Climate change is what we deserve were the exact words I heard from an otherwise well educated and reasonable scientist. The logic was something like:

Climate has changed in the past. Yes there might be a significant change
lately but so has happened millennia ago, for natural reasons, like
volcanoes and other stuff. If you look at the long term climate, it's
full of variations. *Climate changes*

Therefore this change, that is doubtfully due to humans, is not really
worrisome. Climate changes and we have to deal with it. And if we are
the cause of it, more so. Why fight against the consequences we deserve?
We are too many, we harm the environment too much. If we indeed are the cause and we
disappear due to climate change, it's the natural thing. Like if we were a virus
and Earth needs to heal.  The earth will come back into its equilibrium afterwards.

This logic comes from a highly educated person, doing basic research science. And the fact is this is not the first time I hear a similar catastrophic argument of cosmic justice. On this particular case, few others around the table agreed on it.

I was passionate about arguing the validity of that logic, but besides trying to make the point of the flawed logic, it sent me an important message: The problem here is not the lack of information. The problem is inaction, and passivity, and our reasoning to get to the point we can justify that attitude. Something like reverse logic, where you know which conclusion you want to get, and you trace back why doing so makes sense (sounds familiar?).

I managed to let her see that our lifestyle is the problem, we, in the developed world, pollute, but those paying for it are others. The consequence of our actions are suffered by others. That doesn’t seem very just. This double inequality of climate change is one of reasons for doing adaptation, specially in the developing world: The ones polluting the most are typically the ones suffering the least consequences. The ones most aware tend to be the ones that can do the least.

Furthermore, polluting (carbon-based development) is an important factor to change to “the other side”, to develop an economy and become more resilient. This “right to pollute” is the core of the Kyoto Protocol. Those who have benefited from that polluting phase want to avoid others doing the same and further pollute the environment, so the idea is for the developed world to pay the developing world for their missed opportunity to develop at the cost of emissions, and thus help leapfrog directly into the kind of green development most of the developed world itself has not reached yet. This is done creating an artificial market of emissions, where countries trade as they need. I won’t go into the Kyoto protocol here, but basically it doesn’t work because countries are not willing to sign it and enforce it, specially the ones that would need to pay. Too much political and economical cost.