Election Day is Tuesday. The polls haven’t closed, but the planet’s votes have been counted.

For weeks, the world’s scientists have been reporting them, one after another. Different teams, different instruments, different corners of the globe. The count was unanimous.

Let’s start with the big picture. The 2026 State of the Climate report tracks 16 of Earth’s vital signs, and seven just hit the worst levels ever recorded, from ocean heat and rising seas to the carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide now choking the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is now higher than at any time in the last 2 million years.

The cause is no mystery. Last year, the world burned 0.9% more oil, coal and gas than the year before.

All that trapped heat has to go somewhere. Most of it goes into the ocean, which has soaked up 90% of the excess heat and about 30% of our carbon pollution. Now a new UN report warns the oceans are starting to lose their absorptive capacity. The reefs show what that looks like. The fourth global bleaching event caused the largest one-year coral loss on record. Reefs used to get a decade to recover between bleaching events. Now they get four to six years.

And sooner or later, it reaches us. The Lancet Countdown links climate change to nearly 3 million deaths since 2016. In 2023, heat killed more people than malaria or HIV. In California alone, the state’s Fifth Climate Change Assessment projects that wildfire smoke could cause about 5,000 additional deaths a year by 2050 under high warming, costing nearly $69 billion a year.

Where does it all lead? To 2.8°C of warming. That’s where today’s policies take us, according to the UN’s latest Emissions Gap Report. And last year, no country pushed us there faster than the US. The United States was the only major economy where planet-warming pollution increased dramatically.

That’s what the science says. It’s clear, it’s consistent, and it’s not up for debate.

But science doesn’t pass laws. It doesn’t set budgets or sign treaties. Every one of these findings lands on the desk of someone we elect. What they do with it depends on who’s sitting there.

Right now, too many of those seats are filled by people who take their cues from the fossil fuel industry, an industry that keeps pouring money into lobbying and disinformation to stall action. The results speak for themselves. The Trump adminstration walked away from the Paris Agreement. Then it officially declared that climate change isn’t a danger to public health.

Tell that to the 3 million who didn’t hear that climate change is a hoax.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres put it plainly: “The emissions gap is now a leadership gap.”

And there’s one gap we can close overnight.

We know because when leaders act, it works. UNEP found that climate policies have already delivered real emissions cuts. Renewables just overtook coal for the first time in a century, and clean energy investment hit a record $2.1 trillion, 82% more than went into fossil fuels. Even California’s sobering assessment insists the future is not predetermined.

It isn’t. It’s decided by whoever shows up.

So on Tuesday, vote like the planet is on the ballot. Because it is.

Vote for leaders who will act on the science, all the way down the ticket. Then bring someone with you. Text the friend who’s sitting this one out. Tell them the planet’s results are in. Ours aren’t yet.

Turnout or burnout. Tuesday, we can choose what happens to our planet.