SBS professor's input to major new report on global tipping points
Strathclyde Business School Professor Iain Black has helped review and shape messages in a major new report launched today (December 6) at COP 28 UAE in Dubai.
Professor Black - along with over 200 experts from a broad range of disciplines in 26 countries - worked for over a year to deliver The Global Tipping Points Report. This report details the state of science around key earth systems tipping points and shows how the threat posed by the climate and ecological crisis is far more severe than is commonly understood. It sets out how five major systems are already at risk of crossing tipping points at the present level of global warming (the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, warm-water coral reefs, North Atlantic Subpolar Gyre circulation, and permafrost regions) and that triggering one Earth system tipping point could trigger another, causing a domino effect of accelerating and unmanageable damage.
Professor Black - Professor of Sustainable Consumption in the Department of Marketing - said, "This is a sobering, deeply worrying report that highlights the fallacy of our thinking that there is always tomorrow for taking urgent systemic action or that we are already taking urgent and systemic action. The report remains hopeful however as it meticulously sets out how to enable and accelerate positive tipping points, where human systems - such as our political system as well as energy, transport and food - can be rapidly changed so they are compatible with a just and safe world and make our lives better and more affordable.
"This requires a focus on the local level to build momentum and examples, targeting small groups of important actors who can create the enablers of change and fight back against those elements which are resisting change. The timing of this report is vital as it provides an excellent, sobering and scientific counter point to the fossil fuel industry influence over of COP 28 and the ‘phasing down vs phasing out’ debate."
Published: 6 December 2023
