No, I am just commenting that it only makes rational sense to ignore a doomsday-type problem if there is no way to avoid it.
For example, we all know we are going to die at some point. It is inevitable, and nothing we do is going to prevent us from eventually dying. Because there is nothing we can do, it makes sense for us to ignore the problem, and possibly even to delude ourselves that we will live forever. There is no cost, since we are going to die eventually no matter what we tell ourselves.
However, with climate change, there ARE steps we can take today to prevent the catastrophe. Therefore, there is no rationalization for ignoring the problem.
I know human brains don't work rationally, though, but I thought it was useful to make the distinction.
Ah, well, when I say "climate denialism is an obvious coping mechanism" I don't mean that people are rationally thinking about the situation and deciding to put their heads in the sand. I think it is "Denial" in the Freudian sense:
> The same word, and also abnegation (German: Verneinung), is used for a psychological defense mechanism postulated by psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, in which a person is faced with a fact that is too uncomfortable to accept and rejects it instead, insisting that it is not true despite what may be overwhelming evidence.
BTW, I think human brains do work rationally to the extent that the world is rational, because they are evolved organs. But human personalities or minds are not necessarily consciously deliberately rational. Like how computers must use physics on the hardware level but can be programmed to model impossible physics in a simulated virtual world.
