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On a sunny day 18 years ago this month, I found myself in a Sacramento park, surrounded by tall trees, shiny cars, and green hype. Nearby loomed the California Capitol, the granite-based bunker from which lawmakers in the environmentally pesky state were pummeling U.S. automakers with legislative bombs designed to force them to crank out climate-friendlier cars. Seeking to persuade the politicians it really was trying to clean up its act, the biggest of Detroit’s Big Three, General Motors, had invited a posse of reporters to take a spin behind the wheel of its latest laboratory prototype: the Hy-wire, a rakish ride powered by a fuel cell, a device that converts hydrogen into electricity to make a car move in ostensible harmony with Mother Nature.

At the time, in 2003, climate change seemed a distant worry, and the stakes for GM’s fickle concept car—beyond the cringeworthy embarrassment—were pretty low. Today, with climate change having surged as a consumer concern, a political priority, and thus a corporate imperative, Detroit is attempting a high-wire act that makes the Hy-wire seem quaint. So are oil producers, utilities, banks, governments, and the rest of the global economy.

On Jan. 28, GM announced that by 2035, a short time in an industry that plans over decades, it intends to cease building petroleum-powered cars and light trucks and to move entirely to ones that run on electricity. The General, as GM is known in Motown—a nod to the dominance over the global auto sector that GM once had and hopes, through its switch to electrification, to claw back—declared that it would spend $27 billion over the next...