Manifesting tipping points in pro-environmental behaviour for climate change mitigation

Achieving ambitious climate change targets, such as limiting global warming to 1.5°C, requires both political and social determination. Bottom-up pro-environmentalist behaviours can facilitate crossing social tipping points (STPs), resulting in new social norms with lower impact on global warming. While the passing of STPs has been described qualitatively, it remains poorly understood how the climate benefits of this phenomenon can be quantified. Here, we introduce a stylised system dynamics model that couples socio-ecological contagion with global warming via greenhouse gas emission pathways to estimate the impact of crossing social tipping points on greenhouse gas mitigation and global warming. This is explored through two examples of bottom-up and top-down mitigation interventions.