But this week, a group of 160 scientists from 23 countries announced that the planet has already reached its first major tipping point: the widespread death of warm-water coral reefs. That’s due primarily to rapidly rising marine temperatures – the seas have absorbed 90% of the excess heat we’ve created – but also the acidification that comes from more atmospheric carbon dioxide interacting with water. (This interferes with corals’ ability to build the protective skeletons that form the complex structure of a reef.) Since the late 1980s, ocean surface warming has quadrupled. Accordingly, in the last half century, half of the world’s live coral cover has disappeared.

“We’re no longer talking about future tipping points – there’s one happening right now,” Steve Smith, a research impact fellow at the University of Exeter’s Global Systems Institute and a co-author of the report, told Grist. “Although our governments are used to planning for incremental, slow change, things do seem to be speeding up.”

The more individual corals perish, the harder it gets for a reef to bounce back, destabilizing it and pushing it into a spiral of die-off. A quarter of all marine species rely on these bustling warm-water ecosystems – which cover some 350,000 square miles – but corals are bleaching as they release the symbiotic algae they need to harvest energy. Since 2023, more than 80% of the world’s reefs have suffered through the most widespread and intense bleaching event on record. Ever-higher acidification makes it even harder for corals to reproduce and then grow back from this kind of disturbance.

Warm-water corals are particularly vulnerable to climate change because they’ve made an evolutionary compromise. Being close to the ocean surface, their symbiotic algae soak up bountiful sunlight to provide energy, meaning they don’t need to rely as much on outside nutrients. But that positioning also means that during marine heat waves, hot water envelops the corals, stressing them to the point where they release their algae, causing bleaching. “This is a tradeoff. They have a balance they have to strike,” said Gordon Zhang, a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s Reef Solutions group who wasn’t involved in the new report. “If the water doesn’t move much, and it’s a very shallow place, the water just keeps heating up.”

Beyond their critical role in hosting marine life, these reefs provide $9.9 trillion a year in goods and services, like fishing and tourism, supporting the livelihoods of one billion people. They also act like giant barriers for coastal communities, absorbing the impact of storm surges, the walls of water that hurricanes shove ashore: reefs in Mexico, for instance, reduced the damage from 2007’s Hurricane Dean by 43%.

Coral reefs, then, are both ecologically and economically essential, yet civilization is woefully unprepared for them reaching this tipping point – to say nothing of the other looming tipping points, like the retreat of glaciers. “We are now in a new reality, and we can no longer rely on the institutions and policies designed for the old one,” Manjana Milkoreit, who researches global governance at the University of Oslo and co-authored the report, said during a press conference announcing the findings.

For one, nations as a whole are nowhere near ambitious enough in reducing the greenhouse gas emissions that are putting unprecedented stress on coral reefs and other essential systems. Secondly, certain tipping points could be so catastrophic that governments would struggle to deal with the society-shaking fallout. A change in ocean currents in the Atlantic, for example, would plunge Europe into deep freezes and mess with the monsoon rains that faraway nations need for their crops. And thirdly, these irreversible changes can reinforce and exacerbate other crises – droughts would worsen if the Amazon turns into a savanna, for instance – a very unwelcome kind of synergy.

Basically, humans need to actively prevent tipping points, because there may be no going back once one kicks off. Coral ecosystems can’t recover and stabilize if we keep warming and acidifying the oceans. “The key message here is: Do not assume that we already know what to do, or we’re already doing everything we can,” Milkoreit said. “It’s not just more of the same, or a matter of implementing existing policies – a different approach to governance is needed.”

This article originally appeared in Grist here. It has been edited to conform with Corporate Knights style. Grist is a non-profit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. 

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That organ invented a concept none of the other creatures had – the future – and realized we could affect that future by what we do in the present. By looking ahead, we were able to, using our experience and observation, anticipate hazards or favourable possibilities and thus deliberately choose to avoid danger and take advantage of opportunity. 

Foresight was a major factor in our survival and success as a species, and we have grown explosively as a result. But today, we have become a very different animal. We now use foresight to serve priorities far beyond basic biological and social needs like food, shelter, clean water, clean air, energy from sunlight – elements that are the key to our survival and well-being. Now foresight is used to sustain elaborations of human constructs like economics, politics, law and religion. However, the COVID-19 crisis is a reminder of our basic animal nature – and the difficulty humans have prioritizing the wisest choices when politics and economics intrude on what is a biological challenge. 

We’ve been aware of the threat global warming poses to humanity since 1824, when the greenhouse effect was first described by Joseph Fourier. By the 1950s, Russian climatologist Mikhail Budyko presciently warned that loss of Arctic sea ice would accelerate warming. Taking the science seriously, U.S. President Lyndon Johnson warned about the need to act on global warming in the mid-1960s, and Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the White House in the late 1970s. 

Canada played a major role in 1988, when 300 scientists, policy-makers from 46 countries, UN representatives and NGOs met in Toronto. Prime Minister Brian Mulroney spoke, and Stephen Lewis, Canada’s UN ambassador, chaired the conference, which concluded that global warming represented a threat to humanity second only to a global nuclear war and called for “urgent action” to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20% over 15 years. Had Canada acted on our foresight then to achieve that target, we could have ​led the world away from the urgent crisis we now face.

The Nature of Things did its first television program on global warming in 1989. That year, I hosted a CBC radio series, It’s a Matter of Survival, that warned of a perilous future if we didn’t act immediately. The huge public response to that series prompted me to form the David Suzuki Foundation to look at the underlying root causes of our unwillingness to act on our basic survival instrument, foresight – to look ahead, recognize the danger of the climate emergency and act to avoid it. 

Fast forward three decades and the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow will be the 26th annual meeting to deal with a crisis we have long known about. If history is any guide, COP26 will accomplish little. While there are numerous solutions to climate change, ideological differences, national interest, corporate priorities, religious pressures, political timidity and legal strictures all act to block real action. All the while, the reality of climate change becomes ever more obvious and dire. 

The biggest hurdle is our belief that the economy or political future must be considered first. The most challenging obstacle to action is the mindset that no longer recognizes that our very lives and well-being remain utterly dependent on nature – air, water, soil, photosynthesis and biodiversity – while economics, politics and law are human creations. (Has COVID-19 respected human borders or cared about corporate or political priorities?) Humanity has inadvertently created an existential crisis by failing to recognize that we remain embedded in a web of relationships in nature and must act as a single species with a common goal.  

I have no idea what the final path will or should be. I only know that if we keep putting ourselves and our inventions (economics, politics, law) ahead of nature’s laws, we will bicker away and try to resolve the issue with incremental changes here and there.  

We must act the way we do in science fiction movies when Earth is invaded by aliens from another galaxy who kill humans indiscriminately: seize the challenge as one species in a common commitment to defeat a threat that imperils all of us.

Dr. David Suzuki is a scientist, broadcaster, author, and co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation.

On December 9, David Suzuki joined Corporate Knights with Margaret Atwood and Sheila Watt-Cloutier for a fireside chat about climate action.

Watch the full event below.

For more information about the event, visit corporateknights.com/paristoglasgow.

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Malcolm Turnbull will be replaced by Scott Morrison, his treasurer, who defeated challenger Peter Dutton 45 votes to 40 for the leadership of the governing right-wing Liberal party.

One of the most dramatic weeks in Australia’s political history began with Turnbull’s admission that he could not pass his signature energy reform – the National Energy Guarantee (Neg). Rebels in his party, led by former prime minister and arch conservative Tony Abbott, had refused to back a policy that would have set – relatively weak – emissions targets for the power sector.

That led to a leadership challenge from Dutton on Tuesday, which narrowly failed. But Turnbull bled support throughout the week as ministers resigned across the government. He did not contest the vote on Friday.

In a valedictory press conference, Turnbull said his party, which governs in coalition with the Nationals, was unable to implement a climate change policy.

“I think the truth is that the coalition finds it very hard to get agreement on anything to do with emissions. The National Energy Guarantee is a vitally important piece of reform,” said Turnbull.

Turnbull said the opposition to action on climate change within his own party was an article of faith.

“Emissions issues and climate policy issues have the same problem within the coalition of bitterly entrenched views that are more ideological views than views based, as I say, on engineering and economics. It’s a bit like same-sex marriage used to be, almost an insoluble problem,” said Turnbull, who oversaw marriage reform this year despite strong internal opposition from the right.

“As for what the future holds in terms of energy policy, again you’ll have to talk to Scott about that,” said Turnbull.

Speaking to the media on Friday, Morrison would not be drawn on the future of the Neg. His new deputy Josh Frydenberg was Turnbull’s environment and energy minster and was responsible for developing the climate policy.

Morrison, ostensibly the moderate candidate, made global headlines last year when he entered parliament brandishing a lump of coal. But he has also said cheap power from new coal plants is a “myth”.

The election of Morrison diminishes the immediate likelihood of Australia exiting the Paris climate agreement, which observers said was possible under a Dutton prime ministership. Dutton is aligned with Abbott, who has repeatedly called for Australia to follow Donald Trump’s US out of the deal.

But the narrowness of the leadership contest shows conservative, Abbott-aligned forces are powerful within the party. Environmental advocates called on Morrison to immediately clarify his position on the Paris deal.

Australian Conservation Foundation CEO Kelly O’Shanassy said: “Australia signed up to Paris in good faith. As one of the highest polluters per person in the world, if we were to capitulate on our responsibilities there would be rightful international condemnation and more unnecessary climate damage at home.”

Greens leader Richard di Natale said the only option for Australia to develop a response to climate change was to vote the government out of office.

“They have no climate policy, no energy policy and no economic policy and the paralysis is likely to continue. They are unfit to govern,” he said.

Di Natale called the Liberals “a bunch of spiteful, backwards-looking, anti-immigration, climate deniers with no economic plan. It’s time to turf them out and make a fresh start”.

Turnbull said he would leave the parliament, triggering a by-election and leaving Morrison with no majority in the lower house. Ties will be resolved by the speaker, Liberal party member Tony Smith, whose vote means Turnbull’s resignation will not immediately bring down the government.

Australia is due to hold elections within the next nine months. The Labor opposition is leading in the polls.

This story was originally published on Climate Home News.

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