Come to think of it there is something to be said for small-scale, amateurish, and inefficient operations. It's not practical for a small group of people to replace the industrial machinery of car manufacturing, but we can learn to build, maintain, and repair bicycles — relying on substantially less in the way of manufactured parts from China than would be required for other transportation systems.

Similarly we can't easily replace the entire system of industrial agriculture that's playing its part in wrecking the world, but we can get together with some neighbours to plant and maintain an orchard of fruit trees that will keep on producing stuff for people to eat no matter what happens to international trade and global shipping routes. Why shouldn't we? The idea is not to save the entire world from itself, the idea is to build up the local community, get people more connected to the land and to each other, and with any luck have some nice fruit to eat.

A million such little local experiments, each one seemingly insignificant on the global scale, conducted under whatever hellish conditions the future brings by people desperate to come up with some better way to live — it might add up to something. It is, in any case, something to do.