Someone has to go first. If not you, then who? Everything starts with someone going first.

And your actions do have an effect: by providing an example to others, making it more likely they too will participate; and economic, by reducing the income generated from the activity.

1/1,000,000,000 has no meaningful impact on any of those.

Silent Spring was written by a Rachel Carson and had real impact. However, her personal lifestyle was irrelevant.

PS: As to someone going first, that is not an issue when say a state adds a sales tax. In such cases the first person to pay the tax is a sign that it's already in place.

So I take it you don't believe in voting? Voting is nearly as worthless.

No one said your singular vote (with your wallet) would change everything. But just like voting you help push things in the right direction. And you can, with additional effort, influence more people to vote the same way as you.

Voting magnifies the impact of the individual. Consider the impact on the climate of 40,000 people completely eliminating their CO2 emissions. The difference would be impossible to measure, even if it was the top 40,000 emitters on the planet. Maybe you'd push back the time to hit 2 degrees of warming by a day or something.

Now consider the impact of the right 40,000 people voting differently in the 2016 US Presidential elections. All sorts of things would look very different, including action being taken to fight climate change.

One person can make a difference, by influencing others. But you have to be smart about it. You can't just decide to fly less, and then declare that you're making a difference because one person can make a difference.

Who? The government. Sign a treaty, pass a law, impose loads and loads of CO2 taxes. Impose sanctions on countries that won't fall in line.

On the contrary, big things are always started by individuals. I can't think of a single case where all nations have 'agreed' and magically solved some global issue.

First thing that comes to mind is Nazis. Imagine some American guy gearing up and landing in France all by himself instead of trying to get his government to intervene.

I think the point is somebody, somewhere, started the ball rolling with the various governments. Everyone in the government didn’t all wake up one morning and simultaneously decide to oppose the Nazis.

Somebody has to get it started, but they have to get something useful started. Trying to convince your government to fight the Nazis by writing editorials or calling members of Congress is useful. Trying to convince them by going to France to single-handedly fight the Wehrmacht is not useful.

Rich people flying less won't do anything to convince governments to fight climate change, so what's the point?