We are seeing what a serious response to a crisis looks like, let's apply this focus to energy transition

This column is an opinion by Yrjo Koskinen, the BMO professor of sustainable and transition finance at the Haskayne School of Business, University of Calgary. For more information about CBC's Opinion section, please see the FAQ.

When Russia invaded Ukraine, the West's reaction appeared to surprise everybody, including Russia. The United States, the European Union and others responded quickly and decisively by imposing punishing economic sanctions, by targeting Russian assets abroad and by sending Ukraine significant supplies of weapons. 

The most consequential actions were freezing the Russian Central Bank's gold and foreign exchange reserves and limiting Putin's access to the Russian sovereign wealth fund's assets. Russia had prepared its banking sector for being barred from using the SWIFT global messaging system, but going after its foreign assets was likely unexpected and clearly devastating. There's probably more to come.

This is what a serious response to a crisis looks like. 

Also recently, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its 2022 report on impacts and adaptation to climate change and as a result, well, not much happened. In the middle of the invasion, hardly anybody even noticed. 

The truth is, geopolitics eats climate change for breakfast.

An urgent crisis creates the incentive for action. Even though we claim that we are in a climate crisis, people don't really believe it. Its impact seems less urgent; the deadlines far away. 

Nonetheless, we ignore climate change at our peril. Long-term consequences of inaction could be devastating, as the February IPCC report points out.  

The energy transition must still remain a priority, but we need to get much smarter about it. Climate emergency declarations have been pure virtue signalling, followed with little action as governments pass the ball to their successors by agreeing to long-term goals and only putting forward hazy paths to meeting decades-away commitments. 

First of all, no more false promises. Next, we have to admit to ourselves that there will be no orderly energy transition. 

Transition will be volatile, full of surprises and will bring unintended consequences. The process is just far too complex for anybody to figure out all the contingencies. Pretending otherwise just leads to disappointments and backlash. 

As Europe sought to lead in renewable energy usage, it continued buying most of Russia's oil and gas because even world leaders in wind and solar power need reliable baseload power in order to meet energy demands when the sun doesn't shine and the winds don't blow. Europe ended up financing the Russian war machine. Ukrainians are paying the price. 

In the short and medium-term, we should admit something too few leaders are willing to say publicly: fossil fuels are a significant part of the energy mix. 

Currently, fossil fuels provide over 80 per cent of the world's energy. We can't wish that fact away, even if we wanted to. That number will go down, as the world's energy use is forecasted to grow nearly 50 per cent by 2050 and the growth is largely coming from renewables. But most likely the world will still consume considerable amounts of hydrocarbons then.