

> why we're not focusing more on adaptation to than prevention of climate change

The reality is that prevention is cheaper (there is also an issue of distribution of the cost, though). Prevention of climate change effectively means not using energy from fossil fuels, while adaptation means paying extra energy cost for each unit of energy you get from fossil fuels.

This extra cost is actually greater than extra cost that would be incurred if you used non-fossil fuel source. So if you decide to continue to use fossil fuel sources at all, the total cost (savings due to cheap fuel + mitigation costs) will always be higher than the non-fossil energy sources (higher cost to get the energy but savings on mitigation).
