A tipping point is where a small change can have a big impact. Tipping points can be times of danger, but also of opportunity and possibility. Because small changes can lead to a big impact, that means each of us can have a significant role to play in history.
This time of year, at the equinox, when day and night are in balance, a small change in the amount of sunlight brings about a whole new reality. Leaves change color and fall off the trees. Birds take off and fly thousands of miles south. Perhaps the most fundamental of tipping points on this planet, is 32 degrees Fahrenheit, when water turns to ice. At this temperature, a drop of a half a degree can send cars skidding across the road. This tipping point is not just metaphorical; it is part of physical reality.
The pagans are onto something when they see this time of the equinox as a season of important change, of rebalancing, a time for taking stock. Elections are the way we take stock as a country. Perhaps it is no coincidence that we hold our elections in the fall.
This election is a time for each of us to take stock of the tipping points we face as a nation, as a democracy, and as a planet, to consider what is at stake, and decide what we will do, what impact we will have.
There are many things at stake in this election, from abortion rights to immigration to foreign policy. But there are two issues effectively on the ballot where we face potentially irreversible tipping points: democracy and climate change.
I’m sure it’s not news to you that democracy and our planet are both in crisis. Both of these have already been areas of focus for our congregation. But the tipping points involved now mean that systems could change in such a powerful way that it may be very difficult to ever go back. What I want you to also consider is not just the peril in these tipping points, but the promise as well. In both areas, we may well encounter tipping points that can take us sharply in a positive direction. The outcome of this election could, perhaps surprisingly, push our politics and our struggle against climate change into an unprecedented new and blessed reality, from which there will also be no going back.
Climate scientists have raised concerns about several tipping points that could become self-reinforcing. For instance, scientists think there is nearly twice as much carbon frozen in the Arctic permafrost as there is in the Earth’s entire atmosphere. If substantial quantities start to melt, that will be very bad, because the carbon released will make the planet warmer, which will cause more carbon to be released, which will make the planet warmer, which will. . . Well, you get the idea.
Despite the dangers and everything we know, human beings still sent more carbon into the atmosphere last year than ever before. Climate scientists say we need to act now and make big changes within a decade.
The United States and the world now recognize the climate problem, at least to some extent. There have been real steps forward. Three years ago, by a margin of one vote in the Senate, the U.S. passed the largest and most sweeping climate bill in its history, which is leveraging money for our energy transition here at home and providing a model and incentive for the same internationally. At least eight countries are now considered carbon neutral. As of last November, about 145 countries, which account for close to 90 percent of global emissions, had announced or are considering net zero targets, mostly by 2050. Last year, one in six new vehicles sold in the U.S. was a hybrid or electric vehicle.
The tipping point on clean energy may have already arrived. Since 2008, the cost of a wind turbine has fallen more than 50% and the cost of solar panels has fallen by more than 90 percent. Wind and solar are now cheaper than any form of fossil fuels, even from fracking, and the costs of producing wind and solar energy are expected to keep falling. The entrepreneurs with money know this and are acting on this knowledge. Last year, more of the electricity generated in the U.S. came from renewable energy from wind, solar, and hydro, than came from coal.
Tom Steyer, the billionaire investor and climate activist writes: “Most people don’t realize it, but in America, the clean energy projects that have already been proposed could account for 80 percent of the energy our country needs. That’s a huge accomplishment – and it means that producing enough renewable energy to get to net-zero emissions is well within our reach.”
Unfortunately, depending on the outcome of this election, at a time when we can ill afford it, much of the momentum toward change could be undone and important policies and programs be rolled back.
On the political side, I don’t need to catalog for you all the ways in which one of the candidates has openly declared that he will undercut democracy. Once substantially weakened or twisted, democracy may be hard to get back. That makes this election a tipping point.
But this election could be a tipping point in the other direction as well.
The US is approaching a demographic tipping point. In the 1950s, non-Hispanic whites made up 90 percent of the U.S. population. Today that number is about 60 percent, and projections are that in 20 years, non-Hispanic whites will make up less than 50 percent of the population. This is already the case in at least seven states, including Maryland. For some, this change is disquieting, even scary, posing a threat to self-image and to long-held power structures. Can we, in this election, show politicians that stoking this fear by demonizing immigrants as criminals and job-stealers and casting doubt on the integrity of our elections is no longer a winning strategy?
As historian Robert Kaplan writes: “Today, the forces of anti-liberalism can see that time, demographics, and the system are all working against them. The complexion of the country has changed too much. White supremacy, as a political platform, is losing viability as the white population dwindles. Their only option, as anti-liberal intellectuals . . . argue, is to overthrow the system now, in the 2024 election.”
If our democratic institutions persist through this election, the demographic tide may wash away the political hopes of the Christian Nationalists. We can get to a place where we have, for the first time, a truly multi-cultural, multi-racial democracy.
Elections, including this one, offer the possibility that a small number of votes can serve as tipping points. When I was growing up in New Hampshire, there was a U.S. Senate race in 1974 between Louis Wyman and John Durkin that came down to two votes.
And within elections, there are tipping points. The Electoral College system creates many potential tipping points. The 2000 presidential election was decided by about 500 votes in Florida and one vote on the U.S. Supreme Court.
It is not an exaggeration to say that this presidential election – and the future of democracy and the climate – could come down to 17,000 votes in Pennsylvania, or roughly the population of Takoma Park.
And you can make a difference. After this service, Florence Fultz and others will be hosting a table in the back of the sanctuary that offers a variety of opportunities for getting involved. You can write letters or postcards to voters, make phone calls or send texts, give money, talk with your friends and family to make sure they have a plan to vote, or knock on doors to help get out the vote. This is literally mobilizing for our collective liberation.
I want to leave you with these words from the conclusion of Malcolm Gladwell’s book, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference.
“Look at the world around you. It may seem like an immovable, implacable place. It is not. With the slightest push—in just the right place—it can be tipped.”
So go forth and tip the scales of history.