In Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans, either the Kansas City Chiefs will become the first team to win three consecutive Super Bowls, or the Philadelphia Eagles will be the first team to stop a three-peat.
But one first is guaranteed: The first ever Super Bowl ad making a plea for immediate climate action will be seen by millions. What makes this powerful nonpartisan ad so momentous is that it airs as America’s newly elected President Trump—who has repeatedly called climate change a hoax—has been stuffing his cabinet with science deniers and reversing every federal effort to reduce the carbon pollution that drives ever-worsening climate disasters.
The vast majority of Super Bowl ads, including those that raise awareness of climate change, are from companies selling a product, such as an electric car. This remarkable new ad, “By the Time,” is the first climate ad from any nonprofit group. Science Moms is a nonpartisan group of moms who are also climate scientists devoted to improving the public’s understanding of climate change and how it threatens our children and the world we are leaving them. The video shines a light on the devastating impact climate change is having on the people and places we all love.
Tell Congress: Hold the Line on Progress to Cut Air and Climate Pollution
As Science Mom and Texas Tech professor Katharine Hayhoe told me, “I don’t only care about climate change because I’m a scientist. I care about climate change because I’m a mom.” Hayhoe, Chief Scientist at The Nature Conservancy, added, “Climate change is already impacting the people, places, and things that we love most. And who doesn’t want to protect what we love?”
This ad is especially timely for its connection to the two worst climate disasters in U.S. history. First, this Super Bowl is taking place in the rebuilt Superdome, made infamous during Hurricane Katrina. This year is the 20th anniversary of Katrina, which made landfall on August 29, 2005, displacing over a million people, with hundreds of thousands unable to return to their homes. That date is seared into my memory since that’s the day my brother lost his home in Pass Christian, Mississippi—the site of the biggest storm surge in U.S. history, 20 feet, which turned my brother’s home into what looked like the inside of a washing machine, as he put it.
Katrina has been ranked as the costliest U.S. climate disaster, with some $200 billion in damages. But that may ultimately be topped by the cost of the recent devastating Los Angeles wildfires that have claimed lives, destroyed homes and businesses, and displaced nearly 200,000 LA residents. Research from UCLA scientists in mid-January found that human-caused climate change had significantly contributed to the disaster by creating much hotter and drier conditions that fueled the devastating fire storms.
In contrast, Trump’s new Secretary of Energy, oil executive Chris Wright, has repeatedly “argued that climate change has not fueled more frequent and severe wildfires—a claim at odds with the scientific consensus,” as the Washington Post explained in January. When smoke from Canadian wildfires smothered the East Coast in summer 2023, Wright wrote on LinkedIn that “the hype over wildfires is just hype to justify” climate policies he dislikes. When asked about the “hype” comment in his confirmation hearings, he replied, “I stand by my past comments.”
But the fires were a major motivation for the Super Bowl ad. Indeed, Science Moms partnered with the century-old California Community Foundation to support recovery efforts in LA through its Wildfire Recovery Fund, which has provided over $30 million to communities affected by disasters since 2003. Through the Super Bowl ad, a link is provided (here) to directly support this fund and help those struggling in the wake of this disaster.
Millions upon millions in the U.S. and across the world will be tuning into the Super Bowl airing this year on Fox. For sure there is a football game of epic proportions to watch, but the entire spectacle broadcasts a moment of time in America. Last year, under a climate-prioritizing administration, Las Vegas hosted the “greenest” Super Bowl ever, Usher roller skated to his biggest hits, and America’s Sweetheart Taylor Swift—and her zillions of Swifties—cheered on her boyfriend Travis Kelce. This year, she’s expected to return (will they or won’t they get engaged after the game?!) and also expected is President Trump. The country’s current most popular rapper and cultural critic Kendrick Lamar performs at halftime, and throughout the entire event will be America’s ultimate art form: the television commercial.
Among the celebrity beer ads and movie-worthy car spots will be a low-budget climate ad featuring children and families not asking us to buy anything. The straightforward storytelling is such that it echoes the homespun values of a sentimental pharma commercial and is scripted with—also like an effective pharma ad—alarming words against those happy images. But instead of the alarming words being the list of side effects from taking a medicine, they describe what happens if we don’t pursue the path of cutting carbon pollution and preserving a livable climate on which all life depends.
Let’s hope that in these dark, unsettling times, this historic ad speaks to the true desires of the public to protect what we love, thereby increasing support for the kind of decisive action we must now take to avoid leaving our children in a ruined climate.
Tell Congress: Hold the Line on Progress to Cut Air and Climate Pollution
Joseph Romm is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media. His forthcoming book is “The Hype About Hydrogen: False Promises and Real Solutions in the Race to Save the Climate,” Island Press, April 2025.