‘I thought we had more time’: how motherhood spurred a New Yorker’s fight against fossil fuels

Marlena Fontes co-founded Climate Families NYC with six other mothers to create a space for families to take action

New Yorker Marlena Fontes was working as a labor organizer and newly pregnant with her first child when a conversation with a co-worker about the climate crisis stirred something in her that would change her life.

It was 2018 and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had recently released a report warning that world leaders had only until 2030 to make the sort of dramatic emission cuts that would prevent mass harm around the globe.