(…) a group of 160 scientists from 23 countries announced that the planet has already reached its first major tipping point: the widespread death of warm-water coral reefs. That’s due primarily to rapidly rising marine temperatures — the seas have absorbed 90 percent of the excess heat we’ve created — but also the acidification that comes from more atmospheric CO2 interacting with water. (This interferes with corals’ ability to build the protective skeletons that form the complex structure of a reef.) Since the late 1980s, ocean surface warming has quadrupled. Accordingly, in the last half century, half of the world’s live coral cover has disappeared.

Yes, a tipping point may be a metaphorical cliff, but all is not lost for the world’s corals — if humanity accelerates the translation to clean energy. “The race is on,” Smith said during the press conference, “to transform the entire energetic basis of society within a generation — it’s never been done before — away from fossil fuels and over-exploitation and toward a cleaner, safer future in time to avoid further tipping points and the devastating consequences they will bring.”