Look, there are "some people" who believe all sorts of crap - quite a few still believe that NASA faked the moon landings! I just don't see that as a sound basis for forming an argument - particularly as you didn't make clear that you were addressing rather extreme and less common views, thereby implying that the argument in favour of keeping climate as close as possible to pre-industrial levels was fundamentally and critically infected by a silly, sentimental conservatism. I've been around the environmental movement for thirty years and I can't say I've ever actually encountered the view you purport to have seen - it's more the province of anti-vaxers and their ilk.
Obviously we won't really be able to get back precisely to an eighteenth century climate, even if that WAS our naive goal - the thing is we need to stay as close as we possibly can to that situation, as our entire civilisation and all its cities and infrastructure were built to work in that world.
If you consider what's happening with natural disasters, agriculture and so forth, there are no positives emerging from the changes of the last couple of centuries - and there certainly aren't any in the foreseeable pipeline. Trying to spin it positively is, I think, essentially delusional. So any trivialising or dismissing of wishes to stabilise our climate as far as we are able is simply irresponsible. Yes, we'll have to do our best to adapt to the world we've already set in train, but let's not kid ourselves there are any positives.
Sorry to be so grumpy, but I just can't see the benefit of your approach in comparison with honest realism.
Well, I suppose this is a point of genuine disagreement between us, but I don't think these are particularly uncommon views. In fact I think that the conservative outlook applied to the environment is pervasive in contemporary Western society, even if it is rarely recognized as such. NIMBYism is a good example *symptom* (not cause) of this thinking: lots of people just don't want their local environment to change, and I speculate that it comes from the same natural tendency we humans have to desire a world that remains similar to what we're used to. To be totally clear, the "going back to the 18th century" bit is a stylistic exaggeration that ended up being the title just because it's a good title, but more specifically I do think "keeping the climate exactly as it is right now" is an actual goal (or at least vague aspiration) that many people have.
Of course, there are plenty of more sophisticated thinkers who understand and reject the conservative outlook, including perhaps yourself as well as the people you've met in the environmental movement. And yet even you say in the comment above that we should "stabilise" the climate. Why not say "control"? If we have control we can not only stabilize, but also improve. And it's not like stabilization without full control seems particularly easier to achieve, given our relative lack of success at reducing emissions; or morally good, given that many (not necessarily you) advocate for deprivations as the core method to achieve it. Control would be difficult to achieve, but plausibly not *more* difficult.
Also, I want to emphasize that we agree that the current uncontrolled climate change is bad. I do not aim to trivialize it or spin it positively. Our contention is simply about what the alternative should be: stabilization or improvement. I think our culture at large is incorrectly dismissing improvement, and changing that is the point of the article, even though that means defending a relatively unpopular view.