Well, "throwaway92384", I am not assuming any such thing. I personally know a number of people who are or have been MPs in the UK and the Netherlands, senior civil servants as well as many people in leadership roles in the private sector. I don't think this makes me particularly special incidentally, the same thing is true for many people who are actively engaged in policymaking.
My comment is based on extensive professional and social interactions with other people in leadership roles. It is very frequently the case that such people, including government ministers simply don't have as much independent power of action as you think.
The original parent comment said that if things were really so bad, then something would be done with the implication that since not much is being done, things cannot be so bad. Since we are not mass-building PWRs and running five parallel crash fusion programmes, it must follow that someone has examined the evidence and decided that the problem of climate change is not so bad and therefore we are not doing those things.
The problem with this view is the assumption that there is a someone or a group of someones who sit back, review IPCC reports and then have the ability to collectively compel the political leaders of the world to act rationally. If there was such a group then their lack of action would indicate that they had made a rational decision not to act.
My point is that there are no such people. The powerless enjoy the fantasy of conspiracy because it means that all it would take to solve our problems is some kind of board room coup of the Majestic 12 standing committee.
The reality is that everyone in the system has to act within their roles in the system. Executives at oil companies will say that they wouldn't mind a carbon tax, as long as it was equally applied to all companies. That's logical as they would continue to have a level playing field with the other oil producers and it will take years for us to get off oil as a species anyway. Oh but they don't have the power to pass an oil tax, that's for government.
Politicians in smaller countries will say, they would love to pass such a tax but unfortunately it needs to be global or it will just erode their competitive advantage without reducing emissions. Only if large trading blocs like the EU and US united on enforcing such a system could it be done.
American politicians might say that they personally would love to but they'd need a majority in the Senate, the House, and the right person in the White House.
None of these people are being disingenuous, they all have an accurate view of the limits of their own power within the system. My point is that there is no "outside the system" which can update the system to work better for large collective action problems or force a solution. It's cogs in the machine all the way up. Even the power of Donald Trump, as leader of by far the world's most powerful nation has substantial limits to his freedom of action.