A friend and I consistently debate environmentalism, He was born to a wealthy, white family, enlarged that wealth by holding real estate, the value of which increased because of growth-based demand in California.
That wealth – made at horrific environmental cost to mostly children of color – allows him not to work, and to elevate his own children’s choices in life even as other children are born into early deaths. That wealth allows him to travel – even enjoying access to private surf locations local surfers could never afford.
In essence, he won a birth lottery that ensured him a life of ease built on costs to others, and he favors conservative environmental nonprofits that do not interfere with the fundamental process that will allow him to ensure his eco-social privileges to his children.
When he learned about Fair Start he urged me to focus on getting officials to agree to the standards, because that immediately assumes their authority and his entitlements. He knows how to decoy from questions of fundamental entitlements, white wealth, and the first drivers of all outcomes.
My friend is many things, many of them good. But this is the dilemma of the dysfunctional family system we have all inherited. The thing hat matters most is the ecosocial baseline children need to experience value, and how their birth and development alters that baseline in a way that harms infants’ needs. That’s the objective measure of our value, relative to others. He deserves as much protection as he sought for the infants and animals whose exploitation he benefitted from as efforts to save future generations intensify and those like him are seen as barriers to justice.
All climate reparations must be based on measurable collective self-determination. There are no values outside of that system, given climatological impacts on infants. Fair Start funds and outs those using any other standard, and hold them fully accountable. Government and those they entitle to wealth cannot redefine “harm” to avoid liability for the deaths of millions. Language matters, and we cannot be free or contextually self-determining without communications that reflect or most fundamental obligations to others.
There is an alternative what caused the crisis,
Fair Start begins simply with the fact that wealth in the world today was made through growth and at cost to children’s rights because for decades – in what we might call the #famscam – nations illegally evaded their obligation to only bring children into conditions compliant with those rights. Anything that starts with less is inherently oppressive and non-inclusive.
People, rather than documents, constitute nations as they are born, raised, and emancipated. We all have an overriding or preemptive right and obligation to take the wealth that was stolen by violating children’s rights and use it to fund family reforms, or the constituting of a just future.
That standard – a demand for family planning resources to ensure children’s rights, which is the most basic standard for who our species should be – is the key to mutual self-determination, or freedom.
Many entities in those nations most responsible for the climate crisis are using the same fraudulent impact assessment and reporting standards, ignoring how children entering the world has undone sustainable development impacts, that drove the crisis in order to hide their liability for the death of millions.
All climate reparations must be based on measurable collective self-determination – which is the physical unity of value. There are no values outside of this system, given climatological impacts on infants.
At Fair Start we find and out those using any other standard, and hold them fully accountable. Government and those they entitle to wealth cannot redefine “harm” to avoid liability for the deaths of millions.
Language matters, and we cannot be free or contextually self-determining without constitutive communications that reflect our most fundamental obligations to others. There is no such thing as an inclusive, representative, and hence legitimate legal system without that.
The Tell the Truth (TTT) Campaign: Justice starts with speaking the truth, and neutral fact checking from a zero harm baseline.
The TTT campaign allows everyone to relate their experiences to the reality of the most vulnerable: Children entering the world and impacting animals in the actual and first creation of unjust power relations, rather than relating those experiences to decoy points (politicians, celebrities, advertising, etc.) created by the powerful.
Fair Start is now pursuing legal action to ensure a three year omission disclosure requirement of how growth compounded children’s rights violations relative to an actual baseline of harm, increasingly degraded ecosystems, and ensured massive political disenfranchisement. We have a right to know what entities are doing to the physical capacity for all to self-determine.
Take action:
All should admit that our collectively not prioritizing a fair start in life for all kids did more harm than any one person or organization did good. Anyone claiming to add value to the world should disclose how, in their assessment, they were accounting for children entering the world.
Were they measuring, assessing and reporting public interest impacts / outcomes based on standards meant to take oneself out of one’s birth and development context, ensuring children of color were treated as deserving less and placing them at increased risk – and now, at high risk of dying in the climate crisis?
How much do they owe for benefitting at deadly cost to others?