Ideally their primary obligation should be to act in the long-term best interests of the citizens of the country. Environmental protection should be an important part of that.
Of course most modern governments seem to be composed of hollow men who talk nonsense while helping powerful corporations increase their profits by shitting on everything.
their primary obligation should be to act in the long-term best interests of the citizens of the country
The problem is no one can agree on what is "best interests" which is why I defer to a more libertarian approach. I don't think my opinion of 'what is best' should be legislated onto anyone else.
Yes, parenting is hideously complicated and my wife and I have different opinions on how to do it. Therefore let's defer to a libertarian approach and let children wander free in the world, and free of our biased conceptions of what parenting should be.
There is a world of difference between an honest attempt at something complex, and no attempt at all, or an attempt at doing the opposite. If people were not morons, we would elect people making honest attempts to do good, and perhaps change our minds occasionally. That's not the same as electing people who are obviously corrupt, or totally doing away with government: Looking the other way while letting bad people run free to rape your neighbours seems lazy and unwise, whether you do the raping or not, at some point you'll get what's going around.
Ideally their primary obligation should be to act in the long-term best interests of the citizens of the country.
Sure, and most of my objection to climate anything is pragmatic. Climate change policy is an infinite money pit that promises to deliver bugger-all, 3 or 4 generations from now. It is the wet dream of those hollow men, able to leech off government grant money for decades knowing full well that nobody will be able to notice the lack of results until long after they're dead. If it can be noticed at all.
It is not obvious to me that it is in our best long-term interests to cut emissions rather than, I dunno, let coastal insurance rates rise in an organic manner. We've eliminated most of the smog, most of the water is drinkable (outside Flint). We hit the low-hanging fruit decades ago and have run out of obviously-productive ways we can spend money on environmentalism.
Actually I've been recently sold on one measure: Allegedly if we protect ~15% of the continental shelves from fishing, that should be all we need to keep fish stocks sustainable.
Climate change is an existential threat to our species, and if our species wasn't demonstrably moronic, we would prioritize fixing it asap. Countries that cannot fix it alone should be pressuring others to contribute, and essentially prepping as nations for an extremely hostile future.
Just because hollow men corrupt climate change initiatives like they corrupt everything else, it does not invalidate the underlying physics or the magnitude of the problem.
Government is not a weather control program; they have other obligations.
If we get right down to it, the US government shouldn't be much more than a military, a postal service, and customs/imports office.