For more than three decades, the world has been trying ot answer a key question: how do you get every country on Earth to act collectively on climate change?

This new episode of the We Don't Have Time Podcast takes you from the early days of international cooperation in the 1990s to the landmark Paris Agreement. Showing how climate diplomacy has made historic progress while also revealing just how difficult global consensus can be.

Conflicting interests, economic inequalities, and the need for unanimous agreement have slowed action, even as the urgency of the crisis has grown. But now, a new chapter may be beginning with the Santa Marta Conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels marking a turning point in how the world moves from promises to action.

Listen in now and sign up to the event: https://www.wedonthavetime.org/events/transitioningaway

What would happen if climate change pushed the planet past a breaking point?

If you’ve seen the 2004’s The Day After Tomorrow, you might picture massive tidal waves, superstorms engulfing entire continents, and oceans freezing overnight. It made for exciting cinema, but the real scientific discussion around climate “tipping points” is more complicated.

Scientists believe that gradual warming could push critical Earth systems over thresholds that trigger large and potentially irreversible changes. From the decline of tropical coral reefs to the risk of shifts in the Amazon rainforest or the Atlantic Ocean circulation, understanding how close we may be to these tipping points is one of the most critical questions we face as a species.

But not everyone agrees that “tipping points” are the best way to think about climate risk. Are they a crucial framework about how complex systems behave, or a confusing metaphor that distracts from the real work of cutting emissions?