I'd like to agree with you, I'd like to think that's the case, but we have people like cal and his posts above that kill that belief for me.
An individual recycling and making a compost pile is great, but it won't make any real impact. Oil and gas companies invested in and pushed the narrative of personal responsibility around the environment and climate change. Why? To direct the attention away from them. They've known for decades the damage they're causing but short term profits beat long term (next generations) damage.
These large corporations, those that stand to gain from the status quo, will funnel money into right wing think tanks, which produce "reports" that right wing media rolls with. No topic on this board has seen a higher level of fake experts touted than climate change. A personal favorite of cals being a list of "scientists" from 15 years ago that I could be on...
Another angle being not a fake expert, but the complete misinterpretation of actual climate research and studies.
Basically every time I've taken the time to dig into the mountain of links cal or someone else vomits up the claims can be debunked in a few minutes. But the problem is there is so much misinformation (actual misinformation, not "news that trump doesn't like" misinformation) out there that regular people just see the headlines and don't do any digging. Even if debunked later those readers are long gone.
Look at what Girls posted. Public polls on climate change. I'm not surprised less people care. I imagine it's along party lines too since the issue has been politicized. I don't really care what the public thinks on this matter though, most are scientifically illiterate. We're a country that is hostile to actual expertise and we'll suffer as a result.