We have to make the behavior of people that are destroying our global ecosystem shameful and intolerable, that's how I see this article. I've never seen societal change occur without a collective shift in perspective. This article tries to make that process more understandable because we are short on time. It is a process that has been repeating throughout human history.
As far as personal efforts and struggle to help, I don't really see it as relevant to this particular discussion. The contemporary human tendency to see global issues as a personal issue is decidedly Western. This goes beyond self, and the western obsession with selfhood. The fact that your efforts aren't helping does not create a basis for dismissing and disregarding the severity of the issue. Forgive me if that's rude, what I'm saying is this is not at all personal and about recycling habits. This is about creating a collective consciousness of disapproval that grows to a size where it can no longer be ignored or dismissed for the sake of profit and gain.
Child labor was perfectly okay until everyone decided that it was not okay. This is the crux of the article. If you look at history, it is moments like that that determine subsequent history.
It's about everyone collectively deciding that they've had enough of something. We are up against PR machines and lots of other opinion modifiers to make it seem like our perspective is invalid. We have to overcome that.