Impact Trust • Working glossary
Tipping point
A moment when a small push causes a big, hard-to-reverse change.
Details
Our Take
One of the few technical terms that has genuinely entered common language with roughly the right meaning. Very intuitive; gets misused sometimes (applied to gradual shifts). Tipping points are not just environmental - institutions, social norms, and political systems also have them.
Examples of Use
IPCC, planetary boundaries
Synonyms/Variants
Threshold; Point of no return; Phase transition; Critical threshold
Typical everyday wording
The moment when a small change tips the whole system.
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