You don't have it both ways. If the population don't really grasp physics (and believe me, they don't) then they will not understand why they have to put up with a shit light bulb that cost an arm and a leg when they could have had a good ol' fashioned one like Ma had for a fraction that cost that actually worked.
That is why people pretty soon learned (arguably were trained) that anything "green" is axiomatically shit.
There is a whole theory about immediacy of consequences and how it affects human thinking. We haven't evolved beyond the stage where as individuals we need to worry about our next meal much much more than we need to worry about whether that tree will have enough fruit for next week. If you want a society to plan for the future you either have to force it through by dictatorship or help it through with education. Dictatorships are inefficient and education costs money. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
I am a big fan of the idea that nothing is truly useless. Even astrology, May be complete and utter bollocks, but it's not useless. It can be used.
With that in mind, even the horrors of war and the ordeals of history, no matter how depraved, have a utility. Who knows, it may be that completely by accident, Trump and his not-so-merry (they really are humorless. That should have warned America long ago) band of brigands might cause a shift in the world order that actually benefits mankind quicker than if we had to start from scratch. Which will will assuredly have to do if any of those nukes goes off. Whether by design or accident.
I repeat my point from before. When stand up comics (plural) can make jokes about how shit the brave new world of energy saving lightbulbs is, then you, my green friend, have lost the hearts and minds.
And the passage of time has proved the cynics to be absolutely spot on. All this greeny bollocks is just that. An excuse for the state to fleece the public in the name of "the good" whilst totally an utterly and very publicly not giving a shit. And the second the public realised it was yet another "do as we say, not as we do" area of life, they switched off. I know I did.
The TL;DR is that mixed in with the MAGA lunatics there will have been enough low energy thinkers (see what I did there ?) who heard the bit about light bulbs, or toilet flushes or vacuum cleaners and thought "That guy is making sense" and put their "X" accordingly. Not knowing what the full implications were.