[milsebg]

Well that is exactly the point. Of course, climate activists reducing their individual leisure demand would decrease global carbon emissions only insignificantly, if at all.

That's not the point here. The point is that climate activists ask their government for big changes because they fear civilization could end otherwise. And those big changes would have significant impact on the lifestyle of almost all people affected by these laws. So, why should one be willing to (and thus, vote for the changes) change ones lifestyle, if the advocates just say "well, I stop travelling abroad, when everyone else stops as well (and other carbon emission is reduced, too)"? The OP is about credibility, or, even lower level: sympathy.

Maybe it becomes more obvious if we look at one specific example. In the Netherlands they lowered maximum speed on highways to 100 km/h (from 120 km/h). Correct me if I'm wrong but the carbon saving from that law is close to non-existent compared to the whole economy's carbon emissions.

Or, the whole EU banned light bulbs. Also, the energy saving compared to the whole EU's energy consumption is probably sub 1%. And with the advent of white LEDs, people just use more light and the overall effect is even less.

Both measurments combined have an impact less than your claimed 5%-10%. Does that mean that government should stop taking small steps, and only the "big shot" counts?

Or can small steps (by governments OR individuals) be a tool to increase awareness?

[WhompingWindows]

Those changes, mandating LEDs and lower speed limits, are vastly more important and easy to make than trying to get a ton of individuals to choose a different lifestyle. Psychology tells us about hedonistic adaptation, it'll be much easier for a government to make a big play than for tens of thousands of rich people to all individually give up their lifestyle. It'd be more influential for them to boycott gas planes and use their wealth to stimulate electric plane use, but again: psychology. That's why we need governments...

But think broader, about concrete and steel and shipping, the really hard areas. There is no "choice" about steel, it's a technological and policy issue...Even if we cleaned up our individual consumer choices, that won't change the need for steel or change how it's produced in a dirty way.

Look at a wind turbine, for instance. It's a giant tower of steel. Even though we need wind turbines as fast as possible, we still need dirty steel to ramp those up, and we need new tech to then make future steel cleaner.

This is why focusing on individual choice is so small. Even if all us rich Westerners went vegan and rode bikes to work, that wouldn't address all the tricky technological and chemical issues.