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.
We of course already have the technology to address climate change, with the solutions largely unchanged since we acknowledged the severity of the problem over 50 years ago. The only real innovation that has occurred over that time period has been the fossil fuel industry's innovative media strategy to sow doubt and remove their own culpability.
But I think what's most pernicious about framing climate change as some as-yet-unsolved problem of engineering is that it casts any current action as a waste of time, effort, and resources. This line of thinking means that the comparatively complex tasks of converting our grid to renewables and electrifying our transport systems, for instance, would all be wasted once Elon Musk invents some magic box that cancels climate change. What's deliberately ignored here is any positive effect these changes can make beyond abating global warming - electrifying transport alone reduces pollution, lowers traffic, and expands a citizen's range of travel, amongst other benefits. We can solve plenty of additional problems on the road to reverse climate change, especially ones that likely won't be innovated away by whatever this silver bullet is supposed to be.
TL;DR, this comic from 2009