The simple answer is to vote, and if you can spare the time/money/effort to go and become political active.

Removing coal/oil/natural gas plants won't occur without political will. We need political will to build out rail infrastructure, regulating air/boat fuels, changing subsidies for fossil fuels into emission free alternatives, prioritize bike/pedestrian infrastructure, and so on.

Right now we had politicians in EU voting that natural gas is "green", driving primarily by a specific political party in Germany, and now the same people are turning on coal and oil power plants. Societal change need to start with replacing people in power that view fossil fuel as a tool to be used rather than something that should be left in the ground. No individual action can get near to undo the damage that those politicians are doing by allowing fossil fuels to be burned.

They didn't say that.

> How would you, then, unscientifically solve climate change if we aren't supposed to take individual action to bring our own footprint to net zero, encourage others to do the same, and bring about societal change using market pressure and all that?

The individual action here is minor. Market pressure can work but only in certain circumstances. They already suggested working on political sentiment, since laws can do a lot here to tax or force certain methods.

> But if the "you" in this sentence is being made to feel good for the wrong reasons, isn't that dishonest? Shouldn't we be looking at what is actually effective use of your money [...]

I'm pretty sure the person you're responding to is also an advocate for effective use of money, specifically by focusing on the wider changes and not focusing much on the carbon footprint concept.

But you don't have to spend all your money on improving the world as much as possible.

It’s not about will you fly or take the train. The food we eat, the clothes we wear - everything has fossil fuel inputs at some point.

One can choose to consume less. Buy second hand etc. Then the fossil inputs in mining, transport, farming and whatnot will not be repeated.

Consumer choice electricity? You can’t choose non-fossil based electricity unless someone has invested large amounts of capital in e.g wind power.

The only thing that can affect things this large is industrial policy which again in democratic countries needs political support.

That’s why consumer carbon footprint is gaslighting. The individual choise does not exist, and trying to spin the carbon economy narrative towards consumer responsibility was a backhanded attempt to delay the energy transition which only the war in Ukraine launched to a better trajectory.

I was not suggesting people spend all of their money planting trees. I was thinking it in the context that sometimes people want to do something symbolic with extra cash that makes them feel better. It was not intended as a moral imperitive.