I'm trying to find a good way to articulate how stupid and dangerous this attitude is that you see from enlightened centrists - that climate change is real, but we don't have to do anything drastic (i.e. costly) this moment because we'll "innovate our way out of it" because "we've always done it."
This can sound true-ish because of past existential crises that were resolved through technological innovations, for example, World War II and the Space Race. But what is missing is the urgency that's actually needed to do anything meaningful. It's like if FDR said "we need to defeat the Nazis but that costs too much, here's my plan for defeating half of the Nazis over the next 50 years" or if JFK said "we're going to put a man on the moon by 2010".
Also, since an actual solution would require a great deal of global cooperation and coordination, I don't think there's any scenario where the US is capable of addressing climate change in any meaningful way.
I think a lot of liberal-minded people get caught up in the "end of history" mindset where everything exists along static, cleanly defined lines when thinking about climate change. In this thinking, climate change WILL be a problem but isn't quite yet, and once it is a problem a solution will present itself to completely solve the problem and we won't have to worry about it anymore.
But obviously this isn't the case, climate change is already here and already destroying people's lives and environments in ways that can't be restored. It's just the most severe effects right now are felt by the least privileged and most ignored. To accept idea that "we will just solve it later" also tacitly accepts the vast amounts of human suffering and untold damage to the environment that will happen between now and then.
For me, the question isn't whether we will or will not survive climate change, even in the worst case scenario I think humans will survive and the environment will eventually heal, but rather how much we are going to lose and suffer for the sake of corporate profits.