On the contrary, long term issues are not likely to be a huge problem, if you factor investment, innovation and technical improvements. It's not like the world is static and nothing is going to happen in the coming 50 years.

Let me remind you at that in the early 20th century everyone was seriously worried that humanity might starve to death once we reach 1 billion people. And we are now more than 7, and no starvation is in sight. That was a long term problem that basically disappeared completely.

It's not obvious the problem is solved, it may only be delayed.

I presume, though, that you're opposed to e.g. a heavy carbon tax. You can use that same line to sweep the downsides of it under the rug--after all, a carbon tax will drive innovation toward green tech.

It's a kind of technological nihilism that says that technology will fix everything. In the real world, we have to consider concrete costs and benefits.

In the long term, we are far poorer if we don't address climate change.

* hold that technology will fix everything, but

* oppose a carbon tax, which would give a market incentive to technology aimed at fixing this

It's not even consistent with market principles. We have the income tax, a massive distortion in the economy. We could replace much of this with a carbon tax.

To the extent that carbon use is absolutely necessary (read: inelastic), the tax will be passed on transparently. It'd be theoretically efficient in the same sense a land tax is efficient.

To the extent that carbon use isn't necessary (read: elastic), it'd drive people to substitute it for something else.

Even efficiency of implementation is trivial compared to income tax. The government knows where companies are extracting fossil fuels, and it knows which companies are extracting fossil fuels, and fossil fuel extraction requires large amounts of hard-to-move capital.

Policy-wise it's as pure an economic win as we can imagine in this world of ours, as we'd be moving away from distortionary income taxation.