Re: Personally,
As of about 4 or 5 years ago, the amount of pro-Warmist lobbying money floating around Washington DC was running at about 20-1 compared to anti-Warmist, most of that corporate (I'm not sure what the split is now….)
Some of the biggest petitioners for warmist laws are industry. GE and Enron were the biggest under the Bush administration. GE because they had sunk a lot of R&D into light bulb and wind farm technology that couldn't be commercially viable without subsidies both direct (government grants) and indirect (laws requiring the use of their technology). Enron because their energy trading technology could be converted to trading carbon credits (just as all the other trading floors run by the various energy and oil companies have done since.)
The oil and energy companies actually have a vested interest in making their product more scarce, and laws are as good as anything else at making that happen. And if they can get government grants and subsidy in the process, why not lobby for more? Big companies don't mind regulation…It's a barrier to entry for smaller leaner operations.
It is not just hippies vs. the Man. The Man has a lot of vested interest in raising the spector of global warming, too.