"There are legitimate and worthy reasons for which we should clean up our act. Climate change and saving the planet just happen not to be among them. Because it is impossible without violating the rules of physics."

As for reducing the magnitude of, as you put it, future damage, I very much doubt this is possible as well.

Loose quote from a research paper released by Google many years ago: Even if we were to deploy the most optimal forms of renewable and clean energy sources at a global scale, not only will this not reverse the problem, atmospheric CO2 will continue to rise.

Part of our reality is inescapable. For example, massive forest fires drive more CO2 into the atmosphere than lots of human activity. Around the world, there are fires in mines that have been burning for centuries (google it, you'll be surprised). Etc. We are kidding ourselves if we think that a bunch of measures that are but rounding errors at a planetary scale will have any impact at all in, as I like to put it, anything even remotely resembling a human time scale.

There are things we can do (and probably should do) that I think are likely to make for better and cleaner life all around without the fantasy of saving the planet or reversing climate.

One example of this is to seriously address the massive pollution created by container ships travelling our oceans every day. These ships burn bunker fuel, perhaps the worst thing one could burn. The stuff is horrible and the pollution it creates goes far beyond just CO2. I also learned that they contribute to something called "species pollution". They ingest all sorts of marine life into the ballast tanks at port A and pump it out at port B, transporting species clear across the planet, where they can and have done serious damage.

How to address container ships is a subject that requires serious discussion. It's a complex multivariate problem. Would all-electric ships be better? Massive hydrofoils (for more efficient transport)? Wind has been tried, it isn't as much help as one might think. Another optimization vector would be to eliminate them by distributing the production of material goods closer to their points of consumption. In other words, eliminate container ships (unlikely) or reduce the fleet by only transporting materials that cannot be sourced at the point of manufacture.

Again, these are complex problems. Their resolution, as a first step, requires leaving fantasy-land to then be able to discuss, evaluate and address reality. Only then will we we able to improve life, clean-up our act and live better. The value in these three desirable outcomes is self-evident to the point that they do not need to be justified by some fantastical imaginary doomsday scenario where all life on earth ceases to exist in, as some politicians have suggested, a dozen years.

I am all for being far better about how we behave on this planet. My problem is with creating a religion out of fantasies. Reality does not care about these things and keeps moving forward. It's almost like like stock market.