"irreversible shift" is a correct and usable expression in written English.
It is used to describe a change that is unable to be reversed or altered. For example: "The recent economic instability has caused an irreversible shift in the global markets."
But I think there is an irreversible shift of attitude under way here.
Rather than denying this irreversible shift, we'd be better off trying to find ways of living with it.
They distrust talk of an irreversible shift from a public system for higher education to a "market" one.
There are what came later to be called 'Bennite' slogans: the 'massive and irreversible shift of power to working people'.
It is not often that a phrase lives on through the decades because it captures a seismic and irreversible shift in the cultural and political mood.
The business models of the big four are under attack from new competition, fast-changing technology and a seemingly irreversible shift in shopping habits.
Our findings showcase that prior site occupancy (up to 10 yr) by prairie dogs did not induce irreversible shifts in vegetation state in this semiarid grassland.
DALLAS — Faced with profound and seemingly irreversible shifts, the legal profession is contemplating radical changes to its educational system, including cutting the curriculum, requiring far more on-the-ground training and licensing technicians who are not full lawyers.
"As the global landscape is undergoing profound irreversible shifts, the calculated free-Internet scheme is just one step of a U.S. tactic to preserve its hegemonic domination," Yan Xuetong, who heads the Institute of International Studies at Beijing's Tsinghua University, said in the article.
This particular spontaneous arrangement of the vegetation optimizes the use of the scarce water resources and could be imitated to restore vulnerable ecosystems; at the same time, the patterns of vegetation act as an early warning signal of the fact that fragile ecosystems may suddenly undergo irreversible shifts, thus, they deserve a special attention.
Changes in the disaster risk governance system during and following a protracted crisis can therefore be characterised in terms of their stability, from temporary alterations to permanent, irreversible shifts.
