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We have known for decades now that we must end the disastrous dirty oil age and transition to clean, renewable energy. The wording often used by scientists and activists is that we need a “just transition”. There is where society enables an equitable transition from polluting, undemocratic fossil fuel industries to cleaner community-led renewable technologies.

With hundreds of millions of people across the word suffering from the fallout of higher energy prices and a cost of living crisis caused by Russia’s deadly war on Ukraine, this week’s G7 summit was the perfect opportunity for the world’s most powerful politicians to show clear compelling leadership.

Even before the current COVID-19 crisis, coal was in trouble due to its high carbon content, coupled with high costs. But COVID-19 is accelerating that decline. And once coal is gone, it is not coming back.

For years, coal lobbyists have been saying we needed the dirty fossil fuel for when the wind didn’t blow or the sun didn’t shine. We always knew that was a lie. For years, Donald Trump tried to prop up a dying industry. And now the market has proved them both wrong. And there will be no going back.

The energy company EDF is coming under intense pressure in Scotland to help pioneer a “just transition” from oil to renewables by investing in wind turbine manufacture in the UK, rather than outsourcing the work to Asia.

Would you take it seriously if tobacco companies announced that smoking trends weren’t expected to change much over the next 30 years? And imagine then, that this is what governments used to make tobacco policy: “Forecasts show that people aren’t going to quit smoking, steady rates of smoking around the world are inevitable, so all anti-smoking policies will assume not much is going to change.”

Stealth lobby group ALEC is teaming up with our old-friends, the climate denial-machine, the Heartland Institute to write laws that repeal state-level renewable energy targets.