The items you mention that reflect our magnanimity to future generations are not very good examples, in my view.
They (recycling; acid rain; nuclear proliferation) are efforts to control current problems with proximately negative results.
What’s different about AGW catastrophism, aside from the fact that our inability to predict makes what’s going to really happen very tenuous, is that no proximate benefit occurs.
So, for example, it’s terrible that Miami might drown in 2100, but don’t tax me for that problem right now. I can’t even pay my current overspend. Not to mention that it might prosper instead when sea levels drop and more beach real estate becomes available b/c it turns out AGW causes so much precipitation in still-cold polar areas that land ice mass has a net increase which more than outweighs thermal expansion and seaside glacier loss. (I’m not interested in arguing the point; just creating an example.)
AGW’s gonna need catastrophes real soon now that are predicted in advance, and the nature of those predictions is going to have to be more precise than suddenly realizing after the fact that AGW can trigger a nasty polar vortex meander. If AGW is going to increase hurricane intensity by warming the ocean, we need to not have a baseline “weather” variation where the Atlantic hurricane season is almost non-existent.
Without a bunch of bad, predicted stuff now, we will not be moved to protect future generations against AGW anymore than we are moved to protect our children against paying for my hip replacement and retirement largesse.