Keynote: When the Climate System Tips

Will Steffen, the pioneering Earth system scientist who helped coin the concept of the Anthropocene, opened the event with a keynote on climate tipping points. Speaking from Canberra months after the city was threatened by unprecedented bushfires, he explained how melting ice sheets, collapsing forests and slowing ocean currents can trigger one another like dominoes and push Earth toward a “Hothouse Earth” state we can’t come back from.

We edited the talk’s narrative arc and redesigned Will’s slides. Because Will was presenting remotely, we coordinated a local film crew in Canberra so his video and audio would be broadcast quality, then edited the final keynote. The talk framed climate change as a systems-level emergency and gave the evening both its scientific foundation and its sense of urgency.