BUT THE NARRATIVE: The world’s astonishing dependence on fossil fuels hasn’t changed in 40 years.

There are few ways to understand why. First, most of the world’s clean-energy sources are used to generate electricity. But electricity forms only 25% of the world’s energy consumption. Second, as the rich world moved towards a cleaner energy mix, much of the poor world was just starting to gain access to modern forms of energy. Inevitably, they chose the cheapest option, which was and remains fossil fuels.

So yes, we’re using much more clean energy than we used to. But the world’s energy demand has grown so steeply that we’re also using a lot more fossil fuels than in the past.

“Dependence” is a terrible, perhaps even hateful word to describe poor people using the ready availability of cheap energy to help life themselves out of poverty.