What it says to people is basically that they have no responsibility and shouldn’t make any change.

There's always been a sort of false dichotomy about this. On the one hand there's this idea that climate change can be solved by individual consumer choices and personal responsibility. On the other there's the idea that the average person can continue on with their life exactly as before if we just fix things "behind the scenes".

IMO the reality is that climate change mitigation requires systemic top-down change, but that change is going to affect people's lives. In some ways for the better and some ways for the worse. The kind of "individual choices" we need people to make is to choose not to throw a hissy fit when their local government removes a car lane.