This stolen ramble from Grist articulates my point well:
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2005/7/5/141015/2101

There are worse things than hypocrisy
Posted by David Roberts at 2:10 PM on 05 Jul 2005

A reader sent along a link to this George Monbiot piece with the somewhat accusatory question:

In a recent column, George Monbiot excoriates environmental superstars for not walking the talk. So what about the Grist luminaries? How do you live in reality?
One often sees this sort of thing, and … well, I wish one wouldn’t.

At least once a week we get a letter from some fruitcake saying: “You [or some celebrity or writer] can’t support [some environmental change or policy] until you give up your car, grow your own food, and live by candlelight.” Otherwise — gasp — hypocrisy!

This is, in fact, a favorite right-wing talking point on the environment — it’s all part of the modern-day conservative attempt to reduce everything to “personal responsibility,” thereby freeing the centers of financial and political power from any structural restraints. When well-meaning greens echo the line, they do themselves a disservice.

Let me be clear: Of course there’s nothing wrong with living an environmentally exemplary life. It would be better to live that way than to not. It would be better to devote oneself to charity, too, or go to Africa and work on poverty relief. For any given individual, he or she could be living a more virtuous life.

But that’s more or less a distraction.

If we must wait on humankind to collectively become virtuous — or, ahem, “evolve spiritually” — we are screwed-with-a-capital-S. True virtue will always reside in a minority. Most people will continue to live normal lives, concerned with their immediate surroundings and largely ignoring far-off or long-term effects.

Ironically, this is the real point of Monbiot’s piece, which I’m not sure the reader quite understood. Monbiot says:

“Consumer democracy”, “voluntary simplicity” and “mindful living” have proved to be a disastrous distraction from the political battle. They don’t work for all sorts of reasons, but above all because of the staggering hypocrisy of well-meaning people. If we want to change the world, we must force governments to force us to change our behaviour.

My only quibble with Monbiot — and it’s fairly substantial — is that I wouldn’t put the focus exclusively on government action. I would say, more broadly, that we must push for structural change. That involves changes in laws and regulations, yes, but also changes in popular and business culture, as well as changes in physical infrastructure — the places we live, how we transport ourselves, the way we generate energy, how we manufacture the material items we use every day. (The latter are more the calling of entrepreneurs and inventors than government regulators.)

People’s lives and habits are primarily determined by their milieu. Free will exists, but it is not ex nihilo — it operates within fairly narrow bounds, in the context of a much larger determinism arising from material and social circumstances. To make lasting change, we must alter those circumstances.

Whether I, or you, or any particular person lives a life of environmental virtue is all-but-irrelevant to the larger environmental effort. The goal is creating a human society where a life of environmental virtue is de facto, something individuals live without thinking twice about it, because their material and social circumstances channel them in that direction.

We’re in a political fight, not a contest of individual virtue.
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By: ME

Politics is imperative in playing a part, because in one sense, individual action is irrelevant to collective inaction of almost 7 billion people, and in another sense, individual action on pressuring the government is crucial for collective pressure - for political leadership of cooperation of entire populations and nations to take on issues that we individually can’t. Issues that are bigger than you and me.

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-Toronto Star Ages 6-12 story submission Dec 2006-
(not the exact wording but a story worth repeating!)

A small boy sits on the dry dirt floor and leans against a rock, he lets out a dry cackling cough as if he was about to die. He put his stack of old, faded, riped magazines under his rock and signs. He has to look for food today. He grabs a plastic bag that floats by, if he’s lucky he might get a few bugs - crockroaches, beetles maybe. He glances at one of the magazines that’s sticking out of the rock and laughs, a dry, cynical laugh. And thinks of the politicians that are smiling on the cover - how they all, each and every single one of them that was in power - said they would do something about the environment..but never did……and they were the lucky ones that never lived the day to see its consequences.

He glances at another plastic bag that floats by and thinks ironically, how it will outlive him.

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What happened to the buffalos?

It went away..just like winter snow, summer rain, and new spring grass….then the hole in the sky appeared and the lands were covered with waters from the sea. The buffalo was just the beginning. Then the rest. Tearing up the land for wheat so that when the wind and rain came, nothing’d hold it down. Then draining the good swamp for more land. Moving rivers, damming them. Chemicals poisoning the earth, air and waters.

(excerpt from the Crystal Drop by Monica Hughes)