Unfortunately for us what people support has no meaningful impact on the direction of our country.
That’s not quite true; we’ve gotten major changes in environmental policy over the past few years precisely because people supported it, and worked to elect politicians who did the same.
Multiple studies about the impact of public opinion on legislative action, two by Princeton and Northwestern that I’m most familiar with, disagree with that assertion. Your example of climate change illustrates that well in my opinion. Climate change is clearly not anyone who matters top priority. The action we see in that category feels more like an answer to the question “what’s the least we could do that will minimize social unrest while we rape the planet”.
You are of course free to disagree with that point but I believe there is a counterpoint for any example you choose to use to make the argument that politicians listen to voters.
It’s also not top priority for the American public.
I’ve seen those studies, and they may well say something for issues where there is an inherent conflict of interest between rich and the rest, but on climate, there’s a shared interest in a civilization-supporting planet. CEOs may thing like this:
But the billionaires behind them often want to be able to live in luxury indefinitely. And we can appeal to that successfully.
I’m assuming you can tell I don’t share that optimism. Appealing to billionaires to do the right thing, even for selfish reasons, is a losing battle. I do genuinely envy your ability to find comfort in that thought though.