In short, we aren’t on track to an apocalyptic extinction, and the new head is concerned that rhetoric that we are is making people apathetic and paralyzes them from making beneficial actions.
He makes it clear too that this doesn’t mean things are perfectly fine. The world is becoming and will be more dangerous with respect to climate. We’re going to still have serious problems to deal with. The problems just aren’t insurmountable and extinction level.
It’s got nothing to do with stupidity. We were all born and raised in, and indoctrinated by a society that pushes intense consumerism in every aspect of our lives. That didn’t happen overnight, and it’s not the result of a person making astupid choice. It happened incrementally over centuries, slowly enough that most people take for granted as just the way things are and never really question it.
That’s why only strong government regulation can fix this, and why “durr just stop buying stuff” is an ignorant, asinine take.