re: Obviously...
The cliff analogy would be a good one except for a couple things.
First, it's not the person alive today who would walk off the cliff. It would be their grandchildren. Who they don't care about.
Second, you would be asking them to pay for a guardrail to be put in place to protect their grandchildren, whom they don't care about in the first place. And "pay" is not an option. After all, that guardrail would protect people who didn't pay for it, too, and that would not be fair.
They would rather drown than buy a life raft which would hold more than one person.
"How will it affect me?" That and that alone drives their assessements of the science.
Arf