It’s been three years since the Albanese government received a report by the Office of National Intelligence looking at how the climate crisis is likely to fuel national security threats, but we still don’t know what the report says. It was deemed classified – too sensitive, apparently, for even a redacted version to be made available for public discussion.

Some independent MPs were briefed on it in late 2024 after they raised concerns. Senator David Pocock told the Saturday Paper the report was “frankly terrifying” and that “we’re woefully unprepared for what’s coming”. Beyond that, little is known about its contents other than what can be gleaned from a separate national climate risk assessment that last year warned of potential cascading economic shocks from supply chain disruptions, goods shortages and failing energy systems.

That’s hard for many people to get their heads around, but there is a taste of it in the real-time fallout from the illegal air war in the Middle East, launched on a shifting and often incoherent rationale.

The first focus in any discussion about war should be on the human cost, as people across a list of countries are killed and maimed. That impact is devastating and ongoing.

But a significant secondary issue is that this is not a great time in history to be dependent on the global fossil fuel trade. And that, more than ever, going big on renewable energy makes sense, financially and from a national security perspective.

Oil prices are jumping around in correlation with Donald Trump’s latest remarks, and what happens next is uncertain. But the cost of petroleum fuels is significantly higher than before bombs started falling and the strait of Hormuz – a gateway for about a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil and liquified natural gas supply – was closed.

In Australia, the flow on effects of the war have been swift, even as the climate change and energy minister Chris Bowen has grabbed every available microphone to argue supplies remain secure.

Amid reports of some regional service stations running dry, Bowen acknowledged there had been an increase in demand for diesel – up 100% in Mildura and 238% in the Barossa – but said supply into the country had not been affected by the war. People are stockpiling, fearing what may lie ahead.

To a point, that fear is understandable. Australia has only two refineries and, according to Bowen, 32 days’ worth of diesel on hand. That’s not long if the tap is turned off or people keep panic-buying. No one knows what comes next. It was little surprise that the Coalition spent question time on Tuesday asking whether Australia will have enough petroleum to meet demand.

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But this focus, also evident in some news media, is narrow and backwards looking. Yes, we need enough fuel now. But we also need to set the country up for the future.

Where are the questions in the Australian parliament about what more can be done to cut reliance on petrol and diesel, and accelerate electrification so more people run their homes, businesses and vehicles on clean electricity? On Tuesday, there was one – from Nicolette Boele, an independent.

Elsewhere, the evidence that renewable energy and national security can now go hand-in-hand is getting attention. The climate activist Bill McKibben and the economist Paul Krugman have argued that, “sunlight travels 93m miles to reach the Earth”, but “the wind and the sun don’t need to transit the strait of Hormuz” – independent of Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu or whoever is controlling Iran.

The UN secretary general, António Guterres, stressed that in past oil shocks countries had little choice other than to “absorb the pain”, but that they now “have an exit ramp”. “Homegrown renewable energy has never been cheaper, more accessible, or more scalable,” he said. “The resources of the clean energy era cannot be blockaded or weaponised.”

Bowen has made a similar case. On Monday, he said “the one form of energy which Vladimir Putin or a Middle Eastern crisis cannot interrupt is the flow of sun and the flow of wind”, and that Australia is better prepared for a disruption in the gas and oil market now than when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

There is truth in this. Electric vehicle sales have tripled. The proportion of electricity from renewable energy has increased from 35% to nearly 44%, nearly cutting in half the amount of electricity needed in summer from gas power plants. Bowen also points to the government’s promise of a $1.1bn program to produce low-carbon alternatives to liquid fossil fuels, using feedstocks such as canola, sorghum and sugar.

But beyond this the extent to which the government is getting the message is unclear. Reporting before the May federal budget indicates there is pressure for it to wind back a flourishing household battery subsidy scheme, and remove a fringe benefits tax exemption available to people who buy EVs cheaper than about $91,000.

The arguments are pretty straightforward. Both have proven significantly more expensive than was initially forecast, both favour the well-off, and the budget is in structural deficit. There is a case that the tax exemption could be better targeted.

But we shouldn’t lose sight of the reasons these policies were introduced. The rapid uptick in household batteries is good not just for individuals, but everyone who uses the grid. It helps maximise the use of the huge amounts of solar energy from people’s roofs that otherwise might be wasted, and reduces reliance on expensive fossil fuels generators when demand for electricity is high.

On EVs, Australia still trails much of the world in uptake after years of inaction. The government introduced a vehicle efficiency standard, requiring auto manufacturers to cut average tailpipe emissions from new cars year-on-year. But it was less ambitious than analysts say it could have been, with some large models excluded. And it takes years to replace the national car fleet with newer models. The cuts in national climate pollution will be relatively gradual.

Meanwhile, the climate crisis is accelerating. On Saturday, the Guardian reported on a study that foundthe average global temperature had increased much faster over the past 10 years than over the previous 45. The pace of the rise is now said to be about 0.35C a decade, up from 0.2C. Humans are conducting a real-time experiment in heating the planet at speed.

A separate study in the journal Nature suggested sea levels are already much higher than usually assumed in studies based on modelling. If correct, it means that future sea level rises and related storm surges may affect some coastal areas even more severely.

Added up, it makes a pretty compelling case that this is the moment to do more to help Australians make a clean shift that the evidence says would make their lives cheaper, healthier and less at the whim of volatile fossil fuel markets. There is little point in waiting for the future when it’s already here.