The following solutions can change the game for the fossil fuel industry and for the climate:

If banks can be bailed out, so can the climate. Central Banks have printed money in emergency situations such as the Covid pandemic. In the climate emergency, we should use the same tool for buying stranded assets from fossil fuel companies and closing them down, in exchange for money to be invested in additional renewable energy capacity.

Once polluters have to pay or responsible executives can go to prison for the negative impacts of climate change, people will shift course very quickly. There are many possibilities already under existing law and precedents can have an extraordinary impact. Creating new laws that bring polluters to justice is another approach.

Cheap fossil fuels are a key driver of the climate crisis – and a strong lever for change. “Reducing emissions” alone actually just shifts them around, like a balloon where more pressure will shift the shape, but not the overall size of the balloon. The important question is how much coal, oil and gas comes out of the ground and flows into the balloon. When extraction is stopped, then real reductions happen. Resistance makes fossil fuels more expensive and fossil fuel projects more risky to investors.

This amazing approach has the potential to shift the mainstream of economic activity and entrepreneurship towards solving environmental and social problems, becoming climate friendly would be just one of them.

Governments continue to throw billions of subsidies into fossil fuels, distorting the market in their favour. By ending fossil fuel subsidies and instead financing clean energy, the energy marketplace will look very different – and fossil fuels will lose ground even faster.

The fossil fuel lobby plays a critical role in keeping fossil systems in place by influencing political decisions. Transparency and explicit limits on the influence of the fossil lobby on policy-makers will help climate-friendly policies.

Free Trade Agreements are rigging the game, but in the wrong direction: they make it more difficult for climate policies, protecting the fossil fuel incumbency. We must “defuse” these dangerous tools which perpetuate fossil fuel dependency.

When ethical investors drop fossil fuel companies, a new narrative grows: investing in fossil fuels is immoral. As the business case for fossils worsens through renewables competition, this narrative and the economic case reinforce each other. Shareholder activism can amplify these voices within companies and shorten the time until they correct course.

Real-life examples of persons, cities or nations that have managed the transition to 100% clean energy are an important psychological game changer.

This new principle can guide the transformation from a linear “stupid product economy” to a circular “smart service economy”.

We need more citizens and institutions to pull these long levers and change the game. Please get in touch if you would like to get involved more deeply.

The important lesson from this long list of game changers is that it is definitely possible to turn the ship around and get rid of fossil fuel burning very soon. Who said we need to wait to 2050 to go fossil free? Let’s make 2030 the new 2050!