Economics really undervalue future damage. The reason they do that is this:
Imagine I’ve used the time looker-forward tube and seen that a broken staircase step will cause a $10000 Steinway piano to fall down the stairs and break in the year 2126.
Repairing the step will cost $10.
The time-discounting economics say that if I instead invest the $10 in meme stonks, and it compounds to $10000 and 50¢ in the year 2126, I can buy a new piano and have enough left over for a pack of chewing gum too. Ergo we need to time-discount the future disaster’s value to see if it’s worth the $10 today. And this has become mainstream in economics. This is how things are actually priced.
You’ve correctly compounded the opportunity cost. One of the flaws in this is that you haven’t compounded the catastrophe cost. If you think you can buy a piano for $10000 in 2126 or a pack of gum for 50¢ then.
If a stitch in time saves nine, you can’t just compound the one stitch.
Clean water and breathable air are priceless.