unprecedented dieback, impairing the livelihoods of hundreds of millions who depend on them,” the statement said.

"Humanity faces threats of an unprecedented magnitude from these tipping points," warned Tim Lenton, a climate scientist at the University of Exeter, in an earlier report on the danger of tipping points.

“Tipping points in the Earth system pose threats of a magnitude never faced by humanity,” he said. “They can trigger devastating domino effects, including the loss of whole ecosystems and capacity to grow staple crops, with societal impacts including mass displacement, political instability and financial collapse.”

Swedish scientist Johan Rockstroem, the head of the well-respected Potsdam Institute, has identified nine tipping points that constrain life on earth. We have solved the problems with only one of them: the Ozone layer, says David Suzuki, a well-respected climatologist. This year, the lack of climate action saw the seventh of the nine breached.

“Now it's too late,” said Suzuki in an interview with iPolitics. “The fight against the Climate Crisis has been lost... All we can do now is hunker down.”

The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has already admitted that the 1.5C-2C limit to temperature increases above the pre-industrial baseline target has already been missed. The world is now on track for a 2.7C-3.1C increase, which will have catastrophic consequences for the ecosystem. As bne IntelliNews reported in charts and maps, all the tipping point indicators were already flashing red in 2023. And little or no action has been taken: the COP28 UN environmental summit was a cop-out, attended by more members of the energy lobby than environmental NGOs. There is still no commitment to reduce the burning of fossil fuels as emissions rise to all-time highs and the Climate Crisis accelerates faster than a scientific model has predicted.

Impact of tipping points already visible

Tipping points are already being passed and are having an increasingly visible impact on the environment. Further destabilisation of the climate could follow, including “a collapse of deep-water formation in the Labrador-Irminger Seas,” with abrupt consequences for weather systems and food security in Europe and Africa, delegates at the Exeter summit were told.

The potential collapse of the AMOC (Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation), the Atlantic current system that helps regulate global climate, is described as “particularly alarming”. As bne IntelliNews reported, the collapse of the AMOC, also known as the Gulf Stream, would trigger a mini-ice age in Europe with average winter temperatures falling by 10-30C in Northern Europe. Scientists say they are 98% sure of the collapse by 2100, but more recent research says it could happen in the next few decades, or possibly even earlier.

Moreover, the Southern Ocean current, part of the AMOC, reversed for the first time in history in what climatologists are calling a “catastrophic” tipping point in the global climate system, bne IntelliNews reported.

The Amazon rainforest is also said to be nearing irreversible dieback due to climate change and deforestation. The Amazon rainforest could face “large-scale collapse” by 2050, according to research released last year. This would be included in a tipping point that the ecosystem encounters.

European heatwave hits food production

More mundanely, Europe is currently sweltering in a heatwave of unprecedented proportions that is seeing records broken on a daily basis – records that were only set a year earlier. The economic impact of climate change in Europe has become so noticeable that the European Commission has recently proposed changes to the EU’s long-term budget to better account for the growing economic impact of climate change. The revisions aim to increase funding for climate resilience, disaster relief, and the green transition, while also adjusting budget rules to take into account rising food inflation that will be caused by falling agricultural yields as food security deteriorates.

Over the past three years, food yields in Europe have already declined dramatically as the now annual disaster season gets underway. Several key sectors have already seen the output of key foodstuffs plummet due to a combination of climate-related shocks, drought, extreme heat and changing rainfall patterns, according to data from the European Commission and EU member states.

2022: Europe experienced its worst drought in at least 500 years, significantly reducing harvests of maize (corn), soybeans and sunflowers. Yields for maize dropped by over 20% below the five-year average in many regions, including France, Italy and Romania.

2023: Conditions improved slightly, but yields remained below average for several crops. In southern Europe, persistent drought and heat waves continued to affect cereals and olive production, while flooding in parts of Central Europe disrupted planting and harvest cycles.

2024: Extreme weather intensified again, with early heatwaves in spring and dry soils affecting wheat and barley. The European Drought Observatory reported that crop stress indicators were particularly high in Spain, Portugal and parts of southern France. Olive oil production in Spain fell by more than 50% compared to typical years, leading to record price increases.

However, instead of ramping up its climate fight, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has been criticised for proposing to water down the EU’s commitment to its Green Deal goals in the face of the deepening recession in Europe and the growing funding strains of taking over responsibly for supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia.

In recent months, the EU has:

• Abandoned or weakened several environmental targets, including shelving a law to halve pesticide use by 2030.
• Relaxed climate and biodiversity rules for agriculture under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), amid widespread farmer protests across the bloc.
• Scaled back nature restoration plans, such as reducing the scope of the Nature Restoration Law to secure passage through Parliament.
• Delayed or diluted regulation on vehicle emissions and building energy standards, after pushback from industry and some member states.

Matter of survival

Lenton, professor at the Global Systems Institute at Exeter, described the moment as “a matter of survival,” adding that “decisive policy and civil society action” is now critical. “We need to trigger positive tipping points in our societies and economies,” the statement reads, calling on COP30 leaders to adopt policies that generate self-reinforcing change in technology, behaviour and governance.

To minimise the duration and magnitude of global temperature “overshoot,” the statement calls for global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to be halved by 2030 from 2010 levels – a reduction path not currently supported by existing national pledges. “Every year and every fraction of a degree above 1.5°C matters,” the signatories write.

Mike Barrett, Chief Scientific Adviser at WWF, warned that delaying action until tipping points are felt would be too late. “The risks of global tipping points are real, and the consequences catastrophic,” he said. “We must catalyse positive tipping points, especially in restoring nature, which is one of our major allies in tackling climate change.”

The experts also advocate for policies to phase out fossil fuel-based technologies – including bans on the sale of petrol and diesel vehicles and gas boilers – and for large-scale investment in emerging solutions such as green hydrogen and green steel. In the food sector, they urge governments to redirect subsidies away from livestock production and toward plant-based proteins.

The statement aligns with Brazil’s COP30 presidency, which has highlighted the risk of tipping points and supports the Global Mutirão initiative – a civil society platform intended to accelerate collective climate action. The authors warn that without immediate shifts in global climate policy, current trajectories will lock in overshoot and irreversible planetary change.

“If we wait until we are experiencing the impacts, then we will also know it is already too late to act,” said Mike Barrett of the WWF. “Later is already too late.”