I hear you; and I'm pretty pessimistic that the "democratic" solution will solve anything. Look at covid - the US's approach to mask wearing seems to be what you're proposing - millions of tiny actions by individuals. The result is over half a million people dead. If those deaths were clustered in SF, that would be every man (or every woman) in San Francisco dead from the pandemic. In comparison here in Australia during the entire pandemic we've only lost 900 people to covid. Single cases make the news here.

The difference is that (on this topic) our government has showed real leadership. We haven't left health policy in the hands of millions of individuals. We put health policy in the hands of experts, and then implemented strict policies to get us to 0. Change didn't happen from individuals independently figuring out what to do. Change happened from the country as a whole picking a direction and moving in that direction together.

In comparison, Australia has been utterly appalling with climate change. Its a national embarrassment. I don't eat meat and I don't have a car - but I don't think thats going to matter much in the long run. What we need is to do the same thing for the planet that we did for covid - we need effective leadership on climate change. We need to do it together.