A really bad economy will kill millions, perhaps even billions, and ruin the health of the planet far easier than anything else as society breaks down and people resort to depleting available resources far more rapidly and even stealing and ruining infrastructure to try and survive. We know what happens when people starve: there's no debate there.
But there's decades and decades of climate change predictions that have proven to be laughably false. Depending on how old you are, you'd have been subject to predictions about everything from a new ice age caused by pollution, to rapid global warming that would cause the ice caps to be long-gone by now or superstorms that would render much of the world uninhabitable, to acid rain making cities unlivable.
I've somehow survived all of that horror, and I'm fine taking my chances.
> You'd better be praying that some billionaire invests in....
If your solution is along these lines, then I'd say that prioritizing a healthy economy that can sustain life and have the resources to come up with these solutions is vital.
