Transcript: Tipping Towards Disaster: Revealing the Five Catastrophic Climate Tipping Points
CLARICE: Hello, everybody. Welcome to this week’s episode of Environmentally Speaking.
MARISA: Hi, everybody. I’m attorney Marisa Desautel. I practice environmental law here in Rhode Island and Massachusetts.
CLARICE: And I’m Clarice. Usually I come in with our topics for discussion, but I feel like I made a mistake and we’re talking about a dark topic this week.
MARISA: Yeah. For those of you that listen, you know, fairly — if you’ve heard more than two episodes you know that I’m very pessimistic about the status of our planet’s health and the ability of our species to turn it around. And since I was in charge today of picking a topic on — no surprise. The topic is very dire.
CLARICE: Yeah. This was actually — I don’t know. This one was shocking for even you.
MARISA: Really?
CLARICE: Well, yeah. Because the way the article is written — and of course we’ll link this to the show notes. I’m just going to jump right in. It’s an article from The Guardian titled Earth on the Verge of Five Catastrophic Climate Tipping Points, Scientists Warn. And I’m sorry that we’re laughing.
MARISA: It’s not funny. It’s so bad, though.
CLARICE: It’s so bad that you don’t know what to do.
MARISA: Yeah.
CLARICE: Your panic response is laughter. It’s a heavy article.
MARISA: Yes. Do you know what a tipping point is?
CLARICE: So I thought of a tipping point in the sense of figuratively, but, okay, correct me if I’m wrong. This article is saying literally there’s like a literal — it’s kind of both. We’re at the tipping point of — we’re at no — we can’t turn around.
MARISA: The point of no return.
CLARICE: And there’s an actual shift in rotation which is going to set things way off, or am I wrong?
MARISA: Well, the tipping point in my experience and from my understanding has more to do with the planet getting to a point of no return.
CLARICE: Okay.
MARISA: That the climate will be so impacted that there’s no way to come back from it. And the other element that you were just talking about with the planet actually tipping, I —
CLARICE: That’s not here. Okay. Good. I got so stressed out. I think I panicked so hard. I was like, are we actually tipping. Have we ruined this so badly.
MARISA: We’re all just going to fall right off the planet at this point.
CLARICE: I don’t know. That’s next week’s article.
[0:02:49] MARISA: All right. And in light of the fact that it is the holiday season, I told Clarice that I would keep myself short today because I don’t want to be bumming everybody out. But, okay, let’s also just be cognizant of the fact that this is a news article. I do not know what the political leanings of The Guardian are, but we could also start with the caveat that media tends to sensationalize things. So with that as the backdrop, let me tell you what the five important tipping points are for the planet.
They are already at risk of being crossed according to this report called The Global Tipping Points Report and three more may be reached in the 2030s if the world heats another one and a half degrees Celsius above preindustrial temperatures. So of the tipping points, the major tipping points are the collapse of the giant ice sheets in Greenland and the west Antarctic. I always am afraid I’m going to say that wrong, Antarctic. Number two, the widespread thawing of permafrost. Number three, the death of coral reefs in warm waters. And number four, the collapse of one oceanic current in the north Atlantic. So I guess that’s four, not five.
CLARICE: Well, they also talked about the destruction of mangroves. I don’t know if they’re considering it a tipping point or an effect.
MARISA: Okay.
CLARICE: But the article went into — it was interesting. They went into this kind of side detail of the mangrove ecosystem could just be completely destroyed. I was like, is that essential in the form of a tipping point, or is this just — are you highlighting the detrimental effects. So that could be one, but then again I got so nervous. I thought the earth was tipping. What do I know. I really got so stressed out. I was like, have we ruined it so much.
MARISA: Yeah. It’s actually like off-kilter and just rocketing out into the galaxy. So the way that the article talks about — and, again, my understanding of what a tipping point is is something that happens in terms of earth’s timing and history, something that happens with a sudden shock. It’s not something that kind of takes a while to realize. And in this case if that tipping point is reached it’s a permanent alteration of the way our planet is operating.
So besides the fact that the article is called Earth on Verge of Five Catastrophic Climate Tipping points, I just mentioned four. But what I think you’re talking about with the mangroves being impacted has a lot to do with the fact that every ecosystem on the planet is interconnected. So if you impact the ocean, it will eventually have an impact through the food chain or otherwise. It will have an impact on things like mangroves, coastal wetlands, even upland forest habitats, so everything is interconnected. You can’t undertake an activity over here and have it not impact something going on over here. And no one can see me right now, but I am pointing to the right and then to the left as though to show you the sides of the earth, I guess.
[0:06:25] CLARICE: And it’s just, I mean, even on a base level if you raise the temperature and something melts you now have more water that needs to go somewhere.
MARISA: That’s right.
CLARICE: Something is going to heat up. There will be a flood somewhere else.
MARISA: That’s right.
CLARICE: You raise the temperature. There’s going to be — water will disappear somewhere else. I mean, even if we can’t visualize the connection of how everything is kind of going to domino into each other think about it even just in the isolation pieces. If you’re in a wetland area, expect more water. If you’re in a dry area, it’s going to get drier. Like these things are going to just sort of extreme.
MARISA: Yeah. Yeah. And the timing of the report is interesting because — I don’t know if anyone’s been following the COP28 climate summit. I think it’s in Dubai.
CLARICE: Yes.
MARISA: But it’s being headed by like this oil and gas czar and he’s saying, no, no, no, there’s no problem with the planet, so that’s a story for another day. But I found the timing to be good and I know that the tipping point report was funded by a group called the Bezos Earth Fund. I like that.
CLARICE: That’s a flag that I want for another topic. I had so many questions about that.
MARISA: Yeah. But I like the timing. I think that if you’ve got someone so extreme and factually inaccurate on one side saying there are no problems with the climate, we should keep mining for coal and extracting oil and gas from the earth — I like the timing of this report because I feel as though we are in an era of people that just get very upset when you give them facts. They get very upset when you talk about science, so I thought it was appropriate.
CLARICE: Do you think the juxtaposition was intentionally shocking?
MARISA: I think so, knowing Jeff Bezos and assuming that it’s his earth fund. What do you think?
CLARICE: I mean, I think it worked. I panicked.
MARISA: Yeah.
CLARICE: And we tend to read this stuff at least — I mean, for me at least once a week, for you every day.
MARISA: Yeah. Every day.
CLARICE: So to see this it was — I think this is one of the more shocking — one of the more punchy articles that we’ve seen in a while.
MARISA: Yeah.
CLARICE: So there is a part of me that — and I’m not saying this to say that the facts are wrong or to sort of put in that grain of salt, but, again, going back to we don’t know the political leanings. I think that dramatization might have been on purpose to cause awareness.
[0:09:12] MARISA: Yeah.
CLARICE: We might be at that point. We might be at that point where we need to kind of put out the giant red flags and — what do you call those things — the bullhorns that you have at like events.
MARISA: Oh, yeah.
CLARICE: Yeah.
MARISA: Like they use at soccer games sometimes.
CLARICE: Yes.
MARISA: Yeah. I’m going to send you out with one of those. Just trumpet the streets. Well, I think that’s enough. I know we said we were going to do a short episode and it is pretty depressing, so I just want people to be aware.
CLARICE: Yeah.
MARISA: That’s pretty much what I decided I wanted to do with my life, so I just want people to be aware that this is a problem.
CLARICE: Yeah.
MARISA: Yeah. It’s not good.
CLARICE: One small positive is because of these tipping points becoming closer and closer to reality they’re expecting renewable energy to become more affordable.
MARISA: Clarice.
CLARICE: On that note, have a great week, everybody.
MARISA: You know our policy on renewable energy. It has to be cited properly. There has to be enough environmental study done and that’s not happening.
CLARICE: It was so close to a good ending.
MARISA: No. You should know better.
CLARICE: You can find us on the socials at Desautel Browning on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, never going to call it X. And you can e-mail us at —
MARISA: E-mail me, Marisa, at info@DesautelBrowning.com. Thanks, everybody.
CLARICE: Thanks.
