Voting matters, but unfortunately it appears to be an incredibly sub-optimal solution for dealing with climate change for the following reasons:

• Just because you can vote, doesn't mean that the option you need is even on the menu. It often isn't.
• Through hard work you can get the option on the menu, but that doesn't mean your politician won't do "deals" after they are in power.
• Lobbyists get access to politicians 24/7 and have a lot of influence, you have one vote every 4 years;
• Even if politicians do what you want, it is unlikely that your country by itself will make a difference, this is a global problem.

Meanwhile we are all fucked. It is likely too late already for preventing severe climate change. Our only hope now is geoengineering. The USA and EU are already considering blocking the sun.

The people who (rightly) have a sense of urgency about this are taking more radical action. They are blocking roads and throwing soup at famous paintings. These are desperate acts that seem rational in the face of the horror that we should strive to avoid, but the majority opinion of our species seems to be that these people are "too radical" and that common folks just trying to get by should not be inconvenienced, and that these radical eco-terrorists should be thrown in a cage.

To be honest, I'm not sure that our species deserves to survive.

Agreed, at least in principle - but your statement is so reductive it really could be said about anything.

It's so hard to motivate people to vote, people are exhausted and finding ten minutes in the day to feel good about oneself, much less performing a (seemingly futile, thanks to those poisonous ideas you've mentioned) civic duty is bordering on impossible. When 1 in 15 people in the UK need drugs just to keep their desire to live one more day in check - and a good chunk of the remaining population from that statistic are barely holding on - fighting the futility for someone else is an insurmountable goal.

I don't know if we can afford to wait for climate to get worse for people to take action. People are dying preventable deaths, if it weren't for the very evident effects of man made climate change being politicised or obfuscated, maybe it'd be just a warm Summer in Europe right now.

How long can we wait for a peaceful solution to form?

If we don't wait - how many heads would we need on pikes next to Mortimer Buckley or Larry Fink before we start seeing positive change? When would be the tipping point for the guillotine to become the most ethical solution?

Sorry, I'm rambling. I just feel so hopeless sometimes, and putting a X in a box 2 or 3 times a decade doesn't do anything to make me feel like we're making progress...!

Voting is still good, but it's the bare minimum. Not everyone has the time, but if you do, you should try to advocate publicly, and preferably in a group. Just like with unions, collective action is more effective. If I give feedback to my city individually, I'm a data point. But as part of an advocacy group, they reach out to us.

stuck fin

But you're not talking about the people who are already doing everything they can you're talking about the people who aren't, and they haven't, and they won't, so it is industry and government who needs to do the things for them, because they won't. If our votes aren't enough then there is nothing more that can be done under the current system.