In Australia this seems to be exactly the way our democracy works, although the warchests are smaller. We have had successive governments both of loosely left

In Australia this seems to be exactly the way our democracy works, although the warchests are smaller. We have had successive governments both of loosely left and right persuasions who consistently ignore a majority of the population who want something done on climate change. Instead we get a strange, fake theatre of culture wars and misdirection. If one had a bent towards conspiracies, you might assume the theatre is there to replace progress on things that our political parties find unpalatable for a variety of reasons (undue influence, lobbying, the prejudices of our politicians themselves). As an example, the latest round of climate action from our right-leaning party (to pick technologies they favour to reduce carbon output rather than use a carbon tax) is a complete abandonment of their party policy to support a free market. They've take a sudden turn towards a very prescriptive style "five year plan" on carbon capture and storage. I would ordinarily say that this is an improvement on the attitude of prominent politicians in Australia that "climate change is crap" but in some ways it's worse than doing nothing. All of this after telling us for 40 years that governments should never "pick winners" and five year plans are only for communists. I wish I had been warned ahead of time that neo-liberalism and free market economics have been abandoned but neither party has indicated that on their websites just yet. We get lip service to high-minded principles, but their actions never come close to their professed ideologies.