Governments are responding to the public and in a democracy, this is the intent.
If you go to the nearest mall parking lot, take a look at what is there. I don't have to go back that many generations to see my ancestors living in a house smaller than a Ford F-150 quad cab long bed pickup. We have minivans but some have become giants. Where the sedan was king, now the SUV is the dominant mode of transportation and where the weight of cars was beginning to decline in the 1970's, it has now rebounded to much greater than it was before. I learned to drive in a 1963 Oldsmobile that weighed 4002 pounds and it was considered heavy then. Most trucks, SUV's and vans are more massive now with the Chevrolet Avalanche being 5455 pounds and the heaviest, the Dodge Power Wagon, crushing the scales at 7050 pounds. My 2375 pound Miata and 3299 pound Subaru Legacy wagon are actually lightweights in the modern scheme of things. Some of the weight gain can be accounted for by safety equipment but a lot of it is fat, lazy people picking fat, lazy cars.
Maybe these vehicles should only be available to people who need them. People who support reducing fuel usage often want other people to reduce fuel consumption so there will be more for them to waste. Perhaps we should not be surprised that governments are loath to make any moves to control fuel usage. I predicted that we would be embroiled in oil wars back in the 1950's when I was still in grade school and now we are. Do you think we would be in Iraq if their main export was pomegranates?
If you look at the infrastructure in the US, a typical example is Kennedy Airport in New York. Its four runways are at an altitude of 12 to 13 feet above sea level. It won't take much of a rise in sea level to close it down. Canada will introduce a carbon exchange soon with excessive users buying carbon credits on a market that sells them, so companies can introduce carbon consumption reductions and sell credits to companies that want them. The carbon tax that has existed the longest is the Norwegian carbon tax and no one really knows if it has made any difference but governments love a good excuse for another hand in everyone's pocket.
I see fuel usage as a problem of stewardship of scarce resources that cannot be replenished at anywhere near the rate of usage. I do not see this as a climate change problem because there is a lot more to climate change than carbon dioxide. A thousand years ago, the Vikings settled Greenland and grew crops of rye. You can't do that now - it's still too cold although research crops are being grown there now. The Little Ice Age of 1300 - 1850 gave us a false sense of normal and we can expect temperatures to rise with the main effect being drought where adequate water has existed before.
I wish the Young Republicans luck, but I have no hope whatsoever that they will be heard. Money talks and it is shouting them down.