Photovoltaic panels, windmills, etc aren’t new technology

The big modern efficient and cheap ones are.

More people believed in global warming and climate change in the 90’s than now

I'm looking at a Gallup poll showing 30 percent of Americans worried about global warming in 1990.

Modern day is 61 percent.

collaborated with big oil lobbyists on pivoting to using softer, more nebulous terms to address global warming

Which is a good idea because you get idiots showing up in Congress with a snowball, and was not a term just created out of thin air by big oil.

If we’d been developing and implementing these technologies gradually over the last fifty years,

We have been. Technology and it's development rarely is some targeted thing. Big projects that get results tend to happen only once the base work has been completed and the investment will show hefty returns. The Manhattan project didn't happen until the means to create nuclear power was discovered, for example.

As another big example, most of our ability to have electric cars? It's thanks to cell phone battery research.

Without question these oil companies have stood in the way of progress, but don't think even for a second that we would be in some magic fantasy land if it weren't for them.

All things match along and very frequently the decisions we made are much less impactful than you would think.