"We face a planetary emergency"

Gore in Movie Campaign to Protect Earth

"My whole objective here is to try to move the country past a tipping point, beyond which politicians in both parties compete with each other for genuinely meaningful solutions ... and to change the minds of the American people to the point where people in both parties demand action," he said.

So, let me ask people a question. When I was in Ireland last summer (for academic purposes only, of course), one of my professors, in what I thought of as reasonably casual conversation, alluded to the possibility of changes in the Gulf Stream due to climate change that would then have dramatic negative effects on Irish weather.

I don't seem to have those kinds of casual conversations with people here in the US, unless they're already people who care about climate change as a 'specialized' issue rather than a general one that every man-woman-child-pet-on-the-street should care about.

So, how close are we to this tipping point Al Gore wants to get us past? And is the rest of the world well past it?