I'm an anti-elitist libertarian at heart, but the "let everyone do as they will" mindset may cause problems. (And I understand that elites get it wrong much of the time)
Climate change is a particular challenge here: immediate action is required, but warning signs are too diffuse to work against political inertia.
A reflection of The People would be simply their democratic vote, informed by balanced and unsubsidized arguments from both sides.
I mean, obviously, individually, it's up to each person to choose. But when the majority chooses for everyone (including the minority), is the minority bound to respect that decision?
And whose fault do you think that is... There can be no talk of the will of the people when they are beholden to the coercion of the elites through structured economic insecurity.
I don't think so. I need to heat my house or I will die, so I pay the energy company. But, my "will" is that climate change is the most important issue today, and I would greatly like to increase subsidies for alternative energy and funds for climate science. If the energy company lobbies against that, then they are using my money to lobby against my will. It's easy to extrapolate this to the majority of the energy company's subscribers. You can't say that corporate lobbying is a reflection of the country's will.
- Jared Diamond, "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed"
(A must read book, by the way.)
Theoretically, in an informed democracy, the people would recognize the threat and act to stop it by voting in representatives who are committed to curtailing climate change. In the real world, though, our democracy is not that informed. The mainstream media covers stories that are more sexy. I don't believe there were any climate change questions posed at the presidential debates.
The two possible solutions would be to change the system in such a way to foster an informed democracy. The other, as you mentioned, would be an entirely different government system. I think the former solution is more feasible by passing legislation that makes it harder for fossil fuel companies to have so much influence on representatives. I'm not sure how to fix the news. The reason I don't see a different system of government working is because I don't think any system solves the "individual interest > general welfare" problem. Democracy is pretty much as good as it gets when it comes to the general welfare, other than a smart benevolent dictator... but how long has that ever lasted?
You can change that "may" to "does". Even in the case of perfect coordination and cooperation, there are fundamental mathematical limitations on the optimization power of distributed algorithms. Introducing independent, competing agents then adds game-theoretic results into the mix and everything goes straight into the toilet.
For example, consider the problem of gerrymandering. When one political party takes control over another, they may look at their gerrymandered districts and cry out "Unfair! We need to fix this!" But how do you incentivize them so that they don't just redraw the boundaries in their favor this time?
Elections inherently favor those who desire power over other, demagogues, and narcissists. They also result in the creation of an insular political class, which often trends towards oligarchy.
"Let everyone do as they will" only works if you are prepared to step in when someone's idea of "doing as they will" involves preventing someone else from doing the same, or it won't be "let everyone do as they will" but "let a small portion of people do as they will, and everyone else be damned".
As a left-libertarian, I'd certainly argue that if you pollute and as a result affect the very ability of others to survive or negatively affect their health, you are also affecting their liberty, and society is justified in sanctioning you.
Elites get this wrong because few, if any, elites aim to maximise liberty. Maximising liberty does not (currently, anyway) win you elections.
I'd suppose the Achille's heel of "The People" is their short-sight. You need big minds with big wallets to see and act on the long game.
It may not be "big minds" or "short sight" but the fact that the majority of the populace is expending so much thought and effort to just get by that they don't really have the extra cycles to worry about future calamities. We kind of used up all of our populaces' reserves for that sort of thing on income inequality. The people at the top are the only ones with any "propellant" left to maneuver.
As far as the will of the public, i don't think that "saving the environment" will force a shift of peoples votes, i think that natural disaster / destruction will gather peoples attention enough to make a push.
It's extremely difficult to look at long term, esp when you're living paycheck to mouth... I wonder if the majority of people in these old industry are within that space.
The people are compelled to recycle, change their lightbulbs and so on but their representatives OK a fracking scheme or gas plant that cancels out all savings. There's no insulation, combined heat and power or even removal of fossil subsidies or sense of urgency coming from the representatives.
The few "people" who are scientifically aware seem very keen to see this change, but unfortunately are still a minority.
Sometimes it just seems like every solution is on some global scale that barely involves us. There's a handful of graduates who will get some old MS money (and good for them). And I'll keep living exactly the same. I know there's probably lower hanging fruit around the world, but I hope for effective solutions we can put into practice that change the conversation (as Don Draper would put it).
Good but expensive technical solutions do exist, namely carbon capture and storage, together with more renewables, nuclear and fusion power, perhaps some hydrogen production etc. But the financial requirements are unfortunately more towards OPEX than CAPEX. This means even if some uber-billionaire pays for the CAPEX, us regular people will shoulder the largest cost.
A proper solution would be a functioning carbon tax that negates the currently externalised cost of emissions. But in simple terms that means "making everything more expensive", on the order of $0.5 more per gallon of gasoline overnight, large increases in taxes on new cars, everything made from plastic 50% more expensive, cement and steel prices increasing by at least 20% so new houses are 30-50% more expensive to build, etc. In short, political suicide for anyone who enacts it.
Sic transit gloria mundi.
A carbon tax doesnt make everything more expensive if you give the money straight back to the citizens which is what we did in Australia before it was overthrown by our current government. Everybody earning under $80k and using an average amount of energy was financially better off under the carbon tax.
There have been a handful of ideas to reduce or reverse the effects of global warming using engineered solutions. Examples include such ideas as taking Sulphur Dioxide and putting it into the upper atmosphere (https://www.technologyreview.com/s/511016/a-cheap-and-easy-p...). Another idea, that was invented by Bill Gates' friend Paul Allen, includes building ultra tall chimneys in order to vent opaque soot into the upper atmosphere.
The other side of this is that there is a belief we can come up with technologies that are significantly greener without a significant downside in price or performance.
* creating energy from filtering co2 out of the air, http://www.sciencealert.com/a-canadian-start-up-is-removing-...
* turning salt water into fresh water, http://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-are-turning-salt-wate...
A energy neutral way of irrigating desert (Sahara , large part of California), reducing sea levels, and reducing co2 levels in the air.
I still think it's a great idea, as a backup plan for carbon-neutral transportation in case electric vehicles don't take over the world in the near future.