Fossils fuels tend to support despotism, whereas sun and wind are much closer to being democratic.

At first glance, last autumn’s Glasgow climate summit looked a lot like its 25 predecessors. But as I wandered the halls and streets outside, it struck me that a good deal had changed since the last big climate confab in Paris in 2015 – and not just because carbon levels and the temperature had risen ever higher.

The biggest shift was in the political climate. Over those few years the world seemed to have swerved sharply away from democracy and toward autocracy – and in the process dramatically limited our ability to fight the climate crisis. Oligarchs of many kinds had grabbed power and were using it to uphold the status quo.

Now that we’ve watched Russia launch an oil-fired invasion of Ukraine, it’s a little easier to see this trend in high relief – but Putin is far from the only case: the United States’ deep democratic deficits have long haunted climate negotiations. The reason we have a system of voluntary pledges, not a binding global agreement, is that the world finally figured out there would never be 66 votes in the US Senate for a real treaty.

And so we were left contemplating a world whose people badly want action on climate change, but whose systems aren’t delivering it.

Autocrats are often directly the result of fossil fuels. The crucial thing about oil and gas is it is concentrated in a few spots around the world, and hence the people who control those spots end up with huge amounts of unwarranted and unaccountable power.

Sun and wind are, in these terms, much closer to being democratic: They’re available everywhere.

As a general rule, territories with the healthiest, least-captive-to-vested-interest democracies are making the most progress on climate change. So part of the job for climate campaigners is to work for functioning democratic states.

But given the time constraints imposed by physics – the need for rapid action – that can’t be the whole strategy. Activists have arguably been too focused on politics and not enough on the other power center in our civilization: money.

That’s one reason some of us have worked so hard on campaigns like fossil fuel divestment – we won big victories with New York’s pension funds and California’s vast university system. Now we’re doing the same with the huge banks that are the industry’s financial lifeline.

Putin’s grotesque war might be where some of these strands come together. It highlights the power that control of scarce supplies gives to autocrats. It’s also shown us the power of financial systems to put pressure on recalcitrant political leaders: Russia is being systematically and effectively punished by banks and corporations. The shock of the war may also be strengthening the resolve and unity of the world’s remaining democracies.

But we’ve got years, not decades, to get the climate crisis under some kind of control. We won’t get more moments like this. The brave people of Ukraine may be fighting for more than they can know.

BILL McKIBBEN is the founder of 350.org and the author of the new book Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?