[eru]

Yes. Though the Y2K bug was 'only' ever going to affect boring backend operations, not planes falling out of the sky (nor nukes going off..)

I put 'only' in scare quotes, because that would have still been enough chaos and disruption.

(Compare to how Covid was/is by and large a fairly harmless and mild disease and only really poses any danger, if you have pre-existing issues or supremely bad luck (just like lots of diseases we already have), but still managed to paralyse society.)

Coming back from the tangent: in the West sulfur emissions were tamed with a cap-and-trade regime (if I remember right), which is a pretty good example that these things can work, if implemented and enforced properly. Alas, so far similar efforts for CO2 have been lacking.