Global warming had long been discussed as an abstract matter of physics and chemistry. Only in the 1990s did the more tangible costs caused by natural catastrophes come into focus. The key corporate actors to advance this damage and risk perspective on climate change and corroborate it with data – reinsurance companies – have largely been overlooked in the literature. Drawing on expert interviews, hitherto confidential archival sources and text analysis, this paper traces how the two largest reinsurers have made sense of climate change and become important voices in creating awareness of man-made climate change. It underscores their unique role as both producers and translators of climate change knowledge and highlights the thorny and even subjective nature of interpreting climate-related data. This sheds new light on the history of climate change knowledge and raises important questions about the role of business actors.
The tipping point concept, widely recognized within the natural sciences, is experiencing a resurgence in social studies. The emerging field sees growing insights about characteristics and mechanisms of social system tipping; however, much disagreement remains. This includes whether social tipping points can be anticipated – determining its political relevance, as anticipation is essential for actions to intentionally trigger tipping. We address this disagreement and propose a framework which operationalises socio-technical tipping across subsystems and elements to anticipate tipping points, illustrated in two case comparisons. We show that whereas the transition to electric cars in Germany has started but is not about to tip, especially not regarding normative and regulatory regime factors, the same transition in Norway is about to tip, but still requires international car markets to tip before the sectoral transition is tipped and complete. Similarly, we show that the transition to a PV-based renewable power system in Germany has progressed strongly, both regarding technology and regime factors, but the system has not yet tipped: further efforts reforming infrastructure and regulation are essential. Hence, our findings emphasise the notion that while technological progress holds significance, it represents only one facet among several that must align for a system to undergo a tipping point.