Science Moms’ bipartisan mission: Educate other mothers about climate change

This story was originally published by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The devastating flood that swept through Camp Mystic in Texas this month is every parent’s worst nightmare. Hours or days of fear and uncertainty, feeling powerless to help, and, for the families of the 27 campers and staff members who perished, the most painful news imaginable.

Although flash flooding is a recurring problem in the region, climate change exacerbates the problem. Scientists in Europe have already conducted a rapid assessment and determined that the storm dropped 7 percent more rain than it would have otherwise because of global warming. With 129 fatalities—including at least 36 children—and more than 170 people still missing, it is among the deadliest floods in the state’s history.

Katharine Hayhoe, a professor at Texas Tech University and chief scientist at the Nature Conservancy, posted a message to LinkedIn about the flooding on July 5, writing, “The news is heartbreaking. As a parent it’s hard to even process.”

The fact that so many children and young people lost their lives underscores the importance of educational groups like Science Moms, a nonpartisan organization started in 2019 by Hayhoe and other leading climate scientists and mothers. The group works to demystify climate change and motivate moms to demand plans and solutions that will protect the planet for their kids—and their kids from dangerous, climate-change fueled extreme weather events.

Joellen Russell, an oceanographer at the University of Arizona, says her identities as climate scientist and concerned mother merged long before she helped start Science Moms.

Russell was several months pregnant with her first child in 2007, when 12 states sued the EPA over the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. Russell reached out to John Mike Wallace, her mentor and former colleague at the University of Washington, where Russell worked as a research associate after completing her PhD. “I wrote to him, and I said, ‘Hey, Mike, I’m pregnant. I’m waiting on this new little one, and you need to step up and help me, because we need to turn this bus,’” she recalls. “‘We need to make a change in the world.’”

Wallace wrote back right away saying he’d help. Russell, Wallace, and other scientists signed an amicus brief submitted in the landmark Supreme Court case, Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, which the Supreme Court cited when they ruled the Clean Air Act covered carbon dioxide as a pollutant. Russell’s son Joseph was born a few months later.

United States emissions have dropped 15 percent since 2007.

Now, Russell says, she tries to lean into her humanness and her “momness” as an educator, scientist, advocate for truth. “I’m so thrilled that I have these two gorgeous babies, and I am really worried,” Russell says. “I don’t want them to have to lift this burden. They will, but if there’s anything I can do, I want to do it.”

Science Moms has partnered with Potential Energy, a nonprofit marketing firm “for planet Earth,” on a multimillion-dollar campaign to inform moms about climate change. Their most high-profile ad to date ran during the 2025 Superbowl, when millions heard the message: “Climate change is like watching them grow up: we blink and we miss it.” Months after the commercial aired, Erica Smithwick, a Science Mom and professor of geography at Penn State, still gets postcards from moms the ad resonated with.

A 2020 study by the Yale Program on Climate Communication found over half of the US population is concerned about climate change. An analysis by Potential Energy found approximately 70 percent of mothers say they’re concerned about climate change. According to Smithwick, moms are ideal environmental advocates because they cut to the core of complex issues. Moms already led advocacy groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving and Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America (now Everytown for Gun Safety), and climate change will impact future generations most of all, so a mom-led climate science organization just made sense.

“Mothers throughout time have always put in that extra labor because they care about the health of their families,” Smithwick says. “Whether that’s smoking or seat belts or gun safety, all of those are things that I think moms do care about profoundly. When we think about climate change…we really are worried that our kids are going to get heat stroke, and we’re worried that our kids aren’t going to be able to go on vacation or play outside.”

Smithwick says she waited 15 years to take her two kids to Yellowstone National Park, where she has research​​ed forest resiliency. With the recent wildfires in the West, she thinks it may be too late for her children to see these landmarks without them being shrouded in smoke. Now, as a dangerous heat wave surges across the eastern United States, moms like Smithwick worry even more about the safety of their kids in a rapidly changing world.

Despite the gravity of the issues Science Moms communicate, Smithwick says they strive not to “problematize,” and instead move toward action.

The Science Moms website provides mothers with resources and connects them with individual scientists. The site features explainer-style videos and podcasts, guides for how to talk about climate change with family members, and a letter template for moms to reach out to local leaders and ask about plans to stop big polluters.

This year, Science Moms will be rolling out education campaigns related to extreme weather events. They want to ensure moms around the country are prepared for emergencies, including heat waves and hurricanes, in what may be the hottest summer on record. Russell lives in Arizona, one of the fastest warming states in the nation. In 2024, Arizona’s health department appointed its first chief heat officer, Eugene Livar, to lead the state’s Extreme Heat Preparedness Plan.

“We’re sitting in the hot seat, the bullseye of global warming,” Russell says. “We feel like we have an obligation to both, get prepared, get on it, reduce our emissions and help our people weather this.”

Russell says Science Moms will be focusing outreach toward purple and red-leaning states like Arizona, Texas, North Carolina, Georgia, and Pennsylvania, states where a large percentage of people have been skeptical about climate change information in the past.

According to Russell, the mission of Science Moms remains the same, regardless of administration. Science Moms aims to cut through misinformation and share facts backed up by science. “The sort of cacophony of shifts that are happening up at the higher level of the administration doesn’t really speak to what a lot of moms care about, whatever side of the political aisle they’re on,” Smithwick says.

Tragedies like the Texas flood show how challenging it is to walk a neutral political line, especially when attacks on science are primarily coming from one political party. The exact degree to which the Trump administration’s National Weather Service budget and staffing cuts may have played a role in the disaster is still a matter of debate.

“I think every time we have a tragedy like this, which is unimaginable in its own ways—this particular one—it’s unfortunately a reminder that we have to not look away from climate change,” says Emily Fischer, a professor in the department of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University and one of the founding members of Science Moms. “We have to look straight at it and work together to prevent these kinds of disasters from getting worse.”

But she recognizes how difficult that can be, especially in a moment like this. “It’s really hard to shine the light on climate change after a tragedy,” she adds. “It feels icky in some ways, I think, but it’s actually super important.”

Writing on LinkedIn (in a personal capacity, not necessarily as a representative of Science Moms) Katharine Hayhoe said: “The more climate change supersizes our weather extremes, the more info we need to keep people safe. This includes experts, instruments, models, research, and assessments: everything that’s currently being reduced or cut by the US administration.”

Despite political and environmental uncertainty, Russell sees hope for the future in the eyes of her children. Climate change is a family affair, she says, one she shares with her son, Joseph—a budding climate educator who has passed out exams in her classes for years—and his younger sister, Maeve. It’s an issue that has developed over generations, and it will take generations to fix.

“I plan to fight until I can’t anymore,” Russell says. “When I drop in the traces and can’t go any farther, my kids will step right over me and get up that hill.”