We have much more control and certainty over the disaster we are in the process of creating than an extremely unlikely asteroid incident, over the same time frame.
We can 100% ensure a climate disaster, or nearly 100% mitigate the worst case.
The cost benefit analysis is clear. It costs less to mitigate climate change, and there are huge political and economic gains from removing our dependence on oil, rather than suffer unmitigated climate change.
The hard part is coordination. We have the resources and economic incentives as a whole to take the best path. But our political and economic systems are not as sophisticated, in terms of translating the benefits of change to individual actors, as the problem requires.
Externalized damage is profitable to powerful corporations, and even customers, in the short run. But we need political systems to more reliably set limits, AND provide the incentives, that would result in CFO’s at the most relevant corporations welcoming the change too.
To a first approximation, the transition from fossil fuels by fossil fuel companies will be set by those companies’ CFOs. Make it less profitable to stay with fossil fuels, and make it so profitable for energy companies to supply other forms of energy, that those CFO’s get on board and things will change very fast.
Share the economic value of a change with the most important players, as apposed to fighting them, and it will happen. Pragmatism wins.