She should have been thinking about cake and candles, but she was thinking about cataclysm instead.
Lisa Hoyos was driving to a birthday party when a news report about climate change came on the radio. As the story described the food scarcity and systems collapse likely to occur by 2040 if the climate crisis continued unabated, Hoyos did the math — and realized that her two young sons would be only in their early thirties by then, their lives directly affected by this bleak scenario.
“I had this lightning-bolt fearful sensation,” she remembers. “And I was sure that if parents really understood the depths of the threat to our kids, they’d want to do something.”
Spoiler: She was right.
That was 2008. Hoyos began poking around to find out what it would take to rally her fellow parents around the climate issue. She cofounded Climate Parents with author Mark Hertsgaard in 2012, and has since built a membership of 50,000 people.
During that same time, new and emerging groups with names like Moms Clean Air Force, Cool Mom, Mothers Out Front, and Climate Mama attracted a collective million or so other pissed-off parents. Those ranks swell when yo... Read more
