I agree with most of what you said, except for this. We are much more like a modern cruise ship with a few thousand people on the button for the engine, heading full power towards the iceberg because there's some sweets they want in the same direction. If one of them doesn't collect enough sweets, they usually get sent down to the oars.

There are also 7-8 billion other people with oars in the water, pulling in several different directions, getting told either that they will also get some of the sweets if they row towards the iceberg, or that we wouldn't be in this mess if the just rowed against the engines harder. Obviously, the rowers can't change the direction of the ship - they can either hope that the people controlling the engine change their mind, or they can leave their oars and go take down the engine people en masse.

Point being, the vast majority of people, even pulling together, can't do anything to reverse global warming through direct action. We need to organize and take political action to force governments and companies to act if we are to have any real impact. Of course this will in turn affect us as well (less stuff, less meat, less AC and so many others), but the change must come from the top down at this point. At this point, even if entire countries chose spontaneously to buy half the stuff and eat half the meat, that would probably not have a significant impact on CO2 emissions, given that production would likely continue and switch to more exports.