Can't we all agree on the following three things?
1. Man made climate change is real
2. Catastrophic predictions that never come to pass and fearmongering by many politicians and climate scientists have exploded their credibility on the subject
3. This is going to be a multi-century transition driven by innovation and efficiency gains; not governments.
1) Yes......ish. The problem is that the climate is affected by literally hundreds of variables. There are strong data points to suggest that it is man-made. Strong enough that it is a probably a good assumption (like 95% likely), and there is also a good argument that even if there is still some different variable that is actually causing the majority of the climate change, fixing the things we humans are currently doing that we know are also bad for the environment isn't a bad idea. Unfortunately, burning coal is really bloody efficient at creating power. We've been perfecting it for 1000 years. That's not something that can be thrown out easily, especially if we aren't willing to change our lifestyles during the transition period to help fix the problem.
2) In some ways, we'd be better off with the catastrophic result. We are not going to get a "The Day After Tomorrow" kind of event. The planet will keep warming up a little every year for the next 50 years. It wont happen overnight. It will just be a gradual progression. Old timers will remember how the town used to be greener when they were kids and that the leaves used to fall off the trees in October instead of November. People will die, but it will be a few more per year, not 10's of thousands at a time. Sadly, if a "Day After Tomorrow" type of event happened, it would probably in the grand scheme of things be a net positive. Human beings can sometimes be their best during extreme emergencies. When there is a massive problem that threatens their well-being directly in front of them, they can focus hard and solve problems, knowing that some hard decisions might have to be made. It's when the problems are nebulous things that COULD go wrong, we don't tend to give them as much attention as it probably deserves.
3) The problem is that people are, more often than not, selfish. Unless they are suffering directly from this problem, they aren't going to make the sacrifices of time and effort to solve it (see item 2). With that said, humans are a fairly adaptable race. We will survive, but there could be significant losses along the way. Option 1, if you have the belief that those losses are acceptable, then yes, eventually the innovation / efficiency gains will work itself out. Option 2, if you have the belief that we have the responsibility to do our best to save as many as possible, then government intervention is probably the most likely way to solve it, because enough people believe in option 1 that spurring them into action is only going to happen if the government finds the way to motivate them to do so through either penalties or incentives.