Both require people to care enough about others they’ll never meet enough to significantly self-sacrifice to be successful.

I can cut my carbon footprint to the bone, and my neighbor will run their two-stroke leaf blower all day because they like the noise it makes.

I am not sure you are familiar with what the term consumer responsibility means in this context. It doesnt mean to rely on consumer's "good hearts" and conscience. Its a mechanism to attribute impact to final consumption, so that the costs of that impact are also priced to influence these consumers. So your neighbor would somehow pay for their mindless blowing (rather than the manufacturer or the fuel provider).

The comment to which I responded implied that this is unfair, that the corporate beneficiaries / polluters should "pay".

Totally.

> I can cut my carbon footprint to the bone, and my neighbor will run their two-stroke leaf blower all day because they like the noise it makes.

Personally I reduced our currently measurable monthly CO2 emissions from ~350kg/month to ~15kg/month. They need a lot of (gas powered) leaf blowers to offset that. If thousands or millions of people do it, it'll make a difference. I'm aware of course that not everyone is in the financial position to do what we did. For a lot of people though it's a choice they could make if they're open to changing their lifestyle a little bit.

(I'm not saying our emissions are down to 15kg/month, but that's based on what I can currently measure, transportation, LNG, electricity, etc. Likely they are much higher of course but I gotta start somewhere)