Ten years? Just think of 60 years from now, a time that would be expected to be within the natural lifespan of children born today.
I don't know how people don't understand that we face, without exaggeration, an existential crisis.
I don't know how people don't understand that we face, without exaggeration, an existential crisis.
If you're so narcissistic/nihilistic/whatever as to fall into the latter group, what do you care? Appeals to future generations won't work on people who only care about themselves.
They also won't work on people who only care about next quarter's earnings, either, and that's another issue.
Climate change denialism has enormous overlap with the people who promote COVID denialism. Even before that crisis, they were responsible for creationism and anti-same-sex-marriage (which has since become legal without the world collapsing).
These aren't matters of opinion, values, or world-view. They're Just Plain Wrong. Nor am I talking about fringe opinions; these are political party platforms and talking points that candidates rely on to attract voters.
There are tons of other areas where I am quite certain they're wrong, but more importantly, they argue about them using the same poor forms that they use for climate change. They cherry-pick, they are manipulated by deliberate disinformation, and they place their own ignorance over knowledge.
That creates a hostile, toxic atmosphere in which there is no way for me to convince them, even on the things that are as conclusively scientific as it's possible for a thing to be. That makes it beyond impossible in areas where there might actually be room for legitimate disagreement.
So yeah, I care a lot about climate change, but not because I'll be alive, nor my direct descendants. The way we talk about climate change makes my life a lot worse, today. I believe that we've seen a deliberate inculcation of an anti-intellectual bent in the US that has become weaponized.
It doesn't happen overnight: https://www.kirkdurston.com/blog/unwin
I'm not a Christian either.
Let's say I'm rich and selfish and care only about things and not people. If I bother to look into the future, don't I have more real estate to lose than the poors, who might have one (or fewer!) homes to lose?
Your second point, that long term thinking is hard seems to be a bigger issue, even more so for anybody who is living paycheck-to-paycheck. It's too difficult to get rid of, eg, single use plastic in my life as an ordinary consumer. How do we set things up so the system is incentivized to change itself? Especially when the culture is opposed to any change in the first place.
Rich people can burn carbon to run their air conditioners. They can buy real estate on higher ground. So, no problem for them.