If you want regular people to care more about the environment and pollute less, than you should have the rich and powerful lead by example, not push laws that seemingly do nothing while acting as wasteful as ever.
The thing is, getting rid of the very rich and their indulgence in climate-devastating actions moves the goalposts/acceptable excuses for the lower classes ("but the rich are doing it too") as well.
Maybe I’m too pessimistic, but I feel like most human behavior we decide what we are gonna do and then find the reasons to justify it.
This can be huge population. US CO2 output per capita is pretty big even if you compare it with EU.