here you've got a group of people infinitely more concerned with the future then most,

The issue is that impact of actions on the future is progressively harder to predict over longer timespans, and the ignorance of even the sign of the true utility difference due to an action makes the expected utility differences small. Thus unusual concerns with the grande future leave people free to pick what ever actions make them feel good about themselves, with no real direction towards any future good; such actions are then easily rationalized.