There is something of a reality check under way on the response to the climate crisis. It’s no secret that countries and corporations are far from living up to the goals set by international leaders at the landmark 2015 Paris agreement.

Unless there is a significant course correction, the ramifications will be far-reaching and often destructive. The second coming of Donald Trump and growing global instability has made a top-down injection of urgency at the pace needed harder to imagine. Optimism is harder to come by.

But that doesn’t mean nothing is happening.

It’s worth pointing this out because a narrative has started to take hold that renewable energy and other clean solutions have made little to no headway in displacing fossil fuels, and therefore are pointless. Fuelled by Tony Blair and the former US government adviser Daniel Yergin, and embraced by the fossil fuel industry and its lapdogs in the commentariat, it is used to attack zero emissions targets as a fool’s dream. In Australia, it is part of the backdrop as the Albanese government is lobbied over whether to set an ambitious emissions reduction target for 2035.

The reality, though, is more complicated. Here are some things worth considering if you hear climate action is pointless.

One line that has gained some traction this year is that the proportion of global energy supply from fossil fuels has barely moved over the past 35 years. The claim – bubbling away in the The Australian, on Sky News and on social media – goes that dirty fuels provided 85% of energy in 1990, and still provide 80% today.

So much for progress, right?

But the Bloomberg New

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