Tipping Point Stories from COP30
Within SWISP Lab’s Hacking the Anthropocene living lab methodology, the “At what point did you realise…?” prompt operates as more than a conversational opening. It is a methodological device that surfaces moments of recognition, rupture, and recalibration. The question directs attention toward critical thresholds: points in ecological, political, and affective systems where conditions shift irreversibly and where perception itself undergoes change.
These stories form a distributed archive across media from handwritten post-it notes, field videos recorded after long days in negotiation halls, and storied or performed spoken accounts captured during our living-lab activities. They function as qualitative climate data: accumulations of embodied noticing that illuminate how individuals interpret and respond to Anthropogenic pressures.
At COP30 in Belém, our colleagues from Emory Climate Talks participated in this research practice. Each researcher engaged the tipping-point question, contributing an account that expands our understanding of how thresholds are experienced across cultural, disciplinary, and geographic contexts. Their stories extend SWISP Lab’s long-form inquiry into climate pedagogy, youth engagement, and speculative method.
Here is Rodrigo Puentes, a PhD student in the Gangarosa Department of Environmental Health at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health. We met Rodrigo under Gaia, by British artist Luke Jerram displayed in a huge hall in the COP30 Blue Zone.
Rodrigo met up Kate and Sacha to record his tipping point story (4 mins) in week 2 of COP:
Why These Stories Matter
We are at a critical point in planetary health (human and non-human) and without significant interventions, these Anthropogenic crises seem unstoppable.
The Interconnected Disaster Risks Report (Eberle, et al, 2023), warns that the Earth is on course to cross 6 ‘risk’ tipping points:
○ Accelerating extinctions
○ Groundwater depletion
○ Mountain glaciers melting
○ Space debris
○ Unbearable heat
○ Uninsurable future.
Tipping point stories are not anecdotal supplements to climate research; they are situated indicators of how people register change, risk, and responsibility. They offer a nuanced form of climate intelligence that is affective, relational, and ethically charged. For SWISP Lab, these accounts function as:
- methodological artefacts within our a/r/tographic inquiry;
- pedagogical tools that illuminate how thresholds are felt and interpreted;
- data points that map the distributed emotional and perceptual terrain of climate change across contexts.
They expand our archive of climate stories as an evolving collection that animates the experiential dimensions of Anthropogenic times.