The issue is once you educate yourself in science and engineering, you realize that teraforming planets isn't something you just do. And you can't realistically rely on a technology that doesn't exist. The real problem here is one of education. The facts and the seriousness of climate change do not support his dumbass argument, and we'll all be dead by the time everyone comes to an agreement and realizes, oh shit nobody is going to save us from climate change but us.

You can easily be an environmentalist and still believe in the Star Trek paradigm. While we, that is mankind, might have the ingenuity to find technological solutions to most of our problems, we do not have the political or economic systems necessary to actually put these solutions into reality.

I've heard this phrased as Wizard vs Prophet

https://grist.org/politics/wizards-and-prophets-face-off-to-save-the-planet/

There’s also a fourth attitude. We live on a planet uniquely suited to the kind of life it gave rise to, such as ourselves. The climate of it before we began pumping tons and tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere was generally tolerable. Sometimes we had great periods like the medieval warm period and sometimes we had natural devastation like the little ice age. We’re in the process of going from bad to worse and if we don’t let up with our emissions soon we’re gonna have to get a lot better at every form of engineering really fucking fast

I figured that both sides are eventually going so far to their side they meet halfway. The good ol' horseshoe theory.

In this case tech would go so far with genetic engineering while resource depletion forces them to go bio-punk and arrives at basically high tech treehouses.

I suppose a third paradigm is cold-blooded, individualist Realpolitik; It’s a dog eat dog world, fuck you, I’m just trying to get mine as hard as everyone else is.

This secret third one is the one that basically everyone has, yeah, it's pretty depressing.

I dunno, at this point I'm more given to a kind of blade runner, or maybe mad max paradigm, of like. Even if the star trek future is the shit, right, even if they come up with and use terraforming technologies, which we could probably do at least for offsetting carbon emissions if the theoretical short term proposals are anything to go by, we don't have any real way of understanding what the real knock-on effects of those short term solutions would be. We would probably be just as likely to increase ocean acidification by a couple points in our quest to sequester carbon by dumping a shit ton of iron oxide in the ocean, and then end up killing a bunch of sea life which is connected to everything else. It just becomes a kind of whack a mole style game where you trade one consequence for another at the expense of the environment, and if that ends up happening, I expect pretty quick humanity will attempt to totally shutter off any consequence which might pose a threat to humanity or capitalism, and put them off onto the broader environment instead, and the people who are reliant on those environments to survive. I.E. you get put into a horrible blade runner future, where the survival of humanity isn't in question, but humanity's humanity has gone extinct.

Star Trek Paradigm: humans are limitlessly ingenious, technological solutions will save us, and Nature is viewed with an anthropocentric utilitarian ethic.

That's not Star Trek at all! The United Earth Government already abolished currency and converted to a socialist mode of production before the replicator was invented. More technology doesn't necessarily help. When 21st century Earth got more technology, they used it to do the Eugenics Wars and WWIII. Replicators haven't helped the Cardassians, the Ferengi, the Romulans, or the Klingons with solving poverty, pollution, scarcity, or slavery. The reason Earth has solved those problems and its technological peers have not is that Earth is more socially advanced. Humans do not use money. They work to better themselves and their species. Picard's family makes wine on a vineyard. Sisko's dad runs a creole restaurant. Earth is the picture of human harmony with both society and with nature. Most humans have never even eaten a dead animal anymore.

Plus, Starfleet exists to explore the infinite diversity of nature and of society out in space. Starfleet is full of biologists who love exploring strange new worlds. The sovereignty of indigenous life is respected, so much so that it is called the Prime Directive.