Petaling Jaya, Malaysia – Ambulance sirens blaring throughout cities amid deadly heat waves. Sustained wildfires that worsen cross-border air pollution and kill thousands. Weakening ocean currents that devastate crops and flood communities.
These are some of the signs of a planet approaching critical thresholds as a result of human-induced climate change. Beyond these climate tipping points, the Earth’s natural systems could undergo self-propelling, potentially irreversible changes. How close are we to crossing the thresholds?
And more importantly, what can Asia, home to about 60% of the world’s population, do to avert them? That was the central question at the four-day Global Tipping Points Conference held in Malaysia earlier this month. It was the third edition of the conference series, which was launched in Britain in 2022, and the first one to be held in Asia.
With global warming now set to breach 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, failing to meet the limit agreed upon by the 2015 Paris Agreement, scientists say the Earth’s systems are at risk of crossing multiple climate tipping points. For one, coral reefs in warm tropical waters are dying at an unprecedented rate and scale, as their thermal tipping point of 1.2 C of warming has already been crossed. Nearly all of the world’s coral reefs may be gone by 2075, the International Union for Conservation of Nature warned last week.
That means the diverse ecosystem that hosts over a million species of marine life, as well as a key revenue source for the fisheries and tourism industries, is being lost. Parts of polar ice sheets and some regional mountain glaciers may have also crossed tipping points, while the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, a giant ocean current that moves heat and nutrients to the north across the Atlantic Ocean, is at risk of collapse. If it continues to weaken, it would make Northwest Europe’s winters more severe while prolonging heat waves in the Southern Hemisphere.
He was referring to a United Nations Environment Program report in September that concluded that the only option left for humanity to avert catastrophic impacts of climate change is to take the “overshoot, peak and decline” scenario. The conference, held in a suburban township southwest of Kuala Lumpur, was also impacted by an ongoing environmental and health crisis: many attendees wore masks and complained of sore throats due to the transboundary toxic haze, caused by slash-and-burn agricultural clearing and peatland fires in Indonesia — a crisis that was made worse by climate change. Speakers and participants stressed, however, that “positive tipping points” are already emerging in many sectors and regions.
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