alt Hacker NewsA major problem, I think, is that humans insist on making everything a big package deal bound up with tribalism and ideology.
If you think climate change is a problem, you're more likely to be on the left of the political spectrum and hold a wide range of other views that have absolutely nothing to do with reducing CO2 levels in the atmosphere.
(I'm not just picking on the left. Everyone does this with everything. It's human primate tribal behavior.)
The constant shifting winds are a result of political shifts and power struggles, often struggles over issues that are unrelated to climate change but are linked to it by this mechanism. It makes rational discourse and consistent action hard. The more bound up an issue is with politics the harder it is to even discuss reasonably.
Of course, people with a short term vested interest in not doing anything about this problem love it this way.
The problem is simple and the solution is to switch to power sources that emit far less CO2 or preferably none at all. This remains true regardless of our political, social, or cultural beliefs. Physics doesn't care.
Yes, it happens, but its cultural not an immutable human characteristic.
People make things that are a matter of opinion (politics, religion, whatever) a matter of identity.
This is worse in the US than in most places, but its become a lot worse in the UK, which I attribute to create American cultural influence, especially as it has come at the same time as specific American ideologies.