Your first sentence is flat-out wrong for two reasons: the most obvious is that while not sufficient to solve the problem, it clearly does help but the second is the psychological benefits. Telling people things they can do right now don't matter is depressing; getting them in the habit of thinking about ways to reduce their personal impact is part of helping build the social inertia which is needed to get the various people you mentioned in your second paragraph to listen. Someone who feels good and – far more importantly – gets positive feedback towards making a change rather than a cynical “it won't help” is probably going to keep doing things like that (drop beef next!), and probably explore ways to make their commute less expensive too.
One way to think about it which might be helpful is to triage your targets: have a short-term goal which you could do today with no real barriers (e.g. pick a protein other than beef), a mid-term goal which you can do on your own but might take some planning (bike / transit to work or shop, use a clothesline instead of a drier, replace old non-electric appliances in your house with electric ones, buy your electricity from a renewables supplier, etc.), and a long-term goal with more dependencies which you can't do quickly or on your own (get involved in local politics to reduce car usage, hound your elected representatives, etc.).
I was a bit cynical with the absolutism it is true. I know you aren't wrong on your other points too, believe me. I implement a lot of your suggestions already even. It's just that it will be for nothing if we can't convince our politicians to force the hand of industry to change.
As well, while you and I are doing the right thing, it's likely we are the minority, and for many it's just due to the economics of their situation. We have built a societal appratus that pollutes, it's not fair to put the onus of change on the individuals when they have the least agency of all. Although of course we can do our various parts to help.
My cynacism is probably better seen as exasperation, because it is absolutely mind boggling that we are at the point we are yet the only levers we have are to eat less fruit, or take a bus. Why isn't one of our levers "ban fossil fuel entirely in industries where there are alternatives"? Why is it up to us to correct for profit chasing industrial practices?
Telling people to rile up against climate change let's industrialism get away with it. If I'm to downgrade my life, it better be from trickle down ecology rather than frugality.
> I have a functional can opener in my kitchen which I crank by hand. The suggestion to replace it with an electric version is stupid virtue signalling.
Ah, “virtue signaling”, ever the reliable indicator that someone is attempting to converse in good faith.
Take this as an opportunity to learn what a major appliance is and that some of them burn natural gas or use electricity very inefficiently:
One way to think about it which might be helpful is to triage your targets: have a short-term goal which you could do today with no real barriers (e.g. pick a protein other than beef), a mid-term goal which you can do on your own but might take some planning (bike / transit to work or shop, use a clothesline instead of a drier, replace old non-electric appliances in your house with electric ones, buy your electricity from a renewables supplier, etc.), and a long-term goal with more dependencies which you can't do quickly or on your own (get involved in local politics to reduce car usage, hound your elected representatives, etc.).