On its face, 2025 looks like a year of relentless backsliding in the fight against climate change. President Trump has signed a bill eliminating most federal funding for clean energy, blocked wind and solar projects, and attacked climate science institutions. Several states long committed to climate action, including Connecticut and Massachusetts, have scaled back or are considering scaling back their pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Europe, once the global leader, is softening commitments, including plans to replace cars with internal combustion engines with electric vehicles. Banks have abandoned so many promises to green their lending that a major alliance committed to reducing emissions collapsed last fall.

These shifts look like capitulation to political pressure and fossil-fuel lobbyists. But another, more important trend emerged this year: Policymakers and investors are increasingly pursuing what is feasible rather than promising the impossible.

For years, climate debates have revolved around abstract goals — net zero by a certain date, bans on gas-powered cars — without enough attention to how those goals would be achieved. For investors, the obsession with bold but unachievable targets has made it difficult to know where to put capital.

We need to recognise that many old climate goals, such as slashing global emissions to zero very soon or eliminating sales of gas-powered cars entirely, were never attainable. Admitting that is the first step toward a more mature phase of climate action, grounded in reality and better equipped to focus debate on real trade-offs.

Take Pennsylvania. In November, Gov. Josh Shapiro announced he was abandoning an emissions trading scheme linking the state to 11 others and imposing modest limits on climate pollution. Climate activists sounded the alarm. In reality, the program was mired in legal challenges, and Republicans had successfully framed it as a tax on already costly energy.

Shapiro is now pursuing a more pragmatic approach: producing more energy in the state, lowering costs and using tax revenues to attract clean industries. Pennsylvania continues to move away from conventional coal while encouraging competition among cleaner energy sources — wind and solar, but also nuclear power and natural gas plants fitted with pollution controls. That competition has helped drive down emissions from the US power sector by pushing coal aside, often without mandates or bans.

Connecticut and North Carolina have also softened mandates to buy clean power as politics shift. In both states, voters and experts increasingly link ambitious renewable plans with higher energy costs.

Climate action is also maturing in the tech sector. By 2020, the largest technology companies, including Amazon and Google, pledged to slash emissions to zero or below by 2030 or 2040. Then came the artificial intelligence boom and its power-hungry data centers. Today, none of these companies has officially abandoned their goals, but most are not on track to meet them.

Instead of walking away, Big Tech is pouring money into wind and solar projects, massive battery installations, and a renewed push for nuclear power. Microsoft, with help from the Energy Department, is funding a project to reopen a unit at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania. Google has pledged to buy electricity from natural gas plants equipped with carbon-capture technology.

For data centers, nuclear power and gas with carbon capture offer something wind and solar alone cannot: reliable, round-the-clock electricity at scale. In effect, these companies are running enormous experiments to determine what kinds of clean power can keep up with surging demand. That is good news.

Across many industries, companies are doubling down on clean energy even as climate politics become more contentious. The Harvard Business Review has found that retreat from early climate pledges often reflects realism, not abandonment. Transforming vast industrial systems is expensive and slow. Early promises were long on hope and short on reality. One of the most important tasks for climate activists will be to distinguish genuine backsliding from pragmatic adjustment.

Climate action has been slow, and the world is already locked into significant warming, more extreme weather and greater harm to those least able to adapt. Those consequences will affect everyone and may yet create stronger pressure for action.

For now, governments and firms should focus on steps that deliver real, near-term benefits for the climate. Above all, we should welcome honest conversations about what is practical. Fantasy will not bend the curve on a warming planet.

The New York Times