There’s a lag between human activity and climate change. Rolling out nuclear might have helped a bit, but whether we’d have seen the results today I’m not sure… the benefits would be in the future.
I doubt cars could have evolved any faster though (well they could, but capitalism, so realistically things went as fast as they could)… so it might not have had much impact at all.
Happens with americans too… they seem to completely miss sarcasm sometimes. Humour is very cultural (and often plays into things a native of the country would know but someone outside sometimes wouldn’t).