there is a politics inside the dev team and the consensus being manipulated which i guess they have been fighting in silence even including the blocksize was a war that resulted in forking.
but there have been many people already seeing how centralization is taking place in BTC when it comes to mining especially when shares of mining companies are owned by few. they have also created this BTC council as well forcing miners to be to use green energy.
You are right there is definitely some politics being played in dev but not from the team but from the investors because there was his video on YT showing how big investors like Black Rock, MSTR and some other big names were investing in DEVs to create new L2 and other products for BTC but totally centralized so the more centralized products will be there the more it will be used by others and people will be made to use them like in the name of green energy as you said.
Speaking of pools, they are the only options for solo ones to survive otherwise they can't mine, so if they can't mine they can't make good money without investing in BTC, but still they can become a part of the network for validation which still requires them some cost to cover that most of them think why not just start some mining and they bear to lose in that until they join the pool and they made some profit but not that much it all depends on the price of BTC as we already know.
Let's see what will be the future of BTC. I think what most of us want is profit!