Climate change deserves to be the prime issue because we're accelerating towards very bad, very wide-ranging effects, that will eventually be irreversible (on t

Climate change deserves to be the prime issue because we're accelerating towards very bad, very wide-ranging effects, that will eventually be irreversible (on the time scale of human civilization). That's not true to anywhere near the same degree for any other global environmental issue. The primary way we might "soon" ruin a lot of our drinking water is through climate change, and even change that's far less significant than your 10 degrees remark.