The 3RR does allow administrators some discretion, such as the ability to unblock people where they have shown remorse for breaking the rule. Enviroknot has not expressed any such remorse, and has not addressed the allegations of sockpuppetry. Instead, he or she has spammed the mailing list and attacked Wikipedia Administrators as a whole. Had Enviroknot come up with a good explanation for sharing IPs with other users, expressed some sort of remorse for breaking a very basic rule and agreed to work collaboratively on the relevant article's talk page to reach consensus, I have little doubt the ban would have been happily lifted by a number of administrators.
I totally agree with this. If environknot had been less hostile, his chances of being unblocked would've been much larger.
--Mgm