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For the first time ever, less than half of all vehicle sales worldwide were gasoline-only powered cars (that’s petrol, for everyone not in North America). Yes, that’s right - they made up only 49% of all sales in the first half of 2026, according to data from Mobility Global. EVs and hybrids accounted for 35%, while diesel and other fuels make up the rest.
The steepest drops were in Europe, where the sale of gas-only vehicles fell 13%, and in China, where they fell by 26%—and 49% of heavy duty trucks are already electric. Soaring fuel prices from the war in Iran are speeding things up; although they’re enriching oil companies by billions more at the same time.
For many people, this switch may be permanent: a survey of EV owners in July revealed that 94% of them will never buy another gas-powered car. We’re on our second plug-in car ourselves and, like most EV and hybrid drivers, we can’t imagine going back to gasoline.
But the real story here isn’t any one person’s choice. It’s how fast those choices spread when people talk about them with their friends, neighbours and family members—as I wrote about, here!
The latest Lancet Countdown report is (rightly) calling for climate change to be officially recognized as a global health emergency. “The health harms of climate change are growing faster than the world’s response to them, and in many cases even accelerating,” executive director Marina Romanello says.
Heat-related deaths across the planet rose some 36% over the past decade, compared with the previous decade. They hit a record of about 710,000 worldwide in 2023 – a number we know is lower than the actual total - and the report attributes more than 70% of those deaths to human-caused climate change. This is only one of a myriad of ways climate change affects our health, and the toll isn’t evenly shared: the poorest countries, which have done the least to cause the problem, are hit hardest.
Meanwhile, countries spent a staggering $6.2 trillion on explicit fossil fuel subsidies between 2016 and 2024 (and ten times that, when you include the economic value of all the harm to people, nature, and health they’re causing). In 2024 alone, ten countries spent more on those fossil fuel subsidies than on their own health systems.
Around the world, the fossil fuel industry has been allowed to treat destroying nature, causing the climate crisis, and polluting our air (pollution that kills millions of people every year) as a cost-free side effect… and handed our tax dollars to do so. That’s why our energy system has to change, as fast as possible.
Every day, teachers help young people understand their world: and my inspiration this week is Ellenor Llona, who moved to rural Indiana in 2022 after teaching in the Philippines for 18 years.
Today, she teaches chemistry at Pioneer Junior-Senior High School, incorporating climate science wherever her curriculum allows. Despite the perception that it’s too contentious to discuss, her experience offers encouragement. “So far, there’s no pushback, really,” she says. Her students are already seeing what people elsewhere are experiencing, and hands-on activities help them connect those observations with the science.
Earlier this year, she spent a week at Indiana University’s Educating for Environmental Change Institute, which offers 54 different professional development programs for educators to help teach the science and policy of climate change. I love her commitment to keep learning, so she can help others learn, too.
You don’t have to be a teacher to do the same. Choose one thing about climate change you’d like to understand better; learn more about it (you can even use Talking Climate’s searchable archive!), then share it with someone you know.