[majormajor]

That's not how I interpret that quotation from the article at all. "The trick to that is democracy" not "the trick to that is lobbying."

Instead of spending your time trying to reduce your own "carbon footprint" spend it convincing other people to support legislative action.

"Big Oil" wants you to spend your time working just on yourself instead of spending your time sharing the information about why we need to reign them in. The private individual efforts of 5% of people will do less than the evangelical efforts of that same group.