3.2.4 The politics of prevention

Given the close relationship between the prevention of ESTPs and climate change mitigation, prevention politics are likely to mirror the politics of mitigation to a large extent. At the same time, the multi-scale nature, diverse drivers (including non-climate drivers) and distinct geographic distribution of tipping-related risks can generate a set of novel political dynamics, especially at non-global scales.

Key factors that shape the politics of mitigation are countries’ national interests (often defined in terms of economic growth), power distribution between high-emitting and other countries, vested economic interests, especially those of the fossil-fuel industry, and the strength of civil society forces creating pressure and public demand for action (Stoddard et al., 2021). Here, we only focus briefly on the likely role of national interests in future political dynamics related to the governance of ESTPs. Other factors deserve equal attention. All of these issues are currently under-researched.

Each government will have to assess the relevance of ESTPs for the national interest, especially through the lens of risk: the more a government expects their country be negatively affected by tipping points (or to gain from co-benefits arising from preventive action), the more it will likely favour preventive action to protect its people (including future generations), infrastructure, the position and security of borders, social stability and economic functioning, including trade flows and supply chains, from these impacts. Countries will need to consider how many and what kind of tipping systems will affect them (multi-exposure), and the possibility of complex interactions. For example, low-lying island states will likely face disproportionate tipping risks from ice sheet disintegration, while countries around the North Atlantic (Western Europe, US, Canada) would share concerns related to the North Atlantic Subpolar Gyre. Some countries might be indifferent to the topic, assuming that they will not be affected, at least in the foreseeable future. Others might expect significant challenges related to tipping points, yet oppose mitigation or other prevention efforts because of the expected costs of these measures, or even because they anticipate relative geopolitical advantage as a result of tipping points. 

An additional factor that might affect the determination of national interests is the cascading potential of ESTPs. For example, a landlocked European country might not be directly affected by GrIS melt, and therefore not be motivated to engage in prevention when considering the GrIS. However, since the melting of the GrIS contributes to the slowing of the AMOC (cascading effect), and a collapse of the AMOC would have significant impacts on landlocked countries in Europe (e.g. changes in temperature, precipitation and storm patterns), decision makers in the country in question would have a well-founded interest in preventing the crossing of the ice sheet’s tipping point. Such cascade considerations might be very different for each country.

To a large extent, such national interest determinations with respect to ESTPs have yet to be made. If such risk assessments were undertaken, they might be expected to lead to the formation of political alliances among countries with shared interests (e.g. rapid prevention, opposition to action) and disagreements among groups with opposing interests. National interests and the political alliances they give rise to are dynamic. They will change over time in response to several factors, including increasing scientific understanding of tipping points and what will be perceived as signals or impacts of ESTPs.

The choice of prevention approaches will be subject to political debate based on actors’ diverging preferences and expectations of implications regarding the mix of emission reductions, carbon removal, and other technological solutions, including solar geoengineering. This will also be relevant at national, regional and local levels and when dealing with non-climate drivers.

An important factor to trigger action on tipping points is how national governments and publics evaluate the risk of ESTPs and risks related to potential preventive measures. The way individuals, communities and policymakers perceive the risks associated with crossing tipping points can be expected to influence their willingness to demand and/or take action and implement measures to prevent tipping points (see 3.1.5). However, based on the experience of the last three decades, even intensifying impacts of climate change do not necessarily drive accelerated mitigation motivation and action. A number of dynamics at the national scale, including strategic obstruction efforts by vested fossil-fuel and ideological interests, limit the climate response of various political systems around the world (Stoddard et al., 2021; Ekberg et al., 2022; Jacques, Dunlap, and Freeman, 2008). The prospects of future acceleration and intensification of impacts is therefore unlikely to change the slow and contentious politics of climate mitigation.

All of these dynamics are likely to unfold over the coming decade as knowledge of ESTPs expands in the international community. At the moment, the politics of governing ESTPs takes place primarily in the domain of science-policy interactions, where actors tie different techniques of knowledge production to specific future visions that create a rationale for the pursuit of specific prevention approaches and related governance proposals (Gupta et al., 2020). This form of anticipatory governance can shape the direction of future decision making related to ESTPs in ways that depend on the actors involved and their interests, the design of the knowledge production and visioning process, and other factors (Moore and Milkoreit, 2020).