Tackling climate change means transforming the entire economy. But each action toward that future isn’t equal: a specific set could act as “super leverage points” that would have outsize positive impact.

Transitions take effort, but when they reach a certain tipping point, they can suddenly get much easier. Whenever shifts from one technology to another have happened—horse-and-buggies to cars, or film cameras to digital, or landlines to smartphones—they reach a critical point when consumers “decide they want the new thing and not the old thing,” he says. Manufacturers decide they should only make the new product, and investors stop investing in the outdated product. New products go from niche to commonplace.

“The question is, how might we find those tipping points in the technology transitions that we have to go through to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions and avoid dangerous climate change?” he says. “And surprisingly, that’s not what economists have been advising governments to look for so far. Instead, they’ve come up with very different ideas, like you should try and work out how much the whole of climate change costs.”

Crossing one tipping point can lead to a “tipping cascade”—meaning it speeds up progress in other areas, according to the report, which was produced by the systems change company Systemiq along with the University of Exeter and the Bezos Earth Fund. It highlights three key actions, or “super leverage points,” that could help catalyze those changes:

ZERO-EMISSION VEHICLE MANDATES

The shift to electric cars needs multiple types of support, including incentives and new networks of EV chargers. But government mandates that require car manufacturers to sell more EVs could force brands to move faster to make the vehicles. More production would then push prices down, which would increase demand.

With faster growth in EVs, battery production would also scale up. If EV adoption grew to 60% of global passenger vehicle sales by the end of the decade (something that could be possible with a push from China, the U.S., and the EU), it could mean 10 times more battery production. That could push battery costs down by 60%. Cheaper batteries could then help renewable energy reach its next tipping point. Wind and solar are already cheap, but the next step will be for the combination of renewables and battery storage to reach price parity with fossil fuels.

That would also create a positive feedback loop: As electricity gets cheaper, it would get cheaper to charge cars, increasing demand for EVs even more—and further reducing battery costs. Electric cars could also double as energy storage for the grid, helping wind and solar grow. And cheaper renewable energy could also speed up the transition to electric heat pumps in homes. All of the increased demand for electricity would also lower electricity costs, creating another positive feedback loop that accelerated the uptake of EVs and other electric-powered clean tech.

PUBLIC PROCUREMENT OF PLANT-BASED PROTEIN

In another key leverage point, governments could start buying more meat and dairy alternatives for government offices, schools, prisons, and other institutions. That could mean a significant increase in demand for plant-based brands—for example, in the U.K. alone, government institutions spend 2.4 billion pounds (the equivalent of $2.97 billion) on food each year. That demand could help manufacturers reach economies of scale that bring down the cost of the products.

Public procurement could help double the market share for alt protein in 2035, from 10% to 20%, the report suggests. With less demand for beef and other animal products, hundreds of millions of hectares of land (equal to more than twice the volume of acres) would become available. It would make reforestation possible and also make it easier to protect existing forests that are threatened by expanding agriculture.