P.S.
Should we also immerse ourselves in artistic escapism
My answer to that is: "yes". I wouldn't call it escape, I would consider it where we humans feel the greatest coherent and least contentious agreement. Music, dance, celebration, art is wrongly defined as escape, where it is a turning towards (not away from) the most essential of all human experiences: find meaning, and through it well being, through artistic intimate relations.
rather than take steps to remedy climate change? What's the harm in giving ourselves an escape hatch from the trajectory we're on, in case you're wrong?
This "either save the people or indulge in artistic pettiness" I consider to be another trick argument. Such a thing does not exist. You don't either make art or save the planet. It is in art and in the shared experience of physicality that the feeling of freedom is possible in the first place.
I don't have to be wrong or right. Who says I must? I follow the one and only conscious I can have a say: my own. You do the same and the two of us shall be fine.