There's some truth in that but the last graph option is very easy to implement individually. Switching to a plant-based diet is easy, fun and healthy. It can also be cheaper.

Maybe because people don't change their heating until it breaks, but plenty of people change cars often

I agree, people aren't as emotionally attached to their boilers. But while there are already plans discussed to phase out gas heating in the EU, for many buildings the cheaper and practical alternative has not arrived yet. That takes some convincing.

Electric cars need competitive racing like F1 and NASCAR. There needs to be a culture built around the power of electric vehicles to get the muscle car culture to switch. Make electric cars "cool".

Public transport and bikes require the exact same thing: density, mixed use and paying attention to walksheds.

A lot of the US is suburban sprawl with Euclidean zoning. Neither public transit nor bikes work well there now by design: there's long distances between destinations. A bus that drops you off at a Walmart parking lot isn't all that useful unless you want to go to Walmart. A bus that drops you off in front of a dozen businesses is way more useful.

Parts of that are solvable. For example, mixed use zoning, and pedestrian paths that cut through the mazes of residential cul-de-sacs. It's much easier to bike to a corner store or pub that's .5km or 1km from your house than one that's 5km.

It requires massive political will to build something closer to traditional streetcar suburbs rather than modern car-dependant suburbs.

Yes, that really only works for people in cities and suburbs, but most people live in cities, small towns and suburbs and not on a rural farmstead.

Same for decarbonisation of heating - if I want to install a heat pump and insulate my home better, that costs money!

And older multi-story apartment buildings are often practically impossible to switch to heat pumps. These older buildings make up a vast majority of european city dwellings. All you can realistically do is update insulation and the central heating system to be more efficient, but decarbonizing the latter—I don't even know if there are heat pump based solutions that can heat water to 50...60°C needed if it gets to -20°C and colder. And if there is, installing it would be a nightmare.

Individual heat pumps for each apartment? Where to put the 2 to 4 external heat exchangers per apartment that is needed? If they're on the walls 30 meters from ground how do you have access to them for deicing if they clog up with snow and ice? If they're on rooftops you need mighty long piping to lower floors.

Heat pumps are awesome, but for apartment buildings you have to plan them in from the beginning.

I agree, "the really hard things often don’t require money, but a change in people!" despite what I'm sure are OP's best intentions, is juts more of the same corporate shifting of responsibility away from themselves and on to the individuals they have trapped. Unless the change they mean is becoming an active anti-capitalist and plotting the demise of the rich, which I somehow doubt.

As long as profit is the priority of society, those who make it off of the backs (and eventual destruction) of the rest of us aren't going to stop, and as long as they keep going, anything we do in terms of personal eating habits/recycling/travel and so on is an irrelevant drop in the ocean. The only way to have any real impact is remove them and destroy their system.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/30/capitalism-is-killing-the-planet-its-time-to-stop-buying-into-our-own-destruction

Many poor people already have a mostly plant-based diet because it's cheaper. All you really need is rice, beans, and veggies