Here’s a fun fact: The transportation sector is the biggest source of planet-warming emissions in the United States.

Here’s another: The majority of those emissions come from cars and light-duty trucks — the vehicles people drive to work, school, the grocery store and grandma’s house.

This means one of the most powerful individual actions people can take against climate change is to change the way they get around.

One way to achieve that is to buy an electric vehicle, which produces about a third as much carbon dioxide per mile as a gasoline-powered car. If you’re able to charge your car from completely renewable sources — say, solar panels on the roof of your garage — you can drive as long as you want without generating any emissions at all.

But — fun fact — individual actions alone aren’t sufficient to avert catastrophic warming. If you really want to make a meaningful contribution to the fight against climate change, experts say, you must consider both how you can curb your transportation-related emissions and how you can help […]