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When the underbrush of a forest becomes overgrown, it begins to choke out it's ecosystem. While a forest fire may be devastating in the short term, in the long run it is the best thing that can happen to it, as life can once again flourish in it's aftermath. They even set controlled forest fires intentionally, because they are good for the forest long term.

In many ways intelligent life has the same effect on its host planet as the overgrown underbrush has on the forest floor. The best thing that could happen to the Earth and its environment would be for a proverbial "forest fire" to wipe us out; allowing the Earth to revert back to its natural state and virtually erase any trace of our existence upon its surface. 

Now that "forest fire" could be an outside force inflicted upon us, such as the asteroid that bwarbiany is hoping for. But it is much more likely that we will be wiped out by the unintended consequences of our own technological advancements. So far we have survived our nuclear age, and our altercations to the molecular make up of our atmosphere. So far we have survived our dabblings in artificial intelligence, genetic engineering and biological warfare. So far we haven't replaced human spouses with sex cyborgs that can cook and clean and do housework; dropping our birthrate to zilch. But all of these technologies are only in their infancy, and each has the potential to wipe us out at any moment. 

Now if you think about it, "climate change" is probably the most eco-friendly "forest fire" that we could inflict upon ourselves; as it is just burning up a small part of our ecosystem. The worst "forest fire" that we could wipe ourselves out with would probably be the ole "Terminator" style apocalypse, where we are overthrown and wiped out by our own AI. In that case we might leave behind a bloodthirsty machine civilization that, after it got done with us, might view other biological organisms as their primary threat, and wipe all of them out until there is absolutely nothing left on Earth that even remotely resembles an organic compound. 

A machine civilization would need neither air nor water. They could eliminate the atmosphere and evaporate the oceans in order to wipe out all life on this Earth. 

Sure there might be some microbes deep underground. But rather than digging them up, they might begin searching out life to eradicate on other planets. 

There would still be methane.  And other hydrocarbons even so.

Organic compounds do not require life to generate.  That was an old belief, put to rest when urea was synthesized in a lab.

If machines eliminated the atmosphere, they'd have to be able to operate at extremely cold temperatures.

Heh, okay Dr Zaius. Point taken. 

"Everyone's an epidemiologist" is the new "everyone's a climate scientist."

When I was working, I'd get in these LONG discussions about climate change with a couple of coworkers.  I got Nature and Science across my desk, I usually barely glanced at them, but I took a shot at reading a few articles on the topic.

I needed a thesaurus, especially for the acronyms.  Nearly as I could tell, the article was a find adjustment to some parameter in a model with 20 or more parameters.

It is amazing how much gets published these days, and I'd say nearly all of it is crap, just something of no real interest to build up resumes and get tenure.  I speak from experience, having done a bit of that myself.

I would argue the trillion could be spent on other things that might be more useful and more productive longer term.  Or the money could be spent partly on other things, like infrastructure, the grid, whatever.

But our electricity system is mostly private.

This is if we're spending a trillion at all, and if the economy somehow needed a boost.

One of the Keynesian thoughts was that during good times we'd run a surplus.

My own "plan", as I've mentioned before, would be to make elimination of coal burning for electricity the priority.  Since that is baseline power, you'd probably need more NG in the interim, which is better.  If I really really really thought climate change was "world ending" to some degree, I'd be pushing nuclear hard as the only practicable option.

Wind and solar are fine, but insufficient, by the numbers.  A handful of enviro types have mentioned nuclear, they seem to get shouted down.

So, we're left with no viable option, just verbiage and spin and promises and hot air and commitments and silliness like the GND.

That is why I view most of this as a social restructuring effort having nothing to do with the environment.