I'm fairly convinced that the status quo can do nothing to prevent the collapse of complex industrial society. Obviously it's a complicated topic, but if you assume the position that by 2030 there will be dramatic, uncontrollable warming of the planet (and all of the side effects that will bring), what is to be done to prevent that?
As a guy with a decent work-from-home kind of job (for now) and enough resources to be comfortable, it's been incredibly tempting during quarantine to think about building a house off the grid, finding a stable source of drinking water, and building a sustainable farming homestead in rural America. 2020 has demonstrated that things don't always just work out. I'm worried about the precarious material conditions that pervade contemporary urban culture (at least from the perspective of sustainability if food/water/power systems are interrupted). And I know I could develop the skills I need to live like that.
But obviously, something can be done to prevent a collapse. We could work together to ensure the stability of urban environments, and produce all of the energy and matetials we need here, locally. We could put everyone to work with this goal in mind. We could build a better world collectively.
But how? How do I find a group of people to work with? How do I convince the liberals who just shrug and say, man, isn't it just terrible that trump is in charge? How do I find anyone who's thinking about this shit, and realizes that actually yes, this can all fall apart. Things are not as stable as they seem. Climate change is literally the only issue that matters in any time frame beyond 10 years.
What is next? What is there to do?
I worry that, as a slow moving catastrophe, nothing will be done. As reversible as this is now, the effects won't be catastrophic. All modern politics can imagine is the catastrophe, the singular moment in history that can be heroically opposed by mobilizing resources by Great Men^tm. But this isn't a singular battle for politicians to make a place in history. This is a widespread, disparate, and non-glamorous change for the worse that whole organized efforts of humanity have helped to produce profit and accumulate the resources necessary to sustain the violence against some Other.
There is so much tangled into how politics are done that we can no longer work within the politics and markets as is to produce solutions to this. We just haven't created or designed communities, especially urban ones, to handle the impacts of food shocks, water wars, biodiversity collapses, and insecurity generally.
Neither can we rely on mass public outcry or resistance. The average American conservative won't believe it can be done, the average American liberal is too lazy to attempt to do it and prizes the life it has given them anyway, and most other places on Earth don't have the resources to enforce a collective will against the Global North. We could attempt to build one, but it will take decades and if it arrives on time it will be fragile.
The individualist fantasy of building a bunker out in the woods, growing food, and creating a singular sustainable point for the people you care about is tempting. And doomerism is tempting, especially given the increasing volume of scientific literature saying the worst is probably yet to come while watching absolute upheaval in the Global North be quietly curbed back into a yearning for "normal" instead of revolutionary efforts, but giving in is giving up. And the chance to do the right thing and maybe survive outweighs the possibility of an escape from global change.
Fidelity to that thought is the hardest step, and will catalyze the organizing force that might just curb the worst of this.
As for actual policy and not mindset things, I think personally urban farming and securing local supply lines generally in communal ownership is the quickest avenue for building robust communities and building networks of allies. Strikes, though incredible effective and by far the best way to halt the machine, require enormous initial energy to overcome the barrier of "How do I survive without a paycheck?" By creating our own supply centers we can remove the dependency on the capitalist machine and thereby create keystones to build larger movements that can leverage political institutions for change while at the same time create safety nets if efforts fail.