The moms fighting for climate justice

Chelsea always wanted to have kids. Then 2020 happened.

As the virus that causes COVID-19 began tearing through communities, Chelsea and millions of others hunkered down to try and protect themselves against a practically invisible and unpredictable threat. People took to the streets in Black Lives Matter protests to demand changes in our social structures that discriminate against people of color. In Portland, Oregon, where Chelsea is based, thick smoke from the worst wildfires in the state’s history cast the city in a dark red shadow, as if it was some sort of underworld.

As a therapist, Chelsea knew firsthand how these stressors were impacting mental health. Everything felt uncertain, and that instability didn’t seem to align with her plan to become a mother.

“There was just so much tension,” Chelsea, who is using a pseudonym for privacy reasons, told Salon in a phone interview. “It didn’t feel like a safe time to bring a child into the world.”

Climate change is increasingly impacting both the physical health of mothers and children and family planning decisions. As people become more aware of the environmental impact of having children, some are opting out of having kids entirely. But more and more mom activists are also rallying together to fight for climate reparations so that their children can grow up in a safe, sustainable environment.

“I think everyone would agree that our kids should have clean water to drink, healthy air to breathe and a chance for a stable future,” said Jenny Zimmer, co-executive director of the climate activist organization Mothers Out Front. “We’re not asking for anything crazy. We are asking for a stable and healthy future for our kids.”

Climate change is already directly impacting the health of mothers and children: One 2019 study found higher temperatures are increasing the preterm birth rate. A review published last year found things like pollution were associated with reduced fertility and pregnancy complications like miscarriage. Sea level rise has also been linked to infertility, and pregnant people have an increased risk for contracting climate-related illnesses like malaria.

In 2023, the World Health Organization issued a call to action for countries to address the health of mothers and children in light of climate change, something the agency called a “glaring omission” in existing policy.

“Women and children are particularly vulnerable to injury and death in natural disasters,” said Kris Natalier, a sociology professor at Flinders University and chief investigator of the Maternal Futures study. “As floods, wildfires and the like intensify, women and children, along with other vulnerable groups such as the aged, will bear the brunt of the immediate consequences and post-disaster challenges.”

Many mothers already have climate change knocking at their door in the form of increasingly prevalent natural disasters like wildfires, heat waves or air pollution that keep their kids indoors or contribute to conditions like asthma, said Lauren Leader, the co-founder and CEO of All in Together, a nonprofit dedicated to empowering women. When she was on the local town board in Harrison, New York, flooding was "just a constant issue in our town,” Leader told Salon in a phone interview. “When I think about who were the most active people in our community fighting back against the worst impacts of climate change, it was all the moms.”

Zimmer said many moms join Mothers Out Front because they are experiencing climate anxiety and feel overwhelmed by a sense of responsibility to mitigate the threats of climate change that their children face.

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Others come with specific resolutions they want to see implemented in their communities. In certain jurisdictions, for example, moms have advocated for replacing old school buses, which produce emissions that can exacerbate asthma, to electric ones. They push for improvements in water quality at their children’s school or fight for policies that increase taxes paid by the fossil fuel industry. One mom advocated for the city to rebuild a road her kids had to cross to get to the school bus, which was flooded with knee-deep water due to sea level rise, Zimmer said.

In addition to Mothers Out Front, moms in other activist groups like the Moms Clean Air Force, Science Moms, the Sunrise Movement, Mothers of East Los Angeles, and others fight for climate reparations in local and national movements.

“The best antidote to despair is action,” Zimmer told Salon in a phone interview. “We really do see that when moms get together and organize — they are really powerful spokespeople for change.”

Although individual choices can make a difference in the rate of emissions contributing to climate change, collective action is necessary to reduce the rate of global warming to the degree that is necessary to prevent potentially irreversible damage.

For Zimmer, who brings her kids to city council meetings and involves them in her activism, establishing this sense of community at a young age and showing her kids they do have the power to make change is a way to combat a growing sense of nihilism about climate change.

“My kids can see that their parents are standing up for them and fighting for a better future for them,” Zimmer said. “For me, this is sharing with my kids the value of being a part of a community and taking collective responsibility for big problems.”

Ryan Filler, a web designer in Memphis, Tennessee, said he and his partner were on the fence about wanting to have kids — not only because of how much a child can contribute to climate change, but because of the state of the world they were asking their kids to grow up in.

A protester holds up a protect your mother Earth placard during the protest march on November 06, 2021 in Bristol, England. (Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images)“My wife and I decided to have one child, as much as we fear she might be lonely without any siblings,” Filler told Salon in an email. “It's a huge concern of mine not to add any stress to the planet — her planet, all of our kid's planet — by having a large family.”

Although the national birth rate is influenced by many factors including reductions in teen pregnancies and women having children later in life, climate change has been singled out as a direct factor making people have fewer kids. In one 2023 global survey, more than 50% of participants said climate change influenced their decision not to have kids.

“It's not a surprise to hear people of childbearing age talk about not being sure they want to bring a child into this environment because of what seems to be a very bleak prospect,” said Almeta E. Cooper, the National Manager of Health Justice at the Moms Clean Air Force.

In the U.S., Republicans have been trying to boost the birth rate for decades, with President Donald Trump currently assessing various ways to persuade women to have more children, including small cash incentives. Some argue that the declining birth rate hinders innovation and productivity and that the next generation is more likely to be the one that comes up with solutions to the climate crisis.

Regardless of how having more babies impacts the environment or the economy, the responsibility of our collective well-being often falls on women’s bodies. Yet reproductive choice is rapidly deteriorating across the U.S., as the maternal and infant mortality crisis continues to worsen. Many are weary of incentives to boost the birth rate that do not address the underlying issues contributing to a declining birth rate — including climate change.

“These are interrelated, complex issues, and if a person doesn't have clean air to breathe, clean water to drink and a healthy environment in which to live, how are you going to increase the birth rate?” Cooper told Salon in a video call. “You have to have a healthy setting in order to be able to do that.”

Against the backdrop of a warming world contributing to record-breaking heatwaves, wildfires and sea level rise, the Trump administration has significantly scaled back the degree to which the Environmental Protections Agency is enforcing emissions.

Whether people find the current environment suitable to bring a child into or not, that is entirely their decision. Zimmer acknowledges that we are in an uphill battle with the climate crisis. But she sees her kids as a source of hope.

“When I started as a youth climate organizer, I was motivated by this sense of anger and rage that my own future was being foreclosed upon by politicians and the fossil fuel industry,” she said. “After I had kids, it’s no longer about rage and my own future. It’s about my love for my children, and that is a deeper and more stable well to be pulling from.”

Filler says he constantly worries about his daughter, now two, growing up with a changed climate. But he finds comfort in the everyday moments he shares with his daughter: witnessing her share with another kid at the library or being kind to an animal she finds in their yard.

“I really hope she can carry that gentle nature into the world where it will probably be really needed," Filler said. “Maybe she really will grow up and be a scientist who invents free and perpetual energy, but even if she doesn't I'm going to do my best to raise her as someone who always does the right thing, even when it's hard, and I think that's the kind of person the world needs to face down the climate crisis.”

Chelsea, in Oregon, meditated on the decision of whether or not to have kids for about a year after she started doubting it during the pandemic. She kept thinking about how much sadness in the pandemic stemmed from losing or isolating ourselves from loved ones. Realizing how much family meant to her, she decided to have a baby.

“I kept thinking about a really good quote my mom told me when I was a kid about whether I would rather regret doing something or regret not doing something,” she said. “I just think I probably would regret not having kids."

The process wasn’t easy. She and her partner struggled to conceive and ended up going through a couple of rounds of egg retrievals in the in-vitro fertilization process. Then, one day in December, she got pregnant.

Chelsea still factors in climate change in her decisions. As we spoke on the phone, she sat in front of a stack of cloth diapers she is waiting to use for her baby. She and her partner share one car instead of having two. And they collected all of their first-time parenting materials like cribs and strollers secondhand.

Over time, she recognized that the only thing she did have control over were her own thoughts, feelings and behaviors, she said. Having a child was not something that was dependent on what could happen externally. It was about the way she envisioned her own family to be.

“Maybe I'm a little too much of an optimist, but I feel like something is going to give with climate change,” she said. “I have a little bit of hope left.”