Tipping Points in the Anthropocene: Crafting a Just and Sustainable Earth David C. Eisenhauer Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, USA david.eisenhauer@rutgers.edu Published 17 November 2017 The arrival of the Anthropocene entails an evolutionary tipping point that challenges basic precepts of political theory and modern science. Within this paper, emerging scholarship in political science, science and technology studies, and sustainability science are brought together to sketch out an approach for crafting more just and sustainable pathways in response to the crossing of critical thresholds in the Earth system. Accomplishing this task requires responding to the emerging reality of possibility, irreversibility, entanglement, and novelty that the Anthropocene and tipping points entail. I argue that grounding political projects in recognition of the unfolding and unpredictable terrain tipping points present allows for the opening of novel pathways toward a still possible just and sustainable planet. Keywords: Anthropocene; tipping points; politics; sustainability; political theory. 1. Introduction As the Earth system leaves the Holocene and enters the Anthropocene, tipping points and nonlinear change will become an increasingly urgent issue for the society. Tipping points are broadly defined as occurring when a critical threshold is crossed within a complex system and a discontinuous change unfolds (Lenton et al. 2008). While tipping points can be found at all spatial scales, recent research in Earth system sciences suggests that it should be “considered that we may have long since passed...an evolutionary “tipping point” to planetary change” (Lenton and Williams 2013, p. 382). Indeed, the arrival of the Anthropocene potentially represents such an evolutionary tipping point (Williams et al. 2015; Zalasiewicz et al. 2010) and challenges the presumption that the future of the Earth is analo- gous to the past (Waters et al. 2016). The past 10,000 years of human development J Extreme Events, Vol. 4, No. 1 (2017) 1750004 (21 pages) © World Scientific Publishing Company DOI: 10.1142/S234573761750004X 1750004-1 J. of Extr. Even. 2017.04. Downloaded from www.worldscientific.com by David Eisenhauer on 01/12/18. For personal use only.