Or is it encouraging individuals to start making more of a grassroots effort to effect change for their own sakes, rather than sitting around waiting for the people with little to gain and much to lose in enacting more human policies to suddenly have a change of heart?
Which means that change inevitably has to start with individuals. Trying to insist that it's corporations' and governments' job to make the first move is only useful in situations where assigning blame is more important than dealing with the problem.
Perhaps related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness