Climate change is mostly no binary event. There is the risk of runaway effects, and possible extinction (though unlikely) but luckily we haven't hit those yet.

Climate change is mostly no binary event. There is the risk of runaway effects, and possible extinction (though unlikely) but luckily we haven't hit those yet. The political 2 degree goal is damage control. Climate models are complex and impacts harder to predict the more you divert from the current situation. At 2 degrees the costs to society (social costs of carbon) far outweigh the mitigation costs. To hit the 2 degree target we have to act swiftly "we don't have decades to fix this" we are not (yet) at a "point of no return" As green house gases are currently an externality, there will be no capital without activism. I am too young to look back decades, but my understanding was that the "we don't have decades to fix this" guys in the 80s and 90s were more about running out of oil(and that turned out to be no problem as rising prices make more expensive extraction feasible) and that climate change as a concern only really started in the 90s (even though known long before that). And there are already damages that could have been prevented by acting swiftly in the 90s. We could have reached e.g. a 1.5 degree target. So the "we don't have decades to fix this" rethoric is fitting as ever.