Comment by XorNot
Yep, this is the real answer. It's also the only answer. The big fiction was everyone getting hopped on the idea that "karma" was going to be real, and people's virtue would be correctly identified by overt environmentalism rather then action.
Fossil fuel companies won, and they won in about 1980s when BP paid an advertising firm to come up with "personal carbon footprint" as a meaningful metric. Basically destroyed environmentalism since...well I'll let you know when it stops.
I made a point in the post to say that it's better to mostly ignore your personal carbon footprint and focus on systematic change, but that I was writing the post for people who still wanted to reduce their consumption anyway