Being crude, the politicians need to grow a pair and put their jobs at risk to fix this issue. But these days that will not happen, so off to mad max I guess.
That is the issue, no one whats to change their life style and people do not like change.
MAGA people will not change, even the many environmental left wing people will not change their life styles all that much. Never mind changing your life style is difficult in many places due to Infrastructure in the US.
So, unless politicians make the hard choices, nothing will be done to address Climate Change in time to even keep under 2C.
What we need is a system to tie the direct effects of the actions of politicians to the personal lives of politicians. For example, like doctors, they should be held liable for political malpractice.
We also need to find a way to get people into office who aren't as hungry for wealth and power like most politicians are. Seems like from the start we are setting ourselves up for failure if we elect people who are good at being elected.
Perhaps politics should be like jury duty: it should be more distributed and citizens should have to serve in it.
If you really want 'free' elections, you need to make it so that literally anyone can run instead of only rich people.
The (crude) analogy that comes to mind is something akin to the "checks and balances" of U.S. government, with the head of one checking the ass of the other, but instead everybody's head is under everybody else's ass.