Very good suggestions, Gwyneth. But to these I would add a three-phase coping mechanism that I sum up in the following slogan:

Grow Gardens.

Grow Community.

Grow Awareness.

These three injunctions are causally interrelated: By growing gardens, we increase our self-reliance and ecological awareness on one hand, while establishing common ground with our neighbors on the other. (Gardening is always a ready-made, politically neutral topic of discussion and idea-exchange with our neighbors). So growing gardens can lead directly to growing community.

And growing community--forming garden guilds with our neighbors for sharing produce, tools, and gardening ideas--in turn leads to growing awareness--of the dangerous and accelerating changes in our global climate, and of actions we need to take, both individually and collectively, to mitigate and adapt to these changes, and finally, just to survive.