evidence: For the set of likely future scenarios we face today, the climate science literature has not identified any approaching global tipping point after which runaway climate change intensifies beyond humanity’s ability to arrest it. While tipping elements of the climate system—like Arctic permafrost thaw and loss of Amazon forest area—do influence total warming, the magnitude of this influence is substantially smaller than the societal factors that will ultimately determine the planet’s climate trajectory. [...] Looking ahead, the key message that the scientific community and climate advocates should reinforce is that humanity will always have chief agency over the climate. There is no tipping point beyond which Mother Earth wrestles control of the whole climate system away from human beings and proceeds to punish us for our sins. [...] On top of this, candidate members of the tipping elements club have shifted as scientific understanding of different Earth system components has progressed. For instance, some researchers once proposed the possibility of abrupt future decline in Arctic summertime sea ice, but this hypothesis has faded, with subsequent research reinforcing the conclusion that Arctic summer sea ice declines steadily in proportion to increasing greenhouse gas emissions. Similarly, theories that projected substantial abrupt state shifts in monsoon circulation or the El Niño cycle have largely been laid to rest. Papers from a decade ago raised alarm at the possibility that huge amounts of methane could bubble out of the ocean with apocalyptic consequences. But we now understand that frozen methane buried deep in seafloor sediments responds only slowly and gradually to warming, releasing a trickle of atmosphere-warming methane over centuries and millennia.