Part of it that the commenters so far missed is that to do anything about climate change will affect profits for the oil industry and cause corporations aplenty to have to come up with new manufacturing materials and processes. It also means consuming less. The solutions are seen as a threat to owners of capital who will fight until the earth is in flames to do anything about it. Our politicians and many media sources are owned by these people.

Basically, it started with Reagan[0] and the Republicans equating environmentalism with leftist (read - Communist, and therefore evil) agitation (through its links with feminism and the hippie/antiwar movement) in order to court business interests who favor deregulation and lax environmental standards.

[0]https://www.vox.com/2017/4/22/15377964/republicans-environme...

It became a 'wedge issue'. A common tactic in 2-party politics is for a campaign to push their candidate to become indistinguishable from their opponent, and then pick one issue that divides the voter base, hopefully in their favor. It has to be something that your party can rally around and their party can't compromise on. Conservatives are generally pro business and anti government regulation, while liberals are usually pro environment and regulation, hence the battle of climate change.

The US has two political parties of roughly equal size.

One of those parties has gone completely off the rails into authoritarianism and science denial. Oligarchy is at the root of it: the barons can't sell "clean coal" and "drill, baby, drill" if climate change is seen to be tearing the world apart. Money über alles.

You'd think most people would be repulsed by such a party, but turns out that humans have a neat little exploit! Due to the fact that the parties are completely entrenched and about equally as popular, people intrinsically assume that their policies also have equal merit.

Hence our descent into shit.

the oil industry