Threat is not certainty. If somebody is out there to kill you, you are under an existential threat, until they are caught. It's not a reason to start playing Russian roulette, saying "I'm already in danger, cannot get worse than that!"
I’m not saying this is a good way to think, just that it shows the fault in your logic.
You are conflating the cost of not extracting a fraction of a fraction of current production capacity with the risk ending human existence through changing systems we do not have anything close to a full understanding of nor precise control over.
Degrees of risk matter, in fact they are the whole point of GPs logic.
If you don’t have some measure of cost / benefits / risks, how can you reject a potential solution outright?
The answer is you can’t, so if you are doing so your reflex is based on emotion rather than reason.
I was just exposing a flaw in _your_ logic :-) You said:
> Existential threat means things can’t get worse
And I disagree, things can get a lot worse. You know, like replacing a threat with certainty...