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America’s response to climate change has many moving parts. But how people travel from point A to point B in an environmentally sustainable manner stands atop the challenges of slowing the human alteration of our earth’s atmosphere.

Indeed, reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions from transportation has moved more sluggishly than other sectors over the past four decades and ranks as our number one impediment to preserving the climate humans have become accustomed to.

Thus, this November, the future adoption of electric vehicles and zero-carbon energy to power them is clearly on the ballot.

The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, which incentivized such a transition, passed on a straight party-line vote, demonstrating that elections do matter. Moreover, the next President and the next Senate will likely decide whether to add additional skeptics of environmental regulation to the U.S. Supreme Court. Such appointments would likely delay the shift to cleaner vehicles.

Despite occasional excessive exuberance and skepticism about the pace of moving to an electricity-based transportation future, new vehicles not dependent on oil products are finding acceptance worldwide. The questions currently in doubt are how fast the transition will occur and which countries will lead the way.

While researching my latest book, I discovered that the idea of using electric vehicles to protect the environment has been around for a surprisingly long time. Bernard Spinrad from the Argonne energy lab testified before Congress in 1960 that using nuclear power to run cars with large batteries would reduce air pollution, including the growing carbon dioxide accumulations in the atmosphere that experts were beginning to link to global warming.

In 1965, Lyndon Johnson’s White House issued a landmark study on the science of environmental pollution. It notably included extensive discussion of the specter of climate change. On page 11, the report addressed the emissions, including carbon dioxide, from transportation. It opined: “The pollution from the internal combustion engine is so serious, and is growing so fast, that an alternative to non-polluting means of powering automobiles, buses, and trucks is likely to become a national necessity.”

Despite this early interest in new forms of transportation, it was only well into the twenty-first century that electric vehicles attracted the attention of many car buyers. The early adopters appreciated the quiet running, lively acceleration, reduced fuel costs, and eco-friendliness of their new options at their auto dealer.

Admittedly, EVs are not yet suitable for everyone. Up-front costs remain a problem, though government incentives can offset this barrier. The more substantial obstacles are the range current batteries provide and the time required to recharge them.

For many drivers, a range of 230 miles is acceptable, especially if their residence allows for convenient charging overnight. For those who regularly drive long distances or need extra range in the case of a rare but dire emergency, such as an approaching hurricane, all-electric vehicles are inconvenient at best and even dangerous in extreme cases. For them, a plug-in hybrid with less frequent refueling can be an attractive option, especially with current tax incentives.

But those crafting a climate-friendly future should follow the wisdom of Wayne Gretzky. The hockey legend said he skated not to where the puck was but where it was going to be. In energy and environmental policy, our gaze into the future should consider not just where today’s technology is but where it is going to be.

The anticipation of battery-powered cars with ranges of 500 miles is not just wishful thinking. The progress of making photovoltaic solar cells cheaper and more efficient provides a roadmap for what’s possible and even likely for the enhancement of batteries.

The price of PV solar came down 99% over a 40-year period, with stunning increases in efficiency. Plus, the advances are still coming. Similarly, with solid support from the government and affected industries, we can foresee a strong possibility of those 500-mile batteries at affordable prices within the next decade. We can also anticipate efficiency improvement in the non-battery features of new cars that will substantially extend the distances between refueling.

So, intentions to run our vehicles mostly with electricity are not as scary as some might claim. We can achieve today’s stretch goals. If deadlines slip a bit, we have paused new environmental laws briefly in the past if technology hadn’t entirely caught up with market realities.

But we need to be clear-eyed that the penetration of electric cars and trucks must come sooner rather than later. The U.S. response to the climate threat, basically identified more than six decades ago, has been weak. Moreover, carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere longer than the life of a human being. Delays dealing with climate change are more daunting to overcome down the road than with other forms of pollution.

Calls for a sense of urgency are not exaggerated alarmism. They reflect the expanding impacts of climate change lurking ahead and the hurdles to nimbly modernizing our energy infrastructure.

We must also resist the thinking in some quarters that there is some innate right to pollute. In the 1960s and 1970s, national leaders proclaimed there was no right to dump garbage in your neighbor’s yard or into the commons, such as a nearby stream. Claims of “freedom” to emit greenhouse gases into the atmosphere ignore the freedom of other people to not have their atmosphere degraded, particularly when protective technologies are available.

Advances in human mobility that reduce pollution are far from the only piece of the climate puzzle. Reducing methane emissions, for instance, offers attractive opportunities with relatively rapid impacts on temperature rise. Much of the methane comes from the flaring and venting of gas coincident with extracting the oil needed for conventional vehicles. But far from all.

In the fog of campaign rhetoric, addressing every aspect of any complex problem is nigh impossible. Still, we can get a pretty good idea of where we are headed on climate change by studying whether candidates are committed to the Inflation Reduction Act and other measures that accelerate the transition to electric vehicles.

Jay Hakes’s latest book is The Presidents and the Planet: Climate Change Science and Politics from Eisenhower to Bush (August 2024).