AS a schoolboy, I rather liked rocking back in my chair to see if I could balance at that perfect sweet spot. I couldn’t and occasionally ended up on my back.

One finds tipping points in many situations, most importantly in the environment. A recent report you’ll have not seen is the Global Tipping Points Report 2025. In it, the world experts in this science go through looking at negative and positive tipping points.

The bad news: warm water coral reefs are likely to be past the point. The Greenland ice sheet is irreversibly melting. The Amazon rainforest is teetering on the brink as are some of the huge circulatory ocean currents, for example, the Gulf Stream. Now, if and when any of these slip over the cusp, like I did on my chair, then there will be catastrophic consequences.

But I suppose I can’t do anything about that so best forget it and carry on? Actually, we can do something, and the good news is that there are also some wonderfully helpful tipping points: the price of solar and wind energy has fallen so far and so fast it is by far and away the cheapest electricity; the shift to electric vehicles; the establishing of ULEZs in cities; the change to more plant-based diets; change in how agriculture is encouraged to be more environmentally aware; the whole shift in conversation and perception.

These are all great steps in the right direction. You are able to push for change – chat with friends and family.

A local care home has just put up solar panels and changed a field to a wildflower meadow. A win-win situation lowering electricity bills, decreasing the carbon cost and increasing biodiversity.

Each of us can make a move to tip the balance in the right direction. What will yours be?

CASA (Climate Action St Austell)