Come on man - you're just employing your own brand of demagoguery with that statement. Sure, there are wealthy people lecturing about climate change, and some probably even have private jets, but you are not painting an accurate picture. This is not a bunch of ivory tower "elites", whatever the hell that word means (basically means any group populists want to turn into scapegoats). Thornburg is much more representative of the people who are passionate about this as a cause.

There is no getting started in any way that will seem like more than a tea cup bailing out the Titanic. The better analogy would be that the Titanic hasn't struck the iceberg yet, and there's still time, albeit not much (many think anyway), and so even if we can turn the Titanic a tiny fraction now, let's do it. even though there's a lot more turning to be done.

Gotta start moving the ship in the right direction. And I mean, the Paris Accords are purely symbolic (which doesn't mean they're not important), with no enforcement mechanism, so they can't punish anybody, fairly or unfairly.