How America can leave fossil fuels behind, in one chart | 2020 Election

And what the US election means for climate change.

All of recorded human history has happened during a period in which the average global temperature didn’t change by more than 1 degree Celsius. But the burning of fossil fuels has triggered a temperature rise projected to exceed 3 degrees by the end of the century. It will be catastrophic. But it can be avoided if we massively scale back the burning of fossil fuels.

The US isn’t the biggest emitter of carbon dioxide in the world, but it's emitted more carbon dioxide in total than any other country. So the US has an important role to play in global decarbonization; the world basically can’t get there without the US’s full participation. But the current US president doesn’t have any plans to do that. His Democratic challenger in the 2020 election, Joe Biden, does.

Biden’s plan is ambitious: Its goal is to completely transition the US to clean energy by 2050. But his plan doesn’t get into the details of exactly how that will happen. For that, we talked to physicist and engineer Saul Griffith, who took us through his incredibly detailed road map for how the US could actually walk away from fossil fuels in the next 30 years.

This was the first in our series of 2020 election explainers, all based on viewer suggestions. Watch the others, which cover the stakes of the election on:

You can check out Saul Griffith’s report on decarbonizing the US through electrification at Rewiring America:

To read more about the fluctuations in Earth’s global average temperature and why the current spike is so dangerous, check these sources:

You can dig into historic carbon emissions by country or region at Our World in Data:

The impact of the Trump administration on climate change is covered in more depth on our website:

[Vox]

This was the first episode of our series on the 2020 election. Over 15, 000 of you told us which issues mattered the most to you, and we made 9 episodes explaining what the election meant for those issues:

Thanks to everyone who responded to the callout and took the time to help make our reporting and our videos stronger.

[mob_abominator]

“A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit.” — Greek Proverb.

[lukeh]

This reminds me of when in like grade three the teacher would say if everyone does silent reading without talking for 10 minutes, everyone gets to go outside. Everyone wanted to go outside, everyone knew the best option was to just be quite for ten minutes, but we couldn't do it. there would always be someone who tried to be funny and get attention at the expense of everyone else's fun.

[angamnyiam]

"The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything" - Albert Einstein

[dino]

It sounds like everybody cares but nobody makes the move.

[lareinali]

Countries be like WE NEED TO STOP GLOBAL

Also countries: After you

[MoonatikYT]

The best time to have done something about fossil fuels was 30 years ago, the 2nd best time is now.

[XtarShoter]

"We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light." -Plato

[ganarygirl]

Humans: don’t react to climate change on time
Climate change: approaches
Humans: oh no itwould be to difficult and radical to react now, lets not do it

[safe-keeper]

Chernobyl was a tragedy not only because of the event itself, but also about how much damage it's done to peoples' perception of nuclear power :( .

[Powaup]

Sounds like this all could create lots of jobs. Why don’t politicians take that angle?

[FinancialShinanigan]

This is what happens when you elect politicians who don't believe in science

[mten]

Constantly left out of the conversation: public transit. Electric cars will help, but they're not the answer. Less cars, less resources. Which has to work in tandem with tweaking our cities to be livable for people instead of cars.

[american-professor]

Not gonna lie, this makes me nervous like nothing else

[lalakuma]

Back in 2000, my parents laughed at me for being concerned about the climate. SMH.

[yuioyup]

I hope that getting everyone to agree with this is not like trying to get everyone to wear masks

[EugeneBuvard]

Those diagrams are so beautiful, the reality they depict so scary.

[ratmouse]

America just needs to install the green energy DLC

[jaime]

"How is the US supposed to do that?"

It'd help if we stopped reopening coal mines

[ScopeofScience]

We're currently on track for 4.3C