Trust me, it gets annoying to a lot of us over here too.
I do not believe that. I believe that other species are at risk of extinction, or indeed extinct already, but I think we have enough of a technological and intellectual advantage to avoid extinction. Probably not casualties in the hundred of millions, though.
> I'm still a bit skeptical, in part because of the number of people in actual power who say they believe same thing, but then propose to "fix it" by raising taxes and then not doing anything climate related with all that new tax revenue.
“I am doubtful because politicians do not take it seriously” is not really sound. What your experience shows (rightly, in my opinion) is that a lot of politicians are opportunists with flexible principles, not that the situation is not serious.
And if Roosevelt sat around waiting for all the unconvinceable to be convinced, and didn't enact lendlease, maybe UK and USSR would have fallen and US would face the Axis alone.
Many Americans felt the same way about Hitler and Japan while the Holocaust was happening. It wasn't untill Perl harbour that the penny dropped.
Plenty of people did just that. You can start with the IPCC reports. A lot of think tanks also published reports focused on specific countries. Not knowing is not an excuse, particularly when so much noise has been made on the subject and so much information is available.
> I have heard a lot of people insist that we need to raise taxes and redistribute wealth to social justice causes in the name of combatting climate change, though.
We (the rest of the world) by and large do not care about your culture wars. The fact that saving the goddamn climate we rely on is somehow controversial is maddening. You collectively sound like children arguing about who started and who’s the meanest.