Fusion power will continue to be high on our agenda and it should but it should never be seen as a solution for climate change because that is wishful thinking. Fixing climate change has a much tighter timescale than we can expect for fusion power.
That being said, my mind was stuck in Animat's state as well for a long time, mainly because of neutron flux. Neutrons were the ultimate end boss at the end of the goal by laughing at your fusion progress and just destroying every containment that comes their way. What excites me these days are modern contenders like HB11 Energy and Helion Fusion jumping directly to aneutronic fusion.
This is the stuff most physicists didn't dare to dream of as of late, mostly because they weren't even close to sustaining the simplest D-T reactions for long, and aneutronic fusion takes even considerately hotter and denser plasmas — as well as being plagued by fuel availability concerns (HE3). But it's something that's within reach due to massive advances in ultra-short laser technology, coil breakthroughs and some other clever hacks like breeding HE3 on site.
That, combined with the other advance of direct electrical harvest instead of thermic conversion puts fusion into territories of believable reach for the first time in my mind. After decades of disappointedly following the status quo, I'm getting seriously excited.
Is anyone actually saying “let’s not do anything and keep pumping carbon into the atmosphere because fusion is almost here!” ?
I mean I’m sure you can find someone saying it (like anything) but there’s no reason to argue against an imaginary opposing viewpoint which isn’t being expressed.
What’s actually happening is people like to argue against things because naysaying is fun and people genuinely don’t really have a solid concept of what progress is being made and what progress is still needed, but go on with their vague impressions and defend their ideas anyway (and often against imaginary opponents).
Long before the natural world experiences a phase change, civilization will collapse. While that will radically reduce carbon output, it seems like a thing to prevent.