Quite frankly, that is why democracy will fail us. Most Americans will do just about anything to avoid their income falling for 10-20 years but do just about nothing to avoid the global climate from torpedoing the world's biomes, food production systems, weather patterns, coastlines and coastal cities, decimating species diversity, etc. over 10-100 years.

We could be saved by technological or business breakthrough from an individual, or we could be saved by authoritarianism, but the preference you just described is why we're probably fucked if we hope for a political solution in western democracies (at least the US).