If you can tell me how mineral wealth from the asteroids is going to plausibly help us cope with environmental disasters here on Earth, I'd love to hear it. The only space-based proposals I've heard of so far are SPS, which strikes me as something we'll get to after we've already got a much larger renewable-energy base here on the ground (and which may use only Earth-sourced materials for a long time after that), and the swarm-of-objects-at-the-L1-point proposal for reducing incident sunlight as a quick fix for global warming, which is probably even farther in the future.
On the other hand, the only reason I object to things not being possible really soon is the sense of incredible urgency being pushed by the climate movement, which may well be pursuing a hopeless cause. But on the gripping hand, that cause is based on the same "wealth can solve everything" theory. For example, the book Plan B 4.0 from the Earth Policy Institute focuses on throwing enough money at the problem fast enough, explicitly neglecting considerations of political feasibility. I don't think wealth solves everything. In particular, mineral wealth is not likely to replace lost services from living ecosystems to any great extent.
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On the other hand, the only reason I object to things not being possible really soon is the sense of incredible urgency being pushed by the climate movement, which may well be pursuing a hopeless cause. But on the gripping hand, that cause is based on the same "wealth can solve everything" theory. For example, the book Plan B 4.0 from the Earth Policy Institute focuses on throwing enough money at the problem fast enough, explicitly neglecting considerations of political feasibility. I don't think wealth solves everything. In particular, mineral wealth is not likely to replace lost services from living ecosystems to any great extent.