On Tipping Points and What Comes After
The word “tipping point” is most likely associated with scenarios developed by researchers to predict the future development of the climate on our planet, depending on the size of mankind and its behavior. Hardly anyone would deny that we have made the world subject to ourselves, that we live in the “Anthropocene,” and that this has serious consequences.
Just one example: If all humans were placed on a scale, the total mass would amount to more than 300 million tons. If the same were done with all wild mammals, including marine mammals, the result would be less than 100 million tons. And if all animals kept by us were placed on a scale, the figure would be an astonishing more than 600 million tons.
Numbers like these can make one uneasy. Some of us have been uneasy for a long time. To my knowledge, the first significant statements that our behavior could not continue indefinitely without consequences emerged in the 1970s.
One of the central variables in tipping-point scenarios is the average temperature — if the average temperature rises, the climate changes. The “tipping points” are those thresholds beyond which certain consequences of these changes are said to become irreversible — habitats would become uninhabitable, species would go extinct, and so on.
However, this text is not about ecological tipping points. Rather, it is about the social consequences of their assertion — or, more precisely, about the reactions and dynamics that have emerged since the claim of tipping points increasingly became a matter of politics.
To avoid misunderstanding: Hardly anyone would want to live in a world beyond the tipping points.
But if the efforts to avoid these tipping points produce serious social consequences because political decisions are made as if the tipping points were so threatening that literally everything must be subordinated to climate policies within the shortest possible time, and as if such decisions were without alternative, then counterreactions must be expected — especially if all possible measures are to be set in motion within the short horizon of one legislative period and if this has serious consequences for the economy and society.
Was the price in terms of social consequences taken into account? Or did idealism dominate the decisions? I would argue that the consequences — both economic and social — were massively underestimated, especially between 2021 and 2024 under Chancellor Scholz. Nothing that has occurred since was anticipated in this way.
I would suggest that it was only the overly forceful and later increasingly admonishing, and “in the debate itself further radicalizing,” pursuit of the (supposedly) progressive goals that made the counterreaction as strong as it is today.
This assumption will not please some readers at all.
This text does not say anything about the plausibility of ecological tipping points. Rather, it focuses on the interaction between what “progressive” voices take for granted and the counter-reactions to their policies during recent years.
One might think that the sum of problems remains the same — or, put more sharply: When an agenda is somewhat “pointed,” resistance forms, and if change does not succeed, resistance intensifies. And if resistance is delegitimized through labels such as “far-right,” the situation eventually tips.
That is exactly what has happened: Doubts about policy — whether concerning climate policy, migration policy, or other “progressive” issues such as policies regarding linguistic and administrative treatment of gender — are, for example, “unmasked” as “exclusionary.” (This is not to claim that there are no “exclusionary” or “hostile” statements; of course there are, and perhaps there are more of them. But to me a very interesting question is, why there are now more of them.)
The error lies in an assumption: Just because I argue against migration policy does not mean that I am against migrants. Yet this is precisely what is assumed — that anyone opposing the migration policy of the last ten years is automatically hostile to humanity. In my case, the opposite is true: I oppose migration policy à la Merkel and Faeser because I believe that with an overly naive, idealistic policy we do not only overstrain our infrastructure but also produce consequences that nobody intended. This has nothing to do with having anything against migrants. But if we overload the infrastructure, and if this has consequences, and if we set wrong incentives, and if every doubt about this is delegitimized as “right-leaning” or “far-right,” well then people vote differently — and if we then ignore or delegitimize not only the elected party but the entire associated will of the voters by denouncing this will as an attack on “our democracy,” and if we then empower NGOs to instruct the people accordingly — well, where does that leave us? Only a fool would think of some sort of authoritarianism.
I would argue that we are now dealing with a whole series of social tipping points arising from the dynamic between claims and their consequences in politics on the one hand, and the counterreaction on the other — and this long before the predicted ecological tipping points would even occur.
Discussing such matters is at least delicate, if not risky, because the existence of the social tipping points described here will surely be doubted by some parts of society just as the plausibility of ecological tipping-point models is doubted by other parts of society.
Everything has its price, one might say — but the price in social terms may be dreadful. I would argue that the consequences of these social tipping points could be just as irreversible as is claimed for climate tipping points.
One can be wrong when asserting tipping points — in either direction. The dynamics described here do not claim to be more true or more accurate than the models that lead to the assertion of ecological tipping points. Rather, the aim is to point to interactions and consequences that those who see themselves as “progressive” probably do not have on their radar — or ignore or disregard.
Both types of tipping points are based on certain assumptions. In the case of ecological tipping points, one can attempt to calculate them. In the case of social tipping points, one can only try to describe developments and measure them through surveys. What one cannot do in either case, however, is to prove the probable occurrence of tipping points before they actually occur.
One side believes it possesses a certain customary right: “Just because times change, this does not mean our habits must change — prove that to us first!” The other side calls out: “If we continue like this, this and that will happen — therefore we not only should act, we must act!”
That errors can be made out of conviction in the latter variant, and that errors born of conviction can also become benchmarks, is shown by a recent example that has been far too little discussed.
The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research published a study in a globally recognized scientific journal. The study dealt with the economic consequences of climate change for the world economy. It attracted worldwide attention. The figures were used in many places as benchmarks.
What only became known much later: Routine reviews conducted by the journal had led to fundamental doubts about the results of the study. Several independent reviewers had expressed — tendency: massive — doubts about the methods used and thus also about the implications.
However, the renowned journal hesitated, withheld the criticism, and published anyway. The publication unfolded its effect.
But the criticism did not cease. By the time it was admitted that there was something to the criticism, it was far too late regarding the impact of the study.
Do you remember the attempts of the tobacco industry to downplay the effects of smoking with the help of scientific studies? Hardly anyone would believe such things today. And hardly anyone would still consider such studies legitimate. But what if the side that is currently powerful, still riding the "zeitgeisty trend" of climate, gender, and pro-migrant policies, engages in similar practices? The example of the Potsdam Institute study shows that the “ecologically motivated,” “progressive,” etc. side is by no means immune to such attempts.
Change happens slowly. If one is too convinced of something, one makes mistakes — which must be corrected. Of course, it is not easy to admit mistakes, but neither in migration policy, nor in economic policy, nor in environmental policy have the recent actors admitted to having made mistakes. Making mistakes is nothing surprising, it is rather normal, especially under yet unknown conditions. If someone acts “forward,” he or she will, of course, make some mistakes; if someone acts “idealistically,” all the more so. Mistakes can be corrected. But if correction is prevented through moralization, the situation does not improve — on the contrary: The situation will not only be prevented from necessary corrections — but a climate will develop, in which correction itself is delegitimized and doubt is denounced. The result: The government is virtually always right. (Have you ever lived in a country where the government is always right? I did, and I still remember.)
Through this mechanism, no "political homework" is done; instead, things continue as before, necessary changes are not made — and in consequence this primarily strengthens the opposing side.
This continues until doubt piles up so high that the tower that it has formed collapses and fundamentally changes the landscape — instead of asking what the will of the voters would mean and how the country can be shaped in a “well-tempered” way. Well-temperedness in politics cannot be achieved without a certain “cruelty.” But the point is to distribute the cruelties in a well-tempered manner, rather than, when the ship is already listing, claiming that this is the new equilibrium. Such efforts take their revenge — and whether the situation after that revenge is better than what one might have achieved by acting more pragmatically, well, that will then be a question one pushes, annoyed or cynically, into the category of “could have, would have, should have.”
In fairness to the climate advocates, it must be said that there was a generation that believed one could bring about change by describing, researching, and warning — and that these people were, for the most part, polite and decent, and that little or nothing happened, so they felt we were learning nothing and that it was too late. Some of these people retired with a sense of despair. I know this because I encountered one or another of them.
But then came the brash disruptors, who had little knowledge but all the more attitude — and who today are outraged about the bold disruptors of the counter-reaction and declare them at least enemies of democracy, if not fascists. That the entire present situation rests on an interaction dynamic between the “progressive” camp and the counter-reaction is something nobody wants to see.
In fact, as I said, what we would need are “well-tempered” responses to the situation. But well-temperedness is prevented by delegitimizing the counterreaction through the attribution of radicalism — while one’s own radicalism is transfigured into “lack of alternatives” or “immediate necessity.”
As a result, well-temperedness lies dead in the meadow, because the current system has too few mechanisms for correction and the counterreaction is delegitimized through moralization — and therefore today the counterreaction often must come in the guise of a Donald Trump in order to take place at all.
Stop. But we do have correction mechanisms! All the non-governmental organizations that watch over our democracy. But it is not our democracy, it is “our democracy” — with a thousand instructions on how one must see and speak nowadays. Yet democracy is not a lecture, it means majority decisions. And if one has been lectured too much, then at some point the conscious break with conventions appears “cool” or “courageous,” and symbols and attitudes become popular again that one would have considered unthinkable only a few years ago, according to the motto: “At least they dare!”
Resist the beginnings!
But what if no significant corrections are possible because some of us believe that we have to resist the beginnings — and the beginnings later seem to some others of us as the last correction mechanism, because they do want changes? The price could be dreadful. What would be better? A significant correction of present policies — or a brutal correction that is only truly provoked by the “carry on as before” in “our democracy”? The longer the “carry on as before” resounds, the more likely (and unfortunately also: the more desired) the brutal correction becomes.
If a growing part of the population feels that it makes no difference whether one votes or not, or that one’s own electoral opinion is not heard despite a large share, then this no longer leads only to “resistance against pressure of persuasion” or inner distancing. At some point it leads to a cynical attitude, to a certain fatalism, to “civil burnout”. One disengages; the “personal tipping point” then lies far in the past.
Many of us then tend to develop views such as this: “They can no longer manage it, but refuse to see it. With these people nothing will change. It keeps getting worse. I no longer recognize my country. Yet they want me to think everything is fine. But I have even given up hoping that with these people things can improve again, let alone that I could think everything is fine. There must be change. But among the established there is no one who can achieve it. Whether the others can do it, I do not know — I am skeptical. But they are the only ones who want to change something essential. If they cannot do it either? Then, slowly but surely, everything goes downhill. That is why authoritarian societies today are stronger than the old European democracies. Many democracies, with their bureaucracy and quarrels, hardly get anything done anymore — and if they do, then so slowly that the world has already turned three times further.”