There's been leaps and bounds in Alzheimer's research in recent years, for example. CRISPR is also on the horizon.
Just as a quick note, CRISPR is already a widely-used technique in biology - a ton of scientific papers utilizing it have been published since its discovery in 2014 or so. You are right, though, in that we definitely haven't reached the limit of the potential of this technique. (For those not in the know, CRISPR is system based off a bacterial gene-editing process that can be used to directly edit DNA sequences in any living organism.)
As someone who works in the scientific research field (more specifically, virology), I believe technological advancements are very much needed to deal with climate change, especially on a global scale. Just as important, however, is being able to adjust and adapt to any changes in the environment and the downstream effects that changing climates will have, as well as being able to accurately predict what those changes will be. Disciplines such as astronomy may not seem to be directly helping this effort, but I'm sure those who are studying other planets are making comparisons between what they're seeing out there and what's happening on Earth (I'm sure you all can guess another planet in this solar system that experiences the greenhouse effect, for example). Space technology can also be used for directly studying Earth, too, such as through remote sensing using satellites and other forms of spacecraft. I'm not particularly interested in colonizing Mars or other places in the Solar System at the moment, but the technologies being developed for that end could have a lot of other applications. (Also, I consider colonizing space more as a "last ditch effort if all other hopes for the survival of humanity are toast" rather than "we're gonna focus on this instead of fixing problems down here.")
If you're interested in learning more about what scientists are trying to do for global warming and other topics important to you, I think it's better to seek them out on your own instead of simply following more general media. There's a lot of research being done on topics that the media isn't going to be interested in for a lot of reasons, and even scientists struggle sometimes to adequately explain their work to the general public and/or connect their own work to the larger picture, but none of the stuff they are doing is pointless, or else their studies wouldn't be funded at all. Space may be a sensational topic for the media, but I assure you all that there is a lot more research happening in other scientific disciplines such as medicine, genetics, ecology, geology, physics, chemistry, etc. that may not be getting the attention it deserves.
