I'll fully concede it's an exaggerated straw man.

I won't concede the basic idea behind it as there's a push to enact environmental policy that had massive economic impacts that will cause heaps of problems. Like California's 2030 gasoline car ban will since the alternative technology isn't yet viable for the mass market and will see a huge increase and disruption of the automotive and transportation industries further alienating poor people from larger society and increasing the relative class disparities that are ever widening, which will further hurt the ability to pass effective environmental policy, and exasperate the problem over the long term in exchange for short term political gains.

This is possible because many voters who don't well understand the economy do well understand the concept that pollution is bad and that keeping the environment stable is ultimately more important than the economy. However without a good understanding of both economics and climate science they'll typically fall into the mass media to form their own opinions and the mass media is beholden to capitalist pressures to simply write sensationalist stories as they sell better than to write more accurate scientific information which is boring as fuck.

This leads to a situation where your average schmuck buys the "all life might end" sensationalist nonsense hook line and sinker so they believe economically crippling policies are their only salvation. Or they smell the journalistic bullshit and throw it all out the window. Politicians are waiting in the wings to capitalize on both extremes.

Most of the truly inane babblings are to be found on social media vs anywhere but if you want to see examples of the kind of sensationalist stories put forth you need only to open CNN on any given day in August when it's hot and those stories do well. For more extreme examples see shit like

https://www.space.com/venus-runaway-greenhouse-effect-earth-next.html

Somehow earth gains 90x atmospheric volume in the science fiction imagination of dumb internet users.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/01/climate-endgame-risk-human-extinction-scientists-global-heating-catastrophe

Climate change might kill everyone.

Reason it's under explored is because it's a rediculous notion.

Long term climate change has serious implications that need to be taken seriously. But a lack of good science education has led to a society of histeronic nincompoops who believe that the Hollywood fantasies are realistic outcomes and not sensationalist drivel.

Go to Reddit or YouTube comment sections and you'll find no shortage of people who truly believe climate change will lead to human extinction within their lifetimes. They're retarded. Even if the Earth's temperature raised something like 10 degrees tomorrow, while the effects would be devasting to civilization there is not way it would cause human extinction.

What we are looking at is a slow boil of maybe 3 degrees by the end of the century by worst case estimates. That's very bad for certain regions, that shouldn't be ignored, but the instant you do dumb shit that destroys the economy to fix it you utterly emaciate your ability to make long term effective policy changes. Case in point, Sri Lanka's recent coup. Government collapsed can no longer enforce climate policy, worse outcome than if they did nothing at all.