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.
The succdem government in my country made a bold ten year plan to handle climate change and cut emissions in half.
The plan is to follow a "hockey stick model" where you do fuckall for eight years and then surely someone smart and innovative will have invented a magic machine that makes it possible to do it all within the last two years. Meanwhile they're funding new highway construction and the climate minister is making a fool of himself doing toe-curlingly "funny" YouTube videos about fighting climate change by putting a little grated carrot in your meatballs.