"Climate Change" and "Global Warming" have become synonymous with each other, but honestly mean two different things.
Global warming implies that the Earth is getting warmer. Mankind's actual impact, as opposed to other factors, should be what is measured.
Climate change implies any kind of change in the climate, regardless of "warming", "cooling", or etc. The etc, honestly, should be the part that gets studied.
The hard part is that any measure of temperature going back more than 100 years is tricky at best, and impossible most of the time. Measuring tree rings in the Pacific Northwest, for example, might imply that the weather was warmer in that area in the past, but does nothing to indicate what was happening around the world.
Regardless of who is at fault, humans should try and recognize IF the planet is changing, and IF it is something we can cope with left alone OR if it requires our intervention. The crux of it should not boil down to politics, but it does, because everyone focuses on things that have a direct impact on industry, etc.
That said, we have actually come a LONG way in making devices cleaner. Power generation from coal plants is incredibly clean compared to a few decades ago. Cars run on unleaded gas, use advanced electronics to get the most out of the gas in the tank, and factories no longer belch insane amounts of pollution into the air. I think most people still agree pollution = bad, and I don't need a thermostat to tell me that when coughing and not being able to see the sun on a hazy day in LA is sufficient.
Future technologies should be developed for a LOT of reasons, and if we can lessen mankind's direct impact on the environment while doing so, GREAT! It should be accepted, however, that some things are unavoidable AND people need to get away of thinking in the terms of our fathers and grandfathers (i.e. comparing drilling and its effects today as opposed to drilling on land 50 years ago). True, some things aren't great - coal mining is still pretty rough on miners - but coal as a fuel source has gone from pollution numero uno to being fairly clean.
That said, I know a lot of people want to think of these companies as pure evil (oil, coal, etc) but that's not true - they are neither "evil" nor "good" - they're companies. They look at the bottom dollar, but they look at what that will be in the future. Oil companies and energy companies are constantly looking at making better versions of alternative power. Why? Because one day oil, coal, etc will run out - and the company that has figured out how to use 10% of the inbound solar power to our planet (when we would only need, currently, 1/20000 of the solar energy to run mankind's needs) will be wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice. Heck, they don't even need for us to run out of everything else to do that.
So, we are, technically, already on reducing mankind's impact on the world (you could argue that Europe and the US have less of an impact now than we did in the 50s with leaded cars and few requirements for cleaner power generation) - now we just have to study and observe and decide IF change is still coming, SHOULD we try and stop it or not.
