We realized the powers with the most to gain short-term by continuing their global warming emissions weren't going to budge unless forced, and since government had already been captured long before I was born, no-one was going to force them.

So we knew even in the eighties, climate was going to kill us, but Reagan believed the biblical apocalypse was going to occur in his term via nuclear holocaust. But he wasn't willing to first strike and be personally responsible for hundreds of millions of casualties.

But he was so sure, he felt environmental conservation (what it was called then) was silly.