Congratulations on being the first person in human history to call the end times correctly.
Again and again we’ve shown we can make these transitions, including surviving a major ice age. While there’s good reason to worry, as lack of worry denotes foolhardiness, despair is both self-defeating and counterfactual to the whole of human history.
This time it may well be different, but if it is, then your attitude is guaranteed to lead to failure, as we will then not take the necessary steps to secure the future.
My money is on a technological solution overall, but there are many things regular people can meaningfully do, such as driving less, giving up one or more cars, or choosing to build or renovate toward highly insulated, potentially net carbon sequestering house as with the passive house standard, switch to heat pump based a/c and water heating, and voluntarily contributing to carbon sequestration efforts such as through YC alum Wren https://www.wren.co/join/Empact
If you think that’s not enough, and perhaps you’re right, what lever do we need to press to make change? It is our responsibility as the current generation to identify and press that lever to secure the future for our descendants.
Politically, my money is on the Citizen’s Climate Lobby effort to bring about a carbon tax, and the American Conservation Coalition for its effort to raise the prospect of environmental policy in the Republican sphere. If enough people vote on this issue alone[1], as the second amendment and abortion communities have effectively done over the past forty years, then we have a chance to shift policy in the direction of conservation/protection.
For me that means: a carbon tax to reduce demand, unleashing zero-carbon sources like nuclear to further out-compete the fossil fuel plants, while also embracing efficient infrastructure like pipelines to efficiently convey that supply we continue to use. On this last point, remember that the demand is constrained via a carbon tax.
The world needs our earnest efforts. You can keep your despair.[2]
[1] particularly in the primaries, as most house districts are now non-competitive between the parties
[2] Incidentally, I think the hysteria on the left is also counterproductive, as “the sky is falling” only reaches so many people before it discredits the speaker, and the goal should of convincing the middle does not require them to be terrified - IMO the easiest way to do that is to make the behavior high-status and motivate people that way, e.g. see Tesla, solar panels, etc.