Probably unless of course an individual has many thousands of dollars of idle funds that they don't mind spending on lawyers and legal fees. Politicians basically are at the mercy of monied interests. In any given situation the person or group with the largest amount of money to throw at the problem are going to get their way. Even very large interest groups will have much less influence than a corporation with a huge legal budget willing to spend money on lawyers and lawsuits to get their way. The niceties of laws and legislation is that most are not enforced unless there's an emergency or disaster either imminent or underway. Also money will and always has had an outsized influence on amending laws or passing new ones.
The only limited counterbalance is large numbers of people combined with positive media coverage. That said exactly how far have anti-pipeline, anti-new highways and anti-old growth logging actually gotten? Bad projects can sometimes be slowed down but rarely fully stopped. Very bad ideas environmentally may have to go through some form of environmental assessment yet the proponents simply buy the experts they need to "sell" the project to the relevant political body. This includes gravel pits, in town Biogas facilities and even in town tractor trailer parking lots on top of former landfills right beside residential subdivisions. Seriously who would have thought 35 years ago that Uniroyal Chemical could ruin our local drinking water aquifers and our Creek (Canagagigue) and essentially walk away unscathed with mere window dressing and inadequate pump and treat groundwater technology?
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