Opinion | Vote Like the Planet Depends on It鈥擝ecause It Does

To understand the planetary importance of this autumn鈥檚 presidential election, check the calendar. Voting ends on Nov. 3鈥攁nd by a fluke of timing, on the morning of Nov. 4, the United States is scheduled to pull out of the Paris Agreement.

President Trump announced during a Rose Garden speech in 2017 that we would abrogate our Paris commitments. But under the terms of the accords, it takes three years to formalize the withdrawal. So on Election Day it won鈥檛 be just Americans watching: The people of the world will see whether the country that has poured more carbon into the atmosphere than any other over the course of history will become the only country that refuses to cooperate in the one international effort to do something about the climate crisis.

Trump鈥檚 withdrawal benefited oil executives, who have donated millions of dollars to his reelection campaign, and the small, strange fringe of climate deniers who continue to insist that the planet is cooling. But most people living in the rational world were appalled. Polling showed widespread opposition, and by some measures, Trump is more out of line with the American populace on environmental issues than any other.

In his withdrawal announcement he said he鈥檇 been elected 鈥渢o represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris鈥�; before the day was out, Pittsburgh鈥檚 mayor had pledged that his city would follow the guidelines set in the French capital. Young people, above all, have despised the president鈥檚 climate moves: Poll after poll shows that climate change is a top-tier issue with them and often the most important one鈥攎ostly, I think, because they鈥檝e come to understand how tightly linked it is not just to their future but to questions of justice, equity, and race.

Here鈥檚 the truth: At this late date, meeting the promises set in Paris will be nowhere near enough. If you add up the various pledges that nations made at that conference, they plan on moving so timidly that the planet鈥檚 temperature will still rise more than 3 degrees Celsius from preindustrial levels. So far, we鈥檝e raised the mercury 1 degree Celsius, and that鈥檚 been enough to melt millions of square miles of ice in the Arctic, extend fire seasons for months, and dramatically alter the planet鈥檚 rainfall patterns. Settling for 3 degrees is kind of like writing a global suicide note.

Happily, we could go much faster if we wanted. The price of solar and wind power has fallen so fast and so far in the past few years that they are now the cheapest power on earth. Plenty of calculations show it will soon be cheaper to build solar and wind farms than to operate the fossil fuel power stations we鈥檝e already built. Climate-smart investments are also better for workers and economic equality.

We need to have climate justice.

鈥淲e need to have climate justice, which means to invest in green energy, [which] creates three times more jobs than to invest in fossil fuel energy,鈥� United Nations Secretary General Ant贸nio Guterres said in an interview with Covering Climate Now in September. If we wanted to make it happen, in other words, an energy revolution is entirely possible. The best new study shows that the United States could cut its current power sector emissions 80% by 2035 and create 20 million jobs along the way.

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris haven鈥檛 pledged to move that quickly, but their climate plan is the farthest-reaching of any presidential ticket in history. More to the point, we can pressure them to go farther and faster. Already, seeing the polling on the wall, they鈥檝e adopted many of the proposals of climate stalwarts such as Washington鈥檚 Gov. Jay Inslee. A team of Biden and Bernie Sanders representatives worked out a pragmatic but powerful compromise in talks before the Democratic National Convention; the Biden-Harris ticket seems primed to use a transition to green energy as a crucial part of a push to rebuild the pandemic-devastated economy.

Perhaps most important, they鈥檝e pledged to try to lead the rest of the world in the climate fight. The United States has never really done this. Our role as the single biggest producer of hydrocarbons has meant that our response to global warming has always been crippled by the political power of Big Oil. But that power has begun to slip. Once the biggest economic force on the planet, the oil industry is a shadow of its former self. (You could buy all the oil companies in America for less than the cost of Apple; Tesla is worth more than any other auto company on earth.) And so it鈥檚 possible that the hammerlock on policy exercised by this reckless industry will loosen if Trump is beaten.

But only if he鈥檚 beaten. Four more years will be enough to cement in place his anti-environmental policies and to make sure it鈥檚 too late to really change course. The world鈥檚 climate scientists declared in 2018 that if we had any chance of meeting sane climate targets, we had to cut emissions almost in half by 2030. That鈥檚 less than 10 years away. We鈥檙e at the last possible moment to turn the wheel of the supertanker that is our government. Captain Trump wants to steer us straight onto the rocks, mumbling all the while about hoaxes. If we let him do it, history won鈥檛 forgive us. Nor will the rest of the world.

This story originally appeared in and is republished here as part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.

Bill McKibben is the Schumann Distinguished Scholar in Environmental Studies at Middlebury College, the founder of 350.org, and the winner of the 2014 Right Livelihood Award. He is a 猫咪社区! contributing editor.