Tipping Points: Any Cause for Hope?

I just finished reading, two decades after it was published, the book Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. I read it at the same time that I am still trying to get through This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein, about which I wrote earlier. I realized there were things we can learn from comparing the two books.

The most noticeable thing is that Klein’s book is extremely depressing. It is also heavy with references. In contrast, Gladwell’s book (what an appropriate name he has) is optimistic, and has just enough references so that you know he is not making everything up. I read it in a couple of days. Klein’s book will take me months or years to digest.

From Klein’s viewpoint, no matter how much we do, it is not going to make any difference. Unless we totally change our economic system, the Earth is condemned to climatic warming that will exceed the ability of our civilization to tolerate. As I wrote previously, trees are out, weeds are in; this is the world of our future, and we might as well accept it.

But Gladwell’s viewpoint, as indicated right on the cover of his book, is that little things can make a big difference. Some seemingly minor event or process can push just enough on circumstances that they will begin to tip in a new direction. Also, right on the cover of his book is a match. It only takes a spark to start a fire, if the fuel is there and the conditions are right. Gladwell would suggest that we might be able to avoid global climate disaster, if something unexpected and unpredictable occurs that makes people change the way they think and live. It seems impossible, but such things have happened, though on a much smaller scale.

One example from Gladwell’s book is the Broken Windows theory of crime prevention. It would seem that, to reduce crime, which was epidemic in New York City in the early 1990s, it would be necessary to make big economic and sociological changes that would affect and improve the lives of millions of people. In parts of New York that had lots of crime, there were broken windows and graffiti everywhere. These, it would seem, are the symptoms of crime, not the causes. But a campaign to clean up broken windows and graffiti, as if they were the cause rather than the effect, seems to have caused a reduction in the crime rate. If people see broken windows and graffiti everywhere, they to not have a sense of responsibility for their surroundings, while if they see broken windows and graffiti being cleaned up, they begin to identify with their surroundings and notice when bad things happen. Criminals know that they are less likely to get away with their crimes in a neighborhood where broken windows are quickly fixed and graffiti quickly cleaned up. Treating the symptoms is a lot cheaper than addressing the root causes, which might be so large as to be impossible to address.

I have wondered why crime rates are so much lower in France, where I now live, than in America. I wonder if part of the reason is that there is a lot of effort, by property owners and municipalities, to pick up litter. There is a lot of litter in France, but about ten times less than in America (I base this statement on actual counts of I have made). The French do not, or no longer, see their local environments as places to throw garbage, or in which crime is inevitable. One fact that does not fit this interpretation is that practically every public surface in France has graffiti.

Does something like this offer any hope that we might be able to turn around the inevitable global warming? In France, it is seen as perfectly normal for people to walk and take public transit. Even mail delivery is by bicycle. It is not, or is no longer, necessary for municipalities or the government to try to convince people to not drive cars as much.

Gladwell also addresses the problem of smoking in young people, which (at least when he was writing) was increasing even while adult smoking was on the decline. American governments and nonprofits have spent billions of dollars on campaigns that tried to show young people how dangerous smoking is, without much success. I wonder if all the anti-smoking material in my biology classes made any difference. Young people do not respond very much to appeals to evidence and reasoning. Young smokers choose to smoke because of their peers. Smoking is not cool; smokers are cool—the peers whom other young people admire are the rebels who do things precisely because they are dangerous. France and Germany have used graphic images on cigarette boxes in an attempt to scare young people into not smoking, without apparent success.

But how can you make healthy behavior normal or, better yet, cool? And how could you ever get people in general to make healthy choices by making them seem cool?

Gladwell suggests one way to reduce the smoking epidemic. Since there is no way to stop young people from experimenting with cigarettes, the best we can do is to keep them from turning into long-term tobacco addicts. Most young people who play with cigarettes do not, in fact, become lifelong tobacco addicts. Gladwell suggested requiring cigarettes to be below a critical level of nicotine content, so that it would be nearly impossible for a casual smoker to become an addict. The problem is that tobacco industry profits depend almost entirely on addiction. That is how they make their money: customers who cannot not buy the product. Requiring tobacco companies to sell only cigarettes with little nicotine is requiring them to commit economic suicide. Addiction is their product. I see no way out of this problem.

The only way to prevent bad trends is to focus on your own family. That’s what we are doing. We moved to France, rather than to try to raise our grandkids in a social environment that is as wasteful and violent as America. And as for the family context, almost nobody in their immediate or extended French family smokes. Their family, and their peers, enjoy doing healthy and constructive things like taking hikes. And when our grandchildren look around them, what do they see? They see young French people who dart around on electric scooters rather than driving. They look pretty cool and they know it. Young people see their cool peers almost every day on the trams. We do not want our grandchildren to have to choose among their society, their family, and their peers. We want all three levels of influence to maximize the chances that their tipping points will be in the right direction.

All this means that, without us trying to cause it, a tipping point might be reached in which people change their behaviors away from unhealthy and dangerous ones to healthy and constructive ones. It only takes a spark.

Don’t hold your breath in anticipation, however. When a tipping point is reached, the process could tip in a dangerous direction as easily as a healthy one. It is at least as easy for good people to become violent as for bad people to become good. It all depends on who the influencers are. And influencers are very seldom the people who know the truth. A tipping point can accelerate dangerous trends as easily as preventing them.

 

Greetings. I have a felicitous essay with which you can begin your new year.

I have just finished the manuscript of a seventh book that I hope to publish next year (2026), if I find a publisher this year (2025). This is in addition to my sixth book, Forgotten Landscapes, which is scheduled for release July 2025. But right now I want to tell you a little about the seventh book, Every Plant Has a Story.

There are lots of books about botany for the general reader. But almost all of them are about why humans should appreciate plants, e.g., they are sources of food, spices, hallucinogens, etc. That is, plants as slaves of humans. But my book is about the stories the plants tell about themselves, as discovered by scientific research. I will not attempt to summarize it here, but will probably do so a bit at a time in the essays I will post in the coming year.

Every plant has a different story of success in the ruthless Darwinian world of competition. One example is that some plants grow as long-lived trees, while others are short-lived weeds. The long-lived trees (like oak trees) invest a lot of time and energy in building up for the future. They are tremendously successful, but it takes centuries for them to earn back the costs that it took them to build themselves. They epitomize long-term investment. Weeds, on the other hand, do not have a long term. They grow like crazy for, in most cases, a single year, then pour all their resources into seed production. There are all stages in between, such as short-lived trees (like cottonwoods).

Above: sequoia trees invest for long-term success, over millennia; below, weeds such as velvetleaf invest for success only one year into the future, then they die.

Weeds specialize on temporary habitats, such as an area disturbed by fire, flood, or human activity. Trees specialize on habitats that remain stable for many decades, even centuries. Since the Earth contains both kinds of habitats, stable and temporary, the weed approach to investing and the tree approach are both successful, in different places.

The analogy with the human economy is inescapable. You can either invest for the long term, building up savings and assets, preparing for the future. You can manage your life like a tree. Or you can spend quickly and go into debt, as if you have no future. You can be a weed. It is the people who live like trees who make the world a better place, who stabilize it. But there are plenty of people who live like weeds also.

Humans are, however, changing the global climate. Not just heating it up, through the greenhouse effect, but creating a climate that is wildly catastrophic—fires, hurricanes, floods, and all the rest. The entire world now has or will soon have an unstable climate, everywhere. Plants that make long-term investments, such as trees, may not live long enough to be successful. Only weeds, which often live just a year, can survive in a world where the climate changes rapidly. No longer will tree investments and weed investments both be successful at different times and places. Now only the weeds will succeed. I summarize this situation in the last chapter of my book: Trees are out, weeds are in.

Trees are out, weeds are in. This means that if you expect to see old forests with big trees, you’d better see them right away. And then prepare to live in a world in which there are no plants except those that grow and die rapidly. Someday, the giant sequoia forests of California, where huge trees live for millennia, will be regarded as part of a mythological past.

The analogy with human investments is again inescapable. Long-term investments, in which a corporation plans to be a stable force for good over many decades, are on their way out. Short-term investments, to make a killing rather than a living, will soon dominate the economy of the world. Only the long term allows a corporation to invest in reputation: we are a company you can trust for life, we want you to like us. Instead, corporations will all be rewarded for being rapacious, treating their customers like garbage, and they don’t care who knows it. Yes, we dump our wastes into the common space in which we all live; yes, we deny your insurance claims; no, you cannot expect us to actually honor our contracts.  In a truly free economy, consumers can choose to stay away from dishonest corporations. But in many cases, when a corporation treats its customers like garbage, and it starts to collapse, the government will come in and rescue it, or else it will merge with another corporation. Corporations lose their recognizable identities, so you cannot choose to stay away from them. The future of the human world, as of the natural world, will be wildly swerving among disasters, in which you cannot responsibly plan ahead.

I have been reading Naomi Klein’s 2014 This Changes Everything. She makes it abundantly clear that our world economy cannot possibly avoid climate-related collapse. Any company, or country, that invests in the future rather than in immediate profitability is swept aside. Countries, companies, and individuals who choose sustainability are usually beaten down. Unless solar energy is, without subsidies, cheaper than government-subsidized fossil fuel energy, it will be driven into extinction. The time is coming, soon, when sustainability will be essentially illegal. By choosing to spend less money, I am making myself an enemy of the consumerist economy. I am basing this view on Klein’s 2014 numbers. It is much worse today.

I was expecting that my seventh book would be a cheerful celebration of the diversity of plant adaptations even to the most challenging environments. I did not plan for it to be an activist book. The time is past when I delude myself into thinking that any book I could possibly write would change the views of any readers who did not already agree with me. But, despite my plans, my seventh book has become an activist book, a voice of a prophet in the wilderness, from what the short-horizon leaders of the world economy think of as the extreme left.

This represents an almost complete departure from everything I wrote in previous years. Before, I was hoping to help change the world. Now, I just want those of you who care about the long-term well-being of humankind to feel a little better about the way you are living.

Trees are out; weeds are in. Happy New Year.

Climate Crisis: Where Should I Live?

Despite the recent passage of a Senate bill, the U.S. is still making almost no response to the challenge posed by global climate change.

Separate from this, I plan to move to northeastern France for family reasons. This by itself is a decisive reason for me to move there.

These situations have allowed me to think about where I would rather live—northeastern France vs. Oklahoma—during the upcoming inevitable worldwide climate crisis, and where I would prefer that my grandchildren grow up. These are personal reasons, but some of them may be useful to the rest of you. (I never post essays on this blog that are only of personal interest to me.)

(Photo from The Guardian)

A. Direct responses to climate change

1.     I want to live somewhere away from the coast, where sea level rise is already causing problems. Oklahoma and northeastern France are both equal in being far from the nearest coastlines. Conclusion: America is about the same as France in this regard.

2.     I want to live someplace that is not prone to floods or droughts. Again, Oklahoma and eastern France are equivalent in this regard. Both have occasional severe floods in recent years, as well as droughts and wildfires. In France, the wildfires are in the south. Conclusion: America is a little less safe than France in this regard.

3.     I want to live someplace where heat waves are currently brief. Here, northeastern France has the advantage that their canicules and vagues de chaud are shorter than in the U.S. Conclusion: America is a little less safe than France in this regard.

4.     I want to live someplace that is not utterly dependent on fossil fuels. Though Europe still largely depends on fossil fuels, such as gas from Russia, there are more alternative sources of energy there than in America, on a per-capita basis. This includes nuclear energy, which is common in France. The stresses of international energy politics will have less effect on France than on America in upcoming decades. Conclusion: America is a little less safe than France in this regard.

5.     I want to live someplace with robust agriculture, since droughts and storms will inevitably reduce agricultural production and national food security. American agriculture is famous for its agricultural output, but it is almost entirely dependent on fossil fuel inputs for energy and fertilizer, and to pump groundwater. An interruption of transportation would hobble American agriculture. France has a large agricultural output (it seemed to me that Lorraine was almost one big wheat field, and maize is common in Alsace). A major contributor to stability of food production is farmers’ markets, which are much more common in France than in America. However, agricultural production in France, even the wet part, has been hit strongly by recent droughts. Conclusion: America is a little less safe than France in this regard.

B. Indirect effects of climate change. As detailed in Christian Parenti’s book Tropic of Chaos, the world already has many threats to peace and security, and many of these are related to environmental disasters such as drought. Climate change will exacerbate these problems that already exist. For example, there will be even more climate refugees crossing national borders than at present.

1.     I want to live in a society in which people are willing to give up a little personal comfort for the common good. America is not such a place. Almost a third of Americans have refused to do anything, anything at all, to reduce the spread of covid. Fortunately, the public spirit of the remaining two-thirds (vaccines, masking, social distancing) has brought about the evolution of milder viruses.

a.      Would Americans be willing to use less air conditioning, less heating, or less water in order to prevent a society-wide shortage? I do not think so. Europe is already much more frugal in their use of resources than America, and, to compensate for the reduction in Russian gas supplies, has indicated a willingness to use  a further 15 percent less. In both places, whenever you flip a switch or turn on a faucet, it is called “demand,” as if you insist to the death on your right to use as much as you want, regardless of your neighbors. But in America it really is a demand. Conclusion: America is much less safe than France in this regard.

b.     In America, we insist on the right to create as much public nuisance as possible, especially noise and litter. My house in Oklahoma is right under a flight path for vintage airplanes, which fly low overhead all day every day and sometimes half the night. In Oklahoma, we have (by my repeated count) a hundred pieces of garbage for each mile of highway. France also has bruit and déchets sauvages, but not nearly as much. At least in northeastern France, people are quiet and polite, except in Paris. Conclusion: America is worse than France in this regard.

2.     I want to live someplace with lower crime. This is because, as economic stress spreads worldwide, crime will increase everywhere, and I want to start from a lower threshold. Clearly, France is safer in this respect. I want to live someplace with fewer guns. The French have few; but in Oklahoma, gun ownership is epidemic. It is illegal for a judge to order a mentally unstable person to be denied gun ownership. Recent Congressional legislation has helped a little. Conclusion: America is much less safe than France in this regard.

3.     I want to live in a society without underlying racism. Although northeastern France has Nazi sympathizers who occasionally spray-paint swastikas in public places, the U.S. also has this problem, in addition to frequent police shootings of blacks, and mass shootings that are absent from most other parts of the world. In France, Arabs are a minority with whom the dominant culture has friction. But in America, the friction between whites and blacks, and whites and Hispanics, is greater. France has no equivalent of the utter suppression of Native Americans. Racism, all over the world, will get worse. Conclusion: America is much worse than France in this regard.

4.     I want to live someplace with good public infrastructure. I look forward to not having to own a car or drive. In America, you pretty much need a car unless you live in a rest home. This will become more important as gas becomes more expensive. American infrastructure repair is more expensive than in France because France simply does not have as many big pickup trucks (I don’t remember seeing any), although they do have commercial trucks (les camions). Conclusion: America is worse than France in this regard.

5.     I want to live someplace that has no possibility of rulership by religious fundamentalists. So-called Christian Fundamentalists get their way on almost every issue in America, especially in Oklahoma, where a single fundamentalist teacher can get a whole school system downgraded. France has Fundamentalist Muslims, but they have no chance of controlling national politics. Conclusion: America is much less safe than France in this regard.

6.     I want to live in a country that is at peace with its neighbors. Europe is famous for its seamless union of nations. France’s problem with illegal immigration from the south, across the Mediterranean, is less than America’s problem with illegal immigration not only from Mexico but all of Central and South America, without a sea to slow it down. Illegal immigration will get worse with global warming, more so in America than in France. Conclusion: America is much less safe than France in this regard.

7.     I want to live in a country that is not threatened by Russia, led by the obviously insane Vladimir Putin. All of Europe is in danger from him, while America is protected by an ocean. However, Europe is less likely to be a Russian nuclear target. One of the top targets is right here in Oklahoma. Conclusion: America is about the same as France in this regard.

8.     I want to live in a country that is not totally dominated by major corporations. In France, corporations have more influence than individual citizens, but the problem is worse in America, where at least one corporation has stated (according to This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein) that global warming and its resulting threat of international conflict would be a great opportunity to sell weapons. Conclusion: America is much less safe than France in this regard.

One of the things I will miss about America is the number of spectacular places to travel, especially the diversity of natural areas. America has everything from deserts to forests to alpine tundra. But, fortunately, I did a lot of traveling before retirement age. I been everywhere, man. Now, though I am not elderly, I am old enough to find travel stressful. France has forests in the north and dry scrublands in the south, a much diminished range of landscapes than in America. Relative to area, both countries have about the same amount of beautiful coastline. In France, I can get to lots of nice places without a car. I would be really bummed out if I knew that, in moving to France, I’d never get to see the giant sequoias of California, of which France has no equivalent. Fortunately, I have walked among them about a dozen times. I’ll have to be content with the memories.

I would be moving to northeastern France with my family anyway. But, in a traumatic future of global climate change, I have found twelve ways in which France is at least a little better than America and two ways in which the two countries are equivalent. I found no examples in which France was worse.

There are numerous things about France that many Americans would not like, but which do not bother me. I can summarize these ways: “In France, taxes are high and life is good.”

Moving to a new country, with a new language, is difficult, and it is not a reasonable solution for most of you. But think about it.