The economy is what's wrong to a climate activist to begin with. What he will hear is "hey, we can replace this tumour with this other less damaging tumour!". He will answer "yea... I think many things should change" and will stop there, which is code for "I actually want communist central planning".

LOL I understand what you mean :P I hate wasting my time in pointless discussion in private spaces, especially since it isn't appropriate to begin with. I have never started a debate on politics nor economy in social encounters. Not even once. Yet to my surprise, since everyone knows I'm heavily embedded on this subjects, it's everyone else who start me on them, and even then I limit what I say to what's appropriate for such contexts.

One of the funniest cases was on a friend's birthday, in which he asked me to please not to talk about politics since he had some leftist acquittances, and I assured him that I had no prior intention on doing so for it wasn't appropriate. I obliged to my word, yet some beers afterwards this friend was trying to start me debating with his friends just to see the world burn 😂 (of course I limited myself to do it on good humour).