conservative progressive?

"I am actually less interested in correcting the injustices of society today than I am in preventing them from getting much worse."

An interesting paradox - a very conservative attitude from someone who seems to hold progressive ideals.

"I think the chances of a meaningful overall international effort to hold back climate change are very very small."

You might be pleased to know that knowledgeable people who spend a great deal of time worrying about the future aren't much concerned about climate change. The reason is simply that the trends towards mitigation are far stronger than the trends toward disaster. Averting climate change is expected to be quite practical and relatively cheap well before significant problems will arise, with the bonus that we will be acquiring the means to deal with all types of climate problems along the way - regardless of whether it is a question of too much heat or too little, and whether the cause is natural or man-made.

However, it is true that international cooperation of governments on this issue is pretty hopeless. It is being solved by the market - though a few governments have occasionally nudged things in the right direction.

"I would love to get rid of the glass ceiling for women in the workplace, but I'm actually more concerned about a possible backlash that would get rid of the significant gains they have achieved."

You are right to be concerned about a backlash. Calls for "equality" went much too far, ignoring for instance that there are fewer female executives in part because fewer females are interested in being executives.

This misappraisal of the situation is currently resulting in a backlash - as it should. The tricky part will be finding a balance that allows all men and all women to be treated fairly, allowing career-minded persons to succeed on their own merits regardless of sex, but also valuing non-career-minded persons for their contributions to society.

"I think liberal capitalism is about the best form of economic and political organization we can achieve in the foreseeable future."

It is a curious thing, that if previous generations of Marxists had heeded Marx's ideas about capitalism eventually resulting in communism instead of forcing the issue, we might already be further along to that goal.

We may be quite close to achieving a post-scarcity economy, and though such an economy would ideally retain property rights for purposes of accounting and law, the "user experience" would be quite close to communist ideals - with every necessity so cheap as to be negligible.

"One recent notable effort to make the world better was Soviet-style communism, and it made things much worse, so I am very wary of revolutionary change."

I am glad to see that you recognize the disaster that happened when communism was attempted by authoritarians whose natural impulse is to control others. I hope you will come to recognize that the anti-pedophile coalition is made up of the same sort of people. It is also worth noting that the trend towards the segregation of young people is the revolutionary idea of questionable worth, whereas thousands of years of tradition kept children firmly integrated into their society.