When it significantly impacts the daily lives of uneducated Americans.

Educated people around the world already want to do something. Uneducated people outside America already want to do something (because their governments are on board.) It is uneducated Americans -- and their president -- that is going to do us all in.

This means the survival of the planet depends on our ability to communicate with and convince uneducated Americans. That's hard. Al Gore tried long ago with his movie.

It's sort of delusional to say that un-educated people and Trump are the problem. Educated people have vastly huger carbon footprints than non-educated people, thinking globally. Is it the poor people in Africa and Southern/Southeastern Asia that are to blame, or is it the rich people who literally use 10X or 100X more carbon emission in their daily lives? What about the historical emissions of our ancestors - I know mine as an American/WASP are HUGE considering all the cars/planes/meat that have been consumed by my ancestors. Compare that to a line of subsistence farmers in other countries. While I believe in climate change, it doesn't matter, I'm still on the hook for FAR more historical emissions than those un-educated people.

Carbon emissions are going up globally, carbon emissions went up in the USA, slightly different political environments won't change the reality that the vast majority of people, societies, and companies have done far less than they need to already. We can't fool ourselves into thinking a democratic presidential win in 2020 will stop this crisis, it simply won't be enough by any rational view of the emissions already out and coming out every day. Even the favorite policy of democrats/progressives, the carbon tax, got voted down in multiple progressive-state reforanda.

In summary, it feels good to point the finger of blame at the current political regime, but the reality is very little is being done anywhere except for pockets of hope like Norway, California, Iceland, Hawaii, which are NOT enough to balance out historical emissions and rising emissions in China, India, etc.

>Educated people have vastly huger carbon footprints than non-educated people, thinking globally.

But the resistance to doing something about it is not coming from educated people, at least in the US.

Regarding India and China, their governments are on board and they are making progress: https://qz.com/india/1475736/india-is-now-a-world-leader-in-... https://www.forbes.com/sites/dominicdudley/2019/01/11/china-...

You live in a fantasy world if you think uneducated people outside America give two fucks about global warming.

Most uneducated people outside America live worse lives than uneducated people in America, so they have much more important and immediate things to care about than global warming.

Outside America the governments are on board. The only country not in Paris Accord is the USA (which also happens to be, historically, the biggest contributor to global warming).

> When it significantly impacts the daily lives of a majority of relatively economically comfortable people, and not a second earlier.

By then it will be too late.

Majority of which people?

Honduras is being impacted. Our reaction in the USA is to block the refugees fleeing famine and drought from reaching us and “invading”. Similarly with Europe and African refugees.

A significant portion of those "refugees" are seeking safety from problems that can be solved at home, not famine.