The Cliff Edge at Beachy Head – Climate Tipping Points

My grandparents used to live nearby, so as a child I often visited the cliff at Beachy Head, going just close enough to look over the edge at the lighthouse so far below. As an innocent child I didn’t know that this was also an infamous spot for suicides.

This cliff edge is a perfect analogy to the dangers of climate tipping points. We are on a suicidal rush of increasing fossil fuel consumption, which is driving us at full speed towards a cliff. Our top scientists have been telling us for decades that we have to stay at a safe distance from the cliff. But those same scientists can’t tell us what a safe distance is – because they can’t know.

Do you see that piece of cliff where the grass is like a lower ledge? That is where the cliff has started to crumble. I remember those ledges and wanting to climb down onto them. My grandparents wouldn’t let me. My weight was small back then and I might have been safe, but my grandparents, being wiser, said to stay away from it. Climate tipping points are like that ledge. If they are crossed and fail, they will go quickly and catastrophically. Which is why we need to stay away from them by a safe distance. No one can predict when that ledge will collapse – because we can’t know.

Edit: I should have made it clearer that the higher temperatures get, the closer we are to edge. Net Zero means that we stay balancing along the very edge, halted at the highest temperature rise, jumping up and down on the ledges. Only Net Negative takes us further away from the edge and to safe and stable ground.