Not my OC but what I've believed for years: there's no conflict between reducing your own environmental impact and holding corporations responsible. We hold corps responsible for the environment by creating a societal ethos of environmental responsibility that forces corporations to serve the people's needs or go bankrupt or be outlawed. And anyone who feels that kind of ethos will reduce their own environmental impact because it's the right thing to do.
Thoughts?
More people would walk, bike, or take transit if these options were less shitty. If the car weren't formally preferred by the state and given priority over other options.
More people would eat fresh produce over fast food hamburgers if that produce were available as conveniently as the fast food dive instead of a supercenter you have to drive to at the edge of town.
Fewer disposable plastic goods will be used when the major companies stop handing them out left right and center.
This is all big "YET YOU LIVE IN A SOCIETY, CURIOUS!" energy. People can want to make their world more sustainable without adopting a full-on crunchy lifestyle. People can advocate for change knowing it will help others in the future even if it doesn't match with how they currently live. I'm sick and tired of lefty types and environmentalists treating the "average person" like a simpleton who's incapable of having complex thoughts or feelings. Who's incapable of doing anything but acting in their own selfish, shortsighted interest. It's not individual consumers behaving selfishly that got us here.
No matter how you measure it, it's clear a lot of big capital and corporate interests are fighting hard against the reforms that will make it easier and less stressful for people to adopt better, more sustainable lifestyles. People are being pressured to live certain lifestyles by the fact that our entire society is built on the economic power of consumerism. The idea of personal responsibility has been efficiently weaponized to get people mad at their neighbors for not composting instead of being mad at their city for expanding that 4-lane suburban artillery to "make room" for the expected traffic to another Walmart (that will be getting property tax incentives to build there).
You bring up EVs as if it makes your point, but they don't. EVs make my point. The individually-responsible thing most people can do is switch out their ICE car for an EV. It's the best they can do to lower their personal footprints in a society that requires most people drive for most trips. And even if every ICE passenger vehicle were swapped out with an EV tomorrow, that would not be even close to enough -- not to even mention most people cannot afford that trade and the halo of other hugely negative problems that would come from it.
This is the problem with any focus on individual responsibility. We need to take action collectively. The voices tut-tutting people for eating fast food over growing their own potatoes in a window box are weapons used by conservatives and capital to divide and conquer, even when they're repeated by self-professed progressives.