What to do about climate change

I heard this award-winning journalist, Andrew Revkin, who's an expert on climate change, interviewed on NPR the other day. He made two (IMO) contradictory points:

1) The average person needs to learn about how their day-to-day choices can impact greenhouse gases (e.g., take public transportation or choose to work closer to where they live)

and

2) The media is currently reporting somewhat hysterically on this topic and implying connections among events (e.g., the tsunami) and climate change that do not exist.

My question -- how to motivate the average person to participate in reducing climate change without the hysterical reporting???