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Two real-life climate-themed movies are playing in parallel across the globe. They are about the world today, but they are also a snapshot of the future. The first is a slow-building horror story; the second, a feelgood summer hit. Both are worth watching.

Horror films are suddenly box-office gold, so let’s start there. The World Health Organisation says the extreme, record-breaking heatwave blanketing Europe has killed more than 1,300 people. But everyone knows that number will end up a dramatic understatement.

In the summer of 2022, the final estimate of heat-related deaths on the continent was more than 60,000. The past 10 days have been significantly hotter. As the Guardian’s Damian Carrington reported, scientists from the World Weather Attribution consortium found nearly half Europe’s 850 biggest cities have been enduring their worst heat stress in recorded history. Temperatures have consistently been 5C and 12C above seasonal averages.

The horrific destruction caused by twin earthquakes in Venezuela has rightly drawn international attention and assistance as the confirmed death toll has climbed past 1,900 and could top 10,000. The heatwave is a completely different kind of disaster. It is less abrupt, less violent and less visible. There is no call for an international fleet of thousands of rescuers to help, as there has been in Caracas. But the number of lives lost may be greater.

The heatwave has also disrupted life for countless others. It ruptured the surface of Germany’s Autobahn, forcing lane closures. It buckled train lines, degraded power lines, crippled medical equipment and forced the closure of nuclear plants due to regulations limiting the use of rivers to cool reactors if temperatures get too high.

Scientists found daytime temperatures in recent days would have been impossible in the European heatwave of 1976, and 10 times less likely when temperatures soared in 2003. It has taken the underlying increase in global temperatures – caused by rising atmospheric greenhouse gases – for it to happen now. It’s the exacerbating role of human-made climate change in action.

There are versions of this across the globe, including in Australia, where the early signs suggest the southern continent may be headed for its warmest winter on record. Its ski season, meant to really kick off properly with school holidays starting this week, is so far reliant on artificial snow. It is a fraction of what the best evidence says the future could hold. With the recently declared El Niño weather pattern over the Pacific Ocean, that future could feel like it is accelerating in the months ahead.

The feelgood movie is a better place to be. It may have a surprise accidental hero: Donald J Trump.

His inept attack on Iran alongside Israel, and the resulting blockade in the strait of Hormuz of about 20% of the world’s oil and gas supply, has triggered fresh consideration of how countries can win independence from the global fossil fuel trade. In the short-term, there are examples of decisions that have bolstered the use of dirty fuels. But attention is also on how to ramp up clean energy and electrification in the name of energy security and lowering costs.

This move was already under way. For the first time, renewable energy – solar, wind and hydro – last year overtook coal-fired power as the leading source of electricity, providing a third of the global total. Add nuclear – not renewable, but zero emissions – and the total non-fossil generation was 42%.

Solar energy is expanding at an astonishing pace. It grew 30% in 2025 – the single largest annual increase of any electricity source in history. Battery storage – not an electricity source in its own right, but needed as part of a package with variable solar and wind – grew 66% from a lower base.

The reasons for the solar surge aren’t complicated. It’s comparatively cheap, increasingly consumer-friendly, and not reliant on fuel that has to be shipped from somewhere else. In a recent speech, the UN secretary general, Antonio Guterres, noted the cost of solar and batteries had fallen 90% and 95% respectively over the past 15 years, while wind energy costs were down 70%. He argued they presented the world with a “clean way out” of its energy crisis, summarising: “Renewables are the cheapest, fastest and most scalable source of new electricity in most of the world.”

In Pakistan, one of the world’s Top 20 emitting nations, solar capacity has increased more than tenfold in four years as gas power turned unreliable and grid electricity became wildly expensive. Solar electricity last year topped 25% of the country’s electricity, prompting the government to cancel liquified natural gas (LNG) imports scheduled for this financial year.

In the EU, solar and wind provided about 30% of electricity in 2025, up from 19% in 2021. The last fossil fuel price shock, after Russia attacked Ukraine in 2022, played a part in the switch. According to the thinktank Ember, solar in the EU has recorded annual growth of about 20% for four years straight, and renewable energy is now 48% of total generation. Fossil fuels have fallen to 29%.

Even in the US, where Trump and the Republicans have undermined renewable energy and coal generation has had a rebound, the low cost of solar and batteries is winning out. The pair provided 91% of the country’s new generation capacity in the first quarter this year, and Ember reported May was the first time solar provided more electricity in the US than coal.

China is, as on many things, out on its own. It uses more electricity than the US, Europe and India combined, and is adding far more renewable energy than the rest of the globe. Twenty years ago, coal provided about 80% of its power. That proportion has now fallen to about 50%. Its coal generation is yet to fall, and it continues to build new coal plants. But many are left turned off as often as they are turned on.

China is also the global leader in manufacturing and buying electric vehicles. Two-thirds of cars and at least 25% of heavy vehicles sold in China this year are expected to be EVs. Globally, the EV proportion is likely to be 27%, up from 9% five years ago, according to BloombergNEF. But expect that to accelerate.

In India, the Delhi government this week announced it would ban new licence plates for fossil-powered small trucks and three-wheelers from next year, and scooters and motorbikes in two years. Only electric models will be allowed. In Africa, Ethiopia has already banned the importation of new fossil fuel cars, partly to save on fuel costs.

None of these developments change the scale of the task ahead. Global emissions are yet to even start coming down. Much new clean energy is powering expanding demand, not replacing coal, gas or oil. As with most good movie, this story also has a formidable villain. Fossil fuel interests and their supporters will continue to fight for the old model.

But the shift under way in solar, transport and energy storage underlines why there is a new buzzword in the effort to fight the climate crisis: electrification. It is at the heart of plans for this year’s UN climate summit, and the focus of a major campaign by governments, businesses, researchers and campaigners under the banner Electrify Now.

The idea is pretty simple. Electricity is already capable of meeting about 75% of the world’s energy needs using existing technology. It is more efficient, and much healthier, than burning fuel. It will increasingly come from clean sources, purely because in most cases they are the cheapest going.

It is reason for qualified optimism. And, perhaps, the basis for a whole franchise – with sequels, spin-offs, the works – about some much-needed progress in addressing this era-defining threat.