Comment by XorNot
Yep, this is the real answer. It's also the only answer. The big fiction was everyone getting hopped on the idea that "karma" was going to be real, and people's virtue would be correctly identified by overt environmentalism rather then action.
Fossil fuel companies won, and they won in about 1980s when BP paid an advertising firm to come up with "personal carbon footprint" as a meaningful metric. Basically destroyed environmentalism since...well I'll let you know when it stops.
It's a false dichotomy to say "either systemic change or individual change" - both have always and will always go hand in hand, influencing each other in the process. To say only systemic change is required leaves out the individual responsibility for those who have the means to choose. To say it's just individual change required leaves out the fact that people can only choose within the reality of their situation, which clearly is defined by the outcome of the system they are in.