Social change more important than physical tipping points

Photo: UHH/CEN Cover illustration of the Hamburg Climate Future Outlook 2023 Limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius is currently not plausible, as is shown in a new, central study released by Universität Hamburg's Cluster of Excellence -Climate, Climatic Change, and Society- (CLICCS). Climate policy, protests, and the Ukraine crisis: the participating researchers systematically assessed to what extent social changes are already underway - while also analyzing certain physical processes frequently discussed as tipping points. Their conclusion: social change is essential to meeting the temperature goals set in Paris. But what has been achieved to date is insufficient. Accordingly, climate adaptation will also have to be approached from a new angle. The interdisciplinary team of researchers addressed ten important drivers of social change: -Actually, when it comes to climate protection, some things have now been set in motion. But if you look at the development of social processes in detail, keeping global warming under 1.5 degrees still isn-t plausible,- says CLICCS Speaker Prof. Anita Engels.