Addressing Tipping Points for a Precarious Future

Front matter

Addressing Tipping Points for a Precarious Future

Addressing Tipping Points for a Precarious Future

Edited by

Contents

List of figures and tables xi Foreword by Sir Crispin Tickell xiii Preface XV Acknowledgements xix Notes on contributors xxi PART1 Tipping points and critical thresholds 1 1.1 Metaphors and systemic change 3

PART2 Earth system tipping points 21

2.1 Tipping elements from a global perspective 23 TIM LENTON

Preface

This book originates from a 2011 conference generously funded by the British Academy and the Global Environmental Change Committee of the Royal Society.

The aims of the conference were to address and answer three questions:

1. Are we designing our governing institutions for sufficiently flexible, yet equitable, adaptation and resilience in the face of possibly unknowable, but potentially catastrophic, events or combinations of events in both Earth systems and social systems?

2. Are we creating, year by year, a set of governing arrangements that are brittle, fragmented, and increasingly vulnerable, in the face of potentially convulsive change?

3. Is it possible, creatively and purposefully, to shape our governing ways, our cultural mores, our economic approaches, and our commitments to long-term social justice, to prepare society for transformational tipping points in a benign and caring manner in sufficient time?

The conference was preceded by a scene-setting workshop held in the British Academy in January 2011. This greatly clarified the issues, and enabled the participants to feel a common purpose. It encouraged authors to draft their initial contributions, and to sense the connections between their arguments. It set the scene for the complete agenda for the subsequent April conference held in the Kavli Centre and managed by the Royal Society.

The great value of the Kavli conference was to bring together a wide range of scientists, social scientists, and humanities specialists to combine their experiences and expertise for understanding the many interpretations of tipping points. These facets included:

e the physical and dynamical properties of Earth system processes;

e the scientific understanding of the early warnings of reduced resilience;

e the social sciences of economics and governing which suggest how the messy management of human affairs may reach brittle stress points;

XV

Preface e the liberating interaction of the two sets of stress-related physical and social processes through the media of the arts and narrative;

e the moral, spiritual and cultural dimensions of the scope for coping with abrupt change.

One of the very rich aspects of the conference was the ways in which the creative minds of the historian, theologian, and novelist can deal with uncertain but possibly sudden shifts in these systems — the generation of convulsive combinations of developments. This is the skill of those who can craft deep metaphors and the ‘storyline’ — lessons from what has happened before, and about the strength of moral positioning over how to adapt fairly and securely.

The conference also received ideas and commentary from the worlds of business, of media and communication, of diplomacy, and of governing in the broadest sense. These perspectives added greatly to the richness of the discussions and of the nuances of analysing both the contours of tipping points and the answers to the questions of whether we are creating inappropriate governance arrangements. Indeed, it is very likely we are not prepared culturally or politically for adaptation to combinations of tipping points, which could indeed be generated within a few decades. We seem to be creating conditions of maladaptation and dangerous ‘lock-in’. One outcome is that, unless the most successful experiences of adaptive learning spontaneously and imaginatively arising from many parts of the planet are fully reported and understood, humanity may not be able to adapt with sufficient social justice to enable future societies to cope fairly and tolerably with disruptive change.

This book is primarily designed to place tipping points in their scientific, economic, governmental, creative, and spiritual contexts. Its contributions cover the various interpretations and metaphors of tipping points, the scope for anticipating their onset, and the capacity both for resilience in the face of their impending arrival and for better ways of communicating and preparing societies, economies, and governments for accommodating to them and hence to turn them into responses which buffer and better human well-being. Above all, the possibility of preparing society and its governing institutions for creative and benign ‘tips’ provides a unifying theme for the book.

The big lessons from the conference are these: that we can assess tipping points and critical thresholds on many dimensions; that we can begin to see the early warnings of their appearance; and that we do have time still to attend to the conditions which answer Question 3. But at best, we only xvi

Preface have this decade to begin in earnest this comprehensive adjustment. This volume is therefore very timely. The widespread dismay over the prevarication and seeming inability of world heads of state (many of whom did not even attend) to address the plight of all peoples on this disrupted planet at the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (‘Rio+20’, held in Rio de Janeiro in June 2012) is leading many to the dangerous conclusion that political leadership is unavailable. The ‘wicked problems’ of climate disruption and unsustainable use of ecosystems simply defeat conventional politics, whether of the democratic or autocratic worlds, dependent as both are on evidently unsustainable patterns of growth and exploitation of resources. Despite some recognition for a transition to a so-called ‘green’ economy, though not a sustainable one, there is every sign that the very characteristics of markets, politics, and inequalities which have led to the current global recession and social malaise are being blindly pursued, apparently because there is neither vision nor the willingness to change course. At an Oxford University conference in July 2012 on resource security and sustainability, David Miliband MP, a former Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in the UK, argued that we must hold fast to faith in democracy as the best available political model for achieving the transition to sustainability. But he was also driven to admit that among the policymaking elites of the West there was still far too little will-power, passion, or conviction behind sustainable development. Too many politicians, he concluded, in their hearts and heads do not yet accept the diagnosis of unsustainability and the approach of tipping points, still less wish to act on it.

The book is divided into eight Parts, which consist of ‘chapters’ and ‘commentaries’, numbered sequentially. The fourteen main chapters were all presented at one or other of the conference sessions, where they were discussed in detail. The other contributions are designed as short commentaries. For the most part these were commissioned from people who were not at the conference sessions. The text is edited to create cohesion between the contributions so that the various nuances of science, social science, and humanity perspectives are enabled to merge. The intended readership is informed policymakers, policy analysts, researchers, and those in the general public who seek to understand what possible future outcomes they and their offspring may face before this current century passes its halfway stage. The text is also shaped to offer a combination of distress at what may happen if the warnings are not heeded, and hope that there is time to change course, admittedly in an increasingly difficult xvii

Preface manner if conscious delay is continued, and that the ultimate prize is worth sacrificing and fighting for. Humanity has triumphed over adversity, though not always have earlier civilizations succeeded. What is special now is that the whole of humanity faces the same awkward dilemmas, not just the overambitious few. Having edited this book we are not confident that there is a happy outcome, as the disruptive journey has not yet been sufficiently altered to offer confidence that real learning is taking place. Readers are encouraged to make up their own minds when reading the pages that follow.

Tim O’Riordan and Tim Lenton September 2012 xviii

Acknowledgements

Weare especially grateful to the British Academy and to the Royal Society Global Environmental Change Committee for having the faith in the whole enterprise. We have been supported throughout by Fellows of both learned Academies as well as by their very competent administrators.

About the cover art: still image from “Critical Transitions” by Tone Bjordam

Norwegian artist Tone Kristin Bjordam works with video, animation films, photography, painting, drawing and installation. Bjordam has for many years been working on projects visualizing the movement and progression of liquid color in fluids and unfolding organic forms in motion. She stages controlled, yet playful experiments and creates imaginary landscapes.

The art video “Critical Transitions” was made in 2012, inspired by discussions with scientist Marten Scheffer who studies the nature of change in complex systems.

Climate, forests, coral reefs, financial markets and even our minds occasionally reach a tipping point where they go through a radical transformation. Foreseeing such critical transitions or even noticing that they are unfolding is challenging as they are embedded in the omnipresent permanent flow of change.

Dazzled by myriads of such minimal motions, how can we see that they sometimes erupt into transforming change? Emerged in chaotic and turbulent transformation how can we see where we are going? Science seeks universal early warning signals for critical transitions, but often we may only realize the world is not the same anymore in the hindsight.

For more information about this project: www.tonebjordam.com xix

Contributors

Tim O’Riordan is Emeritus Professor of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia, Norwich. He is a Deputy Lieutenant of the County of Norfolk, a Fellow of the British Academy, and received an OBE in 2010. Email: t.oriordan@uea.ac.uk

Tim Lenton is Professor of Climate Change and Earth System Science at the University of Exeter. He holds a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award and is a Fellow of the Geological Society, the Linnean Society, and the Society of Biology. Email: t.m.lenton@exeter.ac.uk

Sir Crispin Tickell GCMG KCVO, a former British Permanent Representative to the United Nations, is a member of the Advisory Council of the Martin School at Oxford University. He is the author of many papers and books on environmental and international issues. Email: ct@crispin tickell.net

David Atkinson retired as Bishop of Thetford in 2009. After doctoral work in organic chemistry, he was ordained in the Church of England, then a Fellow of Corpus Christi College Oxford, Canon of Southwark Cathedral, and Archdeacon of Lewisham. He serves on the Board of Operation Noah. Email: davidatkinson43@virginmedia.com

Mike Barry is Head of Sustainable Business at Marks and Spencer, helping drive forward their sustainability plan, Plan A. He believes that business is reaching a tipping point, where ‘less bad’ is no longer good enough. The real, practical challenges of responding to resource competition, extreme weather, new social expectations, greater transparency and new economic models based around the sharing /circular economy mean that business has to strike out and build a new, better approach, one that delivers social, environmental and economic benefit in equal measure.

Emily Boyd is Reader in Geography, University of Reading.

xxi

Contributors

Paul Brown is co-editor of the Climate News Network, an internet service providing daily news of the science and politics of climate change for journalists. He is a former environment correspondent of the Guardian and Fellow of Wolfson College Cambridge. Email: paulbrown5@mac.com

Ian Christie is a Fellow of the Centre for Environmental Strategy, University of Surrey, Guildford. He has worked for many years on sustainable development and environmental issues in central and local government, business consultancy, and think tanks in the UK.

Charles Clarke is a former Cabinet Minister. After 25 years in active politics, he became a Visiting Professor in Politics at the University of East Anglia, where he organised the ‘Too Difficult Box’ series of lectures (see www.charlesclarke.org).

Keith Clarke is a qualified architect with nearly 50 years’ experience in city planning and the design and construction of buildings and major infrastructure throughout the world. Until recently he was the CEO of the largest consulting engineering consultancy in the UK, WS Atkins, a FTSE 250 company.

Andrew Dobson is Professor of Politics at Keele University. Email: a.n.h.dobson@keele.ac.uk

Paul Ekins is Professor of Resources and Environmental Policy and Director of the UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources at University College London. He received a UNEP Global 500 Award for ‘outstanding environmental achievement’ in 1994 and was a member of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, 2002-2008.

John Elkington is co-founder and Executive Chairman of Volans (2008), and co-founder of Environmental Data Services (ENDS) (1978) and SustainAbility (1987). He is author or co-author of eighteen books, most recently The Zeronauts: Breaking the Sustainability Barrier (Oxford: Earthscan/ Taylor & Francis, 2012).

Giles Foden is a novelist (The Last King of Scotland, Turbulence) and Professor of Creative Writing at UEA. He was rapporteur to workshops of the European Commission’s Global Systems Dynamics and Policies coordination action (2008-2010).

Laurence Freeman is Director of Meditatio.

xxii

Contributors

Toby Gardner is a research fellow in the Zoology Department of the University of Cambridge, as well as a visiting researcher at the Goeldi Museum and the International Institute for Sustainability in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. At the time of writing Dr Gardner co-leads the Sustainable Amazon Network (www.redeamazoniasustentavel.org), a multi-disciplinary research initiative aimed at understanding challenges and opportunities facing land-use sustainability in the Brazilian Amazon.

Patricia Howard is Research Professor in the Department of Social Sciences at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, and Honorary Professor in the School of Anthropology and Conservation at the University of Kent in the UK, working on the relations between biodiversity and human wellbeing. She leads the Ecosystem Services and Poverty Alleviation (ESPA) Project ‘Human Adaptation to Biodiversity Change’.

John Ingram is ‘Food Security Leader’ for the Natural Environment Research Council, and is based in the Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford. His main interest is the interaction between food systems and environment.

Tim Lang is Professor of Food Policy at City University London’s Centre for Food Policy. The Centre studies food systems through the lens of public health, environment, citizenship, and social justice, exploring whether and how policy reflects these concerns. Email: t.lang@city.ac.uk

Thomas Lingard is Global Advocacy Director at Unilever. He also serves on the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Governance for Sustainability, the Oxfam Association, and the International Advisory Committee of the STEPS Centre at the University of Sussex. He was previously Deputy Director of the policy think tank Green Alliance.

Amanda Long is Executive Officer, Marketing, Membership and Media at the East of England Co-Operative.

Sara Parkin is Founder Director of Forum for the Future, Board member of the European Training Foundation, and former Co-secretary of the European Greens. She was awarded an OBE for services to education and sustainability in 2001. Her latest book is The Positive Deviant: Sustainability Leadership in a Perverse World. Email: saraparkinoffice@forumforthe future.org

Joe Ravetz is Co-Director of the Centre for Urban & Regional Ecology at Manchester, and leads on sustainable cities and regions. A former xxiii

Contributors architect/planner, he is also a graphic facilitator, foresight trainer and policy adviser. His books include City-Region 2020 and the forthcoming Urban 3.0: Synergistic Pathways for a One Planet Century.

Jonathan Sinclair-Wilson was for 20 years Managing Director of Earthscan, the leading English-language publisher on sustainable development.

Joe Smith is Senior Lecturer in Environment at the Open University, and works on environmental policy and communications. He has worked extensively with the BBC since the mid-1990s and is also Director of the historic clock-making company Smith of Derby Ltd. Email: joe.smith@ open.ac.uk

Matthew Taylor became Chief Executive of the RSA in November 2006. Prior to this appointment, he was Chief Adviser on Political Strategy to the Prime Minister, and Director of the Institute for Public Policy Research between 1999 and 2003.

Camilla Toulmin is Director of IED, the International Institute of Environment and Development. An economist by training, she has worked mainly in Africa on agriculture, land, climate and livelihoods, mixing research, policy analysis and advocacy. She is Board chair of ICARDA, Trustee of the Franco-British Council, and sits on the Advisory Boards of the Grantham Institute London, and IDDRI Paris.

Xx1V

PART 1 TIPPING POINTS AND CRITICAL THRESHOLDS Setting the scene

This chapter has its origins in an introduction to a seminar jointly convened through the funding kindness of the British Academy and the Royal Society. Its purpose was to explore the various meanings and possible consequences of ‘tipping points’ over the coming decades. The seminar took place in the spring of 2011 at the Kavli Centre run by the Royal Society. It comprised ten speakers and twenty-five commentators. Participants represented a wide range of backgrounds, covering Earth system science, natural resource policies, economics, politics, media and communications, international relations, business, literature, and religion. What was fascinating was their enthusiasm for the creative fusion of highly diverse contributions and ideas. Participants embraced the wide range of meanings associated with ‘tipping points’ and grasped the significance of the concept for the disturbing age in which we find ourselves.

This introductory chapter surveys various ways of approaching and interpreting tipping points, and explains the contexts in which the contributions that follow fit into this framework. Thus, it seeks to provide a perspective for the whole book.

We took as our starting point the idea that tipping points are perhaps best understood as metaphors to help deal with uncertainty and complexity, wholeness, and the unpredictability of the future. Tipping points are processes of discontinuous, and at times disruptive, change. Generically they are critical thresholds, which offer various timescales of onset and impact. These thresholds may manifest themselves across the whole globe, or regionally, or locally. They can come in the form of planetary processes, of ecosystem adjustments, of military, terrorist, or convulsive political action, or of profound shifts in economic performance, cultural outlooks and social behaviour. Indeed, tipping points can arise out of combinations of physical and social systems and the strains and stresses affecting them, all working in complex loops of influence and impact. What concerns us here, and in our concluding chapter (8.1), is that tipping points may sit at the cusp of being transformational for the worsening or bettering of human existence. ‘Tipping points’ in this book actually refer to a series of transitions and transformations, some predictable and some unforeseeable.

Three ways in which tipping points can be characterized relate to:

e The science of global physical systems, their measurement and predictability, singly or in combination, as addressed by Tim Lenton in Part 2;

e The social science of governance through means of anticipating and adapting to possible shifts in such system states, approached in Parts 4, 6, and 7;

e The creative processes of constructing ways forward for society, which contribute to betterment and accommodation, by procedures which are socially fair, build resilience through adaptation, and reinforce the fundamental integrity of the ecosystem life-support processes, explored in Parts 5, 6, 7, and 8.

Lying behind this framing of tipping points are four sets of propositions. The first is that we could be entering a time in which unintended worsening of policy makes for a drastic worsening of environmental problems and socio-economic conditions. By our particular ways of governing ourselves, we may be creating conditions of economy, of decision bias, of social conditioning, and of ethics which actually reinforce (lock in) the likelihood of tipping points in both physical and social realms.

Second, we could be creating conditions of induced vulnerabilities — the generation of further risks — through tendencies already apparent in policy, production and consumption. The ways in which we seek to adapt, because of this inbuilt tendency to create greater tensions (dependency, powerlessness, incapacity to adapt), can also lead to more intense and unanticipated combinations of both social and physical/ecological stresses.

Third, the uncertainties surrounding the idea of tipping points and their manifestations raise the problem of incoherence in communication and response. We have yet to consider suitable means for explaining the various narratives, or ways of visualizing and instilling meaning to tipping points in all of their manifestations, which could lead to constructive adaptation and collective mitigation (as examined in Part 7).

Our final proposition is that tipping points must be conceived not only as risks and threats, but also as potential moments of restorative redirection. It is still possible for a series of positive transformational tipping points to be combined. These would prepare society for forms of governing, of designing economies, and of creating the social conditions for combined preventative action that can stave off the ‘malign’ tipping points, in favour of robust, resilient and adaptive values and governing procedures. This would be the creative and ‘super-adjusting’ tipping point, of which, at present, we see only glimpses — in social movements of ecological localism, and in many parts of developing economies where continuous resilience and adaptation are essential.

Achieving restorative redirection presents an immense challenge, but it is an experience which the planet has been through several times before, admittedly without conscious steering (Duarte Santos 2011; Lenton and Watson 2011). This particular transition will be hugely different. It will involve both profound shifts in social outlooks and associated adjustments. It will also require collectively agreed recognition and capacity to restore and nurture life-support processes, often under conditions of unfriendly and unbending economic incentives, and inbuilt vulnerabilities. Hence the shift towards so-called ‘benign’ tipping points, as ‘malign’ tipping points continue to engulf us, will neither be easy, nor in the absence of ingenuity and extremely determined and creative leadership, democratically popular. We only see tough times ahead.

Tipping points as metaphors

Metaphors can elicit new concepts by ‘throwing together’ pre-existing lines of thought into fresh perspectives, as Giles Foden argues in Chapter 3.1. Metaphors are conveyors of meaning and storytelling. Metaphors enable imagery and ideas to fuse and to recombine, to unify through experimental exploration. Shifts in manners of thinking and of meanings of values are easier to explore through metaphor. They allow continuous rediscovery from any starting point, especially where there are many possible endings. Metaphors stimulate the imagination, and loosen the mental bounds that restrict our perception of actual and potential realities. But metaphors can also confuse, because meanings are not always aligned to appreciate their novelty. Metaphors may be contested and unruly, trampling on established patterns of thought and analysis. As a consequence, the science of tipping points (Part 2) and the politics (Part 6) are beset with conflicting interpretations as metaphorical pathways collide.

Metaphors may be created on the basis of past evidence, interactive models, creative interpretations of futures, simplifications of complexity, exploration of intriguing mathematical formulations, storytelling, and popular, misguided and sloppy usage. All these devices are means for characterizing, and giving shape to, uncertainty, interdependence, turbulence, and crises, and for unleashing the creative power of imagining. Metaphors are employed to assist in the ordering of chaos, for carving out meaningful narratives and stories from apparently seamless continuity, for creating understanding through patterns of skilful construction, and for firming up the shifting sands of unpredictability in order to obtain plausible assurance about what could happen next.

Three classes of tipping point and related metaphors attracted the attention of the seminar participants.

1. Threshold conditions, chaotic transformations, bifurcations, and revolutions

These are qualities found in mathematics; risk theory; catastrophe theory; abrupt change dynamics; the coupling of systems to sudden phase changes in local environments, macro-scale Earth systems, and in geopolitical outlooks. Such transformations take place in a variety of circumstances: from stress points found in pathways of order and reason; to sudden shifts of political arrangements; to new patterns of power; to innovative processes of measurement and making choices. They are characterized by intervening periods of adjustment, which eventually reach a stage where inbuilt procedures for accommodation, or protecting existing institutions of decision taking, can no longer rely on ‘more of the same’. Things simply have to shift.

Physicists, mathematicians, ecologists, epidemiologists and sociologists, in their various ways, have identified ‘bifurcations’. These are points where a small additional ‘forcing’ or ‘nudge’ takes a complex system abruptly into a qualitatively different state or into the orbit of another system or set of properties in the environment, known as an ‘attractor’. The interesting quality here is their apparent unpredictability, even though after a ‘change event’, it may be possible to spot the clues of onset. In the arena of political transformation, for example, the fall of communism in the early 1990s, and the ‘Arab Spring’ of 2011 have been analysed for their precursors in the internal social and political dynamics of restless and networked societies, and oppressive regimes. Tipping points are rarely wholly unpredictable. There is currently much excitement about the prospects for early warning of such ‘critical transitions’ in a range of complex systems (Scheffer 2009), and perhaps even on the basis of identification of large-scale recurrent patterns in social evolution and upheavals (Turchin and Nefedov 2009; Turchin 2011).

2. Prediction, adaptation, resilience, accommodation, path dependency, and tenacity in holding on to the familiar

These are all variants of responses to confronting or actually experiencing such threshold conditions. Doing nothing is not considered a viable or sensible option, but any sudden shifts of policy or behaviour carry all manner of risks and potential casualties, and any new rules of decision taking are usually unfamiliar and weakly formulated. Changing tardily patterns of power, clinging on to conceptions of morality and fairness, and relying on the process of ‘muddling through’, all play their part. So too does the tendency to cling to existing commitments of political dependence, or the failure to adapt because too much sunk investment is at stake.

One cause of the collapse of earlier civilizations might have been the unwieldy scale of large urban complexes, and the associated stubborn adherence to living with the ‘sunk costs’ of existing, costly, and inflexible infrastructural investments (Scheffer 2009). But ‘sunk costs’ also apply to political power structures, worldviews, and frighteningly interdependent economic institutions. This applies today in cases such as the banks, particularly in the Eurozone countries. A related but uniquely frustrating phenomenon of ‘systems that fail to tip’ can be found in political and economic crises where nearly everyone agrees that something has to give (see Sara Parkin (6.3)). Tim Lang and John Ingram (4.1) offer an equivalent perspective on the increasing elusiveness of food security.

The very nature of nascent tipping points makes it difficult to shift attitudes, values and behaviour. Tipping points are visible clearly, if at all, only in the historical record, and thus lack compelling force in the present. The overwhelming temptation and pressures are to wait and see, to hope that something turns up to eliminate the projected risk, and to enable business as usual to persist, or to assume that we can always fall back on adaptation.

Note, however, that even adaptation does not always result in positive coping. Il-designed adaptation can reinforce vulnerability and the brittleness of power and authority, unsuited to emerging threshold conditions, where established mechanisms for adaptation and adjustment can no longer hold. Emily Boyd (7.2) points out that weak adaptation, even in the face of crisis, may arise from the mixing of informal social preferences and cultural norms with formal and less flexible political and economic institutions, further muddled by clumsy media and communications misunderstandings. Adaptive governance, she notes, ‘consists of four fundamentals: explicit understanding of the system; monitoring; flexibility in management and administration through networks; and preparation for “surprise”’.

3. Social construction, opportunism, media formulation, marketing, and organising bias

Tipping points are now invoked in all manner of publications, of communications, of language and knowledge, almost whenever the notion of threat, of crisis, of fear, of helplessness, and of a call for dramatic transformational approaches to the messy governing of economies and societies, is called upon. Here the notion of tipping points loses its shape, tends to be overused and blurred, and hence can become unhelpful as a narrative for coping. This is precisely the danger of metaphor which Giles Foden counsels against in Chapter 3.1. The tendency for universality, for sloppy comparison, and for meaningless preparation, may yet prove the nemesis of the tipping point metaphor. Metaphors can guide, but they can also muddle. This aspect is explored by Tim Lang and John Ingram (4.1), and by Patricia Howard (4.2) in her various ecological, cultural and linguistic interpretations of biodiversity. Tipping points, like the highly necessary but deeply contested concept of sustainability, are already in danger of being over-defined, chaotically misinterpreted, and chronically abused by overreliance on ubiquitousness.

A sense of foreboding

Lying beneath these formulations of tipping points is a sense of foreboding. We appear to be entering a stage in world affairs where rapid change, spurred by instant communication and an overwhelming desire to dramatize events to gain competitive media attention, appears convulsive, cataclysmic, and beyond any sense of benign rational management. It is so tempting to ignore warnings, to cling on to the familiar, to hold on to sunk investments, and to seek pathways which are already damaged by protective power and false promises. This is particularly so in the many cases where the timing of possibly tragic outcomes is not provable, and is subject to very wide variations in estimates. Denial, delay, and dissonance capture the desperation of hanging on.

The emerging worlds of interconnected systems dynamics, and the sweet fruits of interdisciplinarity, tempt thinkers to try and understand our predicament by modelling it. Modelling with huge banks of data is now possible on scales almost unimagined a decade ago. There seems to be no limit to the scope for amassing meaningful patterns from seemingly chaotic cascades of information, apart from the imagination needed to create and make sense of these patterns. And the more the requirement to organize and give meaning, the more there needs to be fusion of both a narrative for creative exploration and a model for analytical ordering and forecasting. Yet the very capacity of modelling nowadays draws our attention to the significant voids in data arrays. For example, ocean acidification may or may not be catastrophic, not just hazardous, for calcareous marine life: we do not yet have the necessary instrumentation or the time series trends to be sure.