While that's true that no individual action matters, it's also true that our individual actions taken as a whole has an impact on the world, and because of that, we must treat individual actions as though they had the impact of collective actions.
Collective individuals have simply no way of affecting the environment in any major way simply by collective behavior change. The only thing that will change things is positive policies that encourage good behavior through positive methods.
For example by making electric vehicles attractive Tesla did more for the environment than possibly any single company ever by causing the shift to EVs in the general populace’s psyche.
Alternatively by doing things like banning plastic straws you instead get malicious compliance and dislike for the policies. That will never change things in a positive direction in the long term.
Individuals who can do things that will change the behavior of others through positive reinforcement can change things or by going to work at a company that was started with one of those efforts in mind. For example one of the biggest impact things an individual could do right now for climate change is to figure out a way to make a concrete that’s cheaper than concrete but not made in the method that releases CO2 and start a business out of it.
My only point was about _collective_ behavior change that is often advertised as a way to stop climate change that is advertised by many. I think that’s completely pointless and impossible. For example I do nothing to conserve anything in my day to day actions other than not wasting money or time. So if you can make CO2 reduction possibly simply by saving money and time then it’ll happen automatically.
Also I’m not so pessimistic about the current direction as you. We’re headed for a 3 degrees C change in temperature which isn’t going to have the most disastrous impacts that could have happened. There’s still also a lot of emerging tech that could play out and reduce those predictions further.
