Reducing greenhouse gas emissions should be a motherhood issue. Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have increased from 280 to 420 parts per million in barely 60 years, the highest they’ve been over four million years and increasing 100 times faster than natural increases. They are heating the planet, bringing a cascade of catastrophes. All sensible people might be expected to agree that we should be reducing emissions as fast as possible.

But there’s a problem. The main source is the burning of fossil fuels, and the burning of fossils fuels is very profitable for many people, earning governments taxes and royalties, earning companies profits and earning workers wages. There are, in other words, powerful vested interests in maintaining the status quo, or even more of the same.

For example, at the UN climate summit in Brazil last year (COP30), Saudi Arabia led a group of petrostates that vetoed efforts to develop a “roadmap” to phase out fossil fuels. The text of the agreement reached by the 194 nations attending didn’t even mention the words “fossil fuels.” (Neither does the text of the Paris Agreement.)

There are, fortunately, responsible actors. A “coalition of the willing,” a group that includes 53 countries and the European Union along with subnational governments, civil society groups and academics, met in Santa Marta, Colombia, this week. The occasion was the world’s first Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels conference, co-hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands. Frustrated by the foot-dragging, the coalition, representing over half of global GDP, has decided to face the crisis and deal with it.

The objective of the gathering is to “initiate a concrete process through which a coalition of committed countries … and relevant stakeholders can … implement a progressive transition away from fossil fuels creating sustainable societies and economies.” The objective is consistent with a ruling by the International Court of Justice, which confirmed that countries have a legal obligation to protect the climate, including by addressing fossil fuel production, licensing and subsidies.

The conference attendees will consider questions such as the financing developing nations need to phase out their production and consumption of fossil fuels; how legal obstacles can be overcome; what a just, equitable and fair transition looks like; and what can be learned from current efforts to phase out fossil fuels. The emphasis will be on economics rather than politics.

The fact that Colombia and the Netherlands are hosts is highly symbolic. Colombia is one of the world’s largest coal exporting countries (Santa Marta is at the heart of the country’s coal industry) as well as a major oil and gas producer.. The Netherlands is the home of Royal Dutch Shell, one of the world’s major oil and gas corporations.

A number of other major fossil fuel producers attended, including Nigeria, Norway and Brazil—and, I’m pleased to say, Canada. Others, the most notable shirkers, were simply not invited. Needles to say, that included Trump’s U.S.A., however California governor Gavin Newsom, a noted environmentalist and potential 2028 presidential candidate, was there.

Trump has, perhaps, in his own perverse way, underlined the need to transition away from fossil fuels by attacking Iran and precipitating the Strait of Hormuz crisis. Tzeporah Berman, head of the Fossil Fuel Nonproliferation Treaty Initiative, said the Iran war made the Santa Marta conference “an emergency meeting.” Affordable and renewable energy sources assume ever greater urgency.

The conference concluded with governments tasked with developing national “roadmaps” setting out how they will end the production and use of fossil fuels. The roadmaps will form the foundation of an initiative to wean the world off coal, oil and gas.

Prime Minister Mark Carney stated in his Davos speech that the task of the middle powers was to “name reality, act together” and “build something bigger, better, stronger, more just.”

The countries attending the Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels conference are dong just that, naming the reality and acting together to build something stronger and more just. This is the middle powers walking the PM’s talk.

We can be part of this—we attended the conference—or we can continue to wallow in dreams of dilbit and pipelines. We don’t seem to have quite decided, as we continue to wait for Mr. Carney to match his environmental policies to his environmental reputation.