The idea that we can only mitigate is insane. Yes we've already signed up for a lot of pain as a civilization, but as long we keep burning fossil fuels we are looking at an increasingly worse future.

It's not like a smoker who has gotten lung cancer, where the best we can do is try to ease the pain, and more smoking won't really matter.

The biggest first step in preventing the worse case is to be able to point to an established oil field and say "that will never be extracted, and will remain in the earth for at least a 1000 years."

Every ton of carbon we can keep in the ground that way, the better of our future, even if that future is already slated to be bad.