When I say about confusion in climate discussions (like elsewhere in the thread), I talk about precisely this. You arrived at the correct (IMO) conclusion that the primary and pressing issue with environmental damage is that systems humans depend on to live may collapse at some point, possibly quite suddenly. But in comments upthread, you argued about moral issues of letting species die. Those are two very separate problems! One of them is an issue of conscience, the other is an impending catastrophe that threatens to kill a lot of people and make even more suffer, and could likely be a civilization-ending process. I think bundling them together (which is common) is making people in general less receptive to the changes that need to be done.