Today everyone get's a car. Some might be EVs (fueled by coal power) but others are not.
And every year world CO2e emissions go up.
And every day we pretend it's ok because it went up by less that it would have if we had put it up even more. But we need them to come down, not just go up less quickly. And we needed that in 2000. Not "we might manage it in 2030".
I would also look at both the rise of cheap EVs and the size of the ICEs people outside of rich western countries are buying. American SUVs are an outlier caused by heavy subsidies but the cost of buying and operating them is prohibitive in many places, not to mention narrow roads and storage cutting into the appeal. There’s a reason why you see so many cool cars only available outside of the U.S. market and most of them get whole number multiples better mileage than the median American vehicle.
Then we congratulate ourselves.
And I am a doom munger when all I see is hopium.
BTW, I support the environment, but I always have and still believe nuclear would have been the best choice. Then we would have time to transition to other sources keeping nuclear as a backup. So now, we are in a hurry up we will all soon die mode. For this, I blame the anti-nuke crowd, I would not be surprised if the coal and oil industries funded these people.
Climate change is a huge complex problem with 1001 causes and each cause has 1001 possible solutions. But people all pick a single solution. And then insist on it. Renewable people won't support nuclear, nuclear people won't support biomass, biomass people won't support renewables. Ditto reductioneers and public transport enthusiasts and anti-car people. And that is just electricity for car transport, that offers nothing to air travel or construction or agriculture.
So everyone sits on their arse saying "it's not MY fault, I recycled a tin can once!".
Everyone is saying the same thing: I will only support things others don't and unless I get my own way we should do nothing.
So we have, as a species, all agreed to do nothing.
But everyone wants to pretend THEY and THEIR solution would have worked, and THEY are the good guy.
I think people are also looking too much for a magic solution that allows them to keep going as is. Like CO2 capture. If we actually build this in quantities that actually make a dent in emissions, we'll be mining half the world for materials to make the installations and power them and ruin the other half to place them and store the captured carbon. It's just never going to be viable especially until we solve the emissions problem first. But it's the promise of a magic solution that keeps it on the map.