[jascii]

"but the impending end of the world seems like a more pressing concern". While climate change may lead to a mass extinction event that will likely wipe out a lot of species, including our own, it will not likely lead to the end of the world. Isn't it the short term thinking you are advocating here that lead us into this situation to begin with?

[wrfitch]

Planet Earth will continue to exist and the natural world may eventually recover, but a manmade extinction event and the possible extinction of human life is a good enough definition of "the end of the world" for me, though perhaps I should have said "the end of the human world". I agree that it's not worth fixing climate change at the expense of the future, but the situation is bad enough that fixing it is worth some level of risk - we had the time for a methodical, considered approach to climate change when we found out about it decades ago, and we didn't do anything.

I also think the decision to accept some long-term risks to alleviate the (frankly terrifying) short/medium-term dangers we face is very different to the decision to exploit natural resources in service of the industrial revolution.