Driving all too big vehicles is a universal problem, but seems to be especially bad in North America, yes. I suppose your humble little diesel was inspired by your numerous visits to Europe... But even here in BE 90% of rides are by 4-seat cars carrying only the driver - a horrific waste indeed.
Do not count on electric cars, still less on electric planes - people tend to forget (under pressure of politics and media) that electricity is not a source of energy like coal or petrol. Electricity must be made, from some source. Same goes for hydrogen. Belgium has been lax on keeping up its power generation capacity, and is now hurriedly reactivating previously abandoned plants running on gas, coal and oil. And begging its neighbour countries to come to its help, as if they had capacity to spare.
Just today, there was a news article about a very big and very modern nuclear reactor nearing completion in Finland. And mind you, they are neither stupid nor behind technology, up there, at the contrary. As long as we want to keep living at our present level of comfort and commodity and mobility, we will need lots of power; and if we cannot get it from hydrocarbons as we are used to, nuclear may well be the only reliable answer on the short term. The article said rightly that nuclear power, though it is not without its risks and disadvantages, does not contribute to global warming.
But yes, climate is changing. Even in this very stable corner of the world, it is long since we had a really cold winter. And the level of ground water continues to sink, quite alarming.