That's clearly incorrect. 43% of Americans think global warming will pose a serious threat in their lifetime[1]. If they could just "vote with their dollars" then the US would have seen immense changes in renewable energy and EVs in the past 20 years.
There are 3 factors:
Market forces make it extremely difficult to create large change at the personal level. You can't crowdfund grid-scale renewables. Even if you have the option to pay extra for renewable power, it does almost nothing- renewable power has zero marginal cost, so it will always be sold anyway. Your impact on how much supply is built is marginal, unless you can pool your money into a huge fund, which is not a program that exists, because people instead want to take advantage of existing political processes, but unfortunately...
Political forces make it extremely difficult to create even small changes. 30% of Massachusetts voted for Trump. Every state has a relatively high proportion of conservatives, and our political systems are all designed to make compromise very difficult. At its absolute worst, in the US congress, only 2 bills per year can be passed without a supermajority, due to budget reconciliation. Surprise, not much gets done.
Finally, 30-40% of the US just flat out thinks its bullshit and are against it on principle. Many of them are quite happy to actively fight against the majority, and it's spectacularly easy for them to do so. Not being wasteful is in fact much harder than being wasteful, so one asshole can wipe out the careful effort of many good people.
Sorry, I should have been more clear. Some people don't care, enough that we can't change right now. You detailed more clearly what I wasn't trying to say.
