Author: Carter Dillard

  • We Asked ChatGPT If All Kids Deserve a Fair Start in Life. This Was the Answer.

    We Asked ChatGPT If All Kids Deserve a Fair Start in Life. This Was the Answer.

    ChatGPT is an open access artificial intelligence system growing in popularity. We asked the system about kids, and the need for a fair start in life.

    This is what it said:

    Yes, all children deserve a fair start in life. Every child, regardless of their circumstances, should have access to the resources, opportunities, and support they need to reach their full potential. A fair start in life includes access to quality education, healthcare, nutrition, housing, and a safe environment free from abuse and neglect. Ensuring that every child has a fair start in life is not only a moral imperative but also essential for building a prosperous and healthy society. By investing in the well-being of our children, we can create a better future for all.

    And as for how to give them that? We asked this: How do we give all kids a fair start in life?

    People in a class room

    Giving all kids a fair start in life requires a multi-faceted approach that involves addressing a range of factors that can influence a child’s development and opportunities. Some of the key factors that can impact a child’s early years include:

    1. Access to quality early childhood education: Research shows that early childhood education can have a significant impact on a child’s cognitive and social development, as well as their future academic success. Ensuring that all children have access to high-quality early childhood education programs can help level the playing field and give them a strong foundation for future learning.
    2. Access to healthcare: Regular access to healthcare can help ensure that children stay healthy and are able to develop to their full potential. This includes providing access to preventative care, such as vaccines and check-ups, as well as treatment for illnesses and injuries.
    3. Nutritious food and adequate housing: Children who experience food insecurity or unstable housing may struggle to learn and grow to their full potential. Providing access to healthy food and affordable housing can help ensure that all children have a fair start in life.
    4. Supportive families and communities: Children who have supportive families and communities are more likely to thrive. This includes providing access to safe and nurturing environments, as well as social and emotional support.
    5. Equal opportunities: All children should have access to the same opportunities, regardless of their background or circumstances. This includes access to quality education, healthcare, and other resources that can help them reach their full potential.

    By addressing these factors, we can help ensure that all children have a fair start in life and the opportunity to reach their full potential.

    A group of young women at a protest hold signs reading “WE WILL NOT GO BACK TO THE 1970s,” “MY BODY. MY CHOICE.,” and “OUR BODIES, OUR CHOICES, HANDS OFF OUR WOMBS!” Others stand smiling beside them.

    Note that ChatGPT does not specify when we should take the necessary steps to ensure these things. So we asked another question:

    Should we change our family planning policies to ensure all children a fair start in life?

    Family planning policies can have a significant impact on ensuring that all children have a fair start in life. While every country has its own unique set of circumstances, there are a few general ways that family planning policies can be changed to help achieve this goal:

    1. Access to contraception: One of the primary ways to ensure that families can plan their pregnancies and have the number of children they desire is to ensure that they have access to a range of contraceptive options. This can help reduce unintended pregnancies and enable parents to plan and prepare for their children’s arrival.
    2. Education: Providing education and information about family planning can help individuals and couples make informed decisions about when to have children and how many children they want to have. This education can also include information about maternal and child health, nutrition, and child development.
    3. Healthcare: Access to quality healthcare, including prenatal care and pediatric care, can help ensure that children get a healthy start in life. This includes access to vaccinations, regular check-ups, and timely treatment of illnesses and conditions.
    4. Support for families: Providing support for families, such as parental leave, child care, and family-friendly workplaces, can help parents balance work and family responsibilities and provide the care and support that children need.

    By prioritizing these areas, family planning policies can help ensure that all children have a fair start in life.

    A child in blue plaid pajamas sits on a bed and holds a stethoscope to their bare stomach, listening to their own heartbeat.

  • Eloísa Trinidad, Liberation Activist, Shares Truth and Vision

    Eloísa Trinidad, Liberation Activist, Shares Truth and Vision

    Eloísa Trinidad is Executive Director of Chilis on Wheels and a well known liberation activist, drawing all forms of liberation into one form of activism that furthers the interests of all vulnerable entities.

    Listen to her vision and methods here:

    People can follow Eloisa and connect with her here:

    @ChilisOnWheels 

    @VeganActivistAlliance

    @elogata

    LinkedIn

    Eloisa is working on food justice, among other things.

    TAKE ACTION:

    The USDA is inviting public comments from US-based organizations, schools, and individuals on its once-every-five-years proposed revisions to the child nutrition meal patterns. There is a real opportunity for these new rules and regulations to facilitate more nutritious, plant-forward, and culturally appropriate menus. We know this is your goal, so I am providing a resource to help you share your position with USDA by its May 10 deadline for public comments. 

    The Healthy Future Students and Earth Coalition has created an extensive set of template comments for allied organizations centered on how the updated child nutrition meal patterns can support plant-forward menus and plant-based, climate-friendly, and culturally appropriate options. Additionally, we created a shorter template and toolkit geared toward parents and students.

    There are two major ways you can help: 

    1. Include some or all of the asks in our template comment to USDA in your organization’s comments by May 10. The top of the template includes instructions for how to submit your comment.
    2. If you have students or caregivers in your network, share the caregiver/student toolkit with your network as soon as possible. The toolkit includes a sample outreach email and social media posts. Personal stories and challenges accessing healthy food are of the utmost importance when submitting comments. 

    We greatly appreciate your partnership with these two actions. Additionally, please let us know if there is anything our coalition can do to support your efforts around the meal patterns or school food advocacy more broadly. 

    Please feel free to share this email with partners, organizations, groups, and individuals in your state and across the country. 

  • What is GrowthWashing? The Most Lethal Form of Greenwashing

    What is GrowthWashing? The Most Lethal Form of Greenwashing

    Greenwashing is generally when someone conveys a false impression or misleading information about how a company’s products or services are environmentally sound. Often it involves using terms like green, sustainable, humane, safe, or regenerative, etc. when those making the claim are on balance harming the environment.

    One of the worst forms of greenwashing is called growthwashing, or hiding the impact of population growth when making a claim. When a company or nonprofit makes any claim related to the environment, check to see if they are accounting for the way outdated family policy, and the growth it creates, is undoing that progress. The claims usually omit the fact that population growth is undoing the what is being claimed, increasing demand and consumption in a way that is causing ecocide. That means those making the claims chose family policies that put more animals in factory farms, research labs, and puppy mills, ensured more children would be born and raised in conditions of abuse, suffering and deprivation, and policies that also ensured each person had less of a voice in their political systems – the systems many groups point to as the best source of change.

    They growth many claims hid (and sometimes promoted) undid roughly three-quarters of the reductions in carbon emissions achieved since 1990 by increased efficiency and alternative energy production.

    https://populationmatters.org/news/2021/01/study-population-growth-cancelling-out-climate-change-progress/

    Those lies will help lead to the death of millions in the future.

    Protecting the Planet Infographic

    As we describe in the letter linked here, Exxon, and its claims, are a great example. They use a basic system of family policies that further vast birth inequity, a form of white supremacy, and which ensure ecocide. This means literally using children to destroy the environment they need to survive in order to create growth-based profits for a few. This means growthwashing is also a form of wokewashing, to the extent it exacerbates birth inequity by hiding more equitable solutions, like baby bonds. Such inequity is actually a vestige of historical inequity that can be traced back to slavery.

    Growthwashing, as explained in the letter to Exxon, relies on hiding the fundamental baseline for cost/benefit analysis. That is what makes it especially lethal – it skews whether we owe things like climate reparations, the amount owed, and how they should be used.

    The growth in the chart below – at the most fundamental level – made some rich, some poor, and ensured the climate crisis would fall hardest on those least responsible for it.

    Line graph showing global population (in billions) and CO2 (relative) from 1800 to 2050. Both lines rise slowly at first, then sharply increase around 1950, with population slightly above CO2 in recent decades.

    Doing so is destructive to the environment on multiple levels, as growth has undone almost three-quarters of the reduction in climate emissions attempted in recent years through things like energy transitions, ensured children are born in conditions that violate the Children’s Rights Convention (which mean they will be less able to deal with worsening climates), widened the massive gulf between rich and poor (which largely tracks along race lines), and debilitated the voices of everyday people in their democracies.

    Growthwashing is one of the worst ways to exacerbate the climate crisis, and it prevents reforms that could save millions of lives.

    Growthwashing does something else that is uniquely harmful. It hides the impact human rights can have on our lives when we truly understand them, and the way fairness – first and foremost in our creation – overrides conflicting rights and interests, like property rights to wealth, much of which was made by externalizing costs on future generations. Growthwashing hides that we cannot separate our values from who we should be.

    Growthwashing hides what we owe to future generations, and instead it enables our quiet exploitation of them.

    Growthwashing, unlike simple greenwashing, involves robbing us of our freedoms in a variety of ways, in addition to harming us through our environment. It hides our valid claim to resources for young women to plan their families in a way that can save millions of lives.

    Line graph comparing average family wealth by race/ethnicity from 1963–2016. White families’ wealth rises steeply, far surpassing Black and Hispanic families, showing large racial wealth gaps widening over time.

    Why growthwash at all?

    Businesses, and many wealth investors who also control the messaging and campaigns at nonprofits, make money from unsustainable population growth that creates lots of cheap labor, hungry consumers, and a larger tax base. They can make more money by quietly undoing with one hand the benefits to the environment they claim to be creating with the other hand.

    I have sat and chatted with wealthy funders backing vegan food companies and nonprofits that made wildly misleading claims about the social and environmental benefits of the products, and who were making money on population -driven growth in markets. They knew what they were doing. I have seen national nonprofits bury research showing the harm growthwashing does, for fear of what their funders – many of whom are moving massive and unearned privilege to their rich white kids – would do if it were revealed. No only were they lying about the impacts of their philanthropy, but they were doing so in a way that harmed poor kids to enrich their own kids through growth-based investments.

    TAKE ACTION: One way to address growthwashing is by requiring the Environmental, Social and Governance reporting requirements include family policies and their impacts. Urge the Biden Administration to require this.

  • You Could Save Millions of Lives by Engaging Fossil Fuel Magnate John T. Raymond 

    You Could Save Millions of Lives by Engaging Fossil Fuel Magnate John T. Raymond 

    *Note – we changed the content on May 11th based on advice from a social change leader urging that we should be less confrontational, and more collaborative. This was the advice:

    I think framing John Raymond as a bad person who needs to have his money removed from him is not a angle that readers can get behind, since he is just doing what ambitious capitalist Americans do.  Let’s face  it, if most Americans were in John Raymond’s shoes, they would have done the same thing.  The argument would be that John Raymond’s son or daughter will have to do differently, as our world cannot continue having this economic system that it does.  And if Raymond loves his children, he will change his ways NOW since we do not have time to waste.  So instead of us preying on John and taking things from him, framing it as John giving to the world by changing his ways because he loves his kid might be a better tactic.  

    John T. Raymond is the son of Lee Raymond, who have may have done more to exacerbate the climate emergency than any one person.

    John, who through his father became an fossil fuel magnate in his own right, is a great example of unearned and massive birth privilege.

    And because he is in the business of fossil fuels, the wealth he “owns” was made at cost – through the climate crisis – to those in the future. The cost of much of his family’s wealth could be the death of millions.

    John T. Raymond is great example of the climate trolley problem, recently covered in Newsweek. What if you could save millions by engaging one man? You can. John. T Raymond is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, money made by externalizing costs and risks on others.

    That money could be used to reform the way we create families, moving from parent focused modes that isolate us to child-centric modes that unify communities, which would be the most just and effective response to the climate crisis.

    Climate crisis infographic
    Cheerful African Ethnicity Infant Carrying Healthy Water for a dehydration concept

    It could reduce emissions in a massive way, and relocate children – while arming them with resources – to safety. This change could unfold in ways that impact billions of at-risk families over time.

    That move is not just reducing emissions, but readying future generations for the worst.

    This will save millions of lives, and end policies that are irrefutably racist and ecocidal.

    And because families come first, this unique reform limits John’s property rights (capturing the costs his wealth foisted on others). We are just, before we own justly. We have a right to engage him on this issue of unpaid costs, and the need to cover climate reparation, because governments cannot assign rights in derogation of our being – at constitutional level – free and equal. What I just said has been subject to multiple positive peer reviews, and some have tried to hide it because of what this truth could do.

    There are baselines for assessing costs and benefits, including when we use currencies like freedom, but all would have to start with how systems of obligation – like the laws that protect John’s wealth – actually include the persons they impact in the allocation decision-making process. Are they actually constitutive or obligatory, or attenuated from their subjects? The particular laws that protect John’s wealth do not fare well when scrutinized. They are based on creating lots of people for shopping malls rather than ensuring minimum levels of development in each person to ready them for town halls. Freedom comes in reversing that basic form of disempowerment.

    One could argue that the positive law entitlements described in the first link of this paragraph must control in the absence of agreement otherwise, but unpacked that boils down to doing what the government – the men with guns – says, because it is the government. But that, as a reason, is the opposite of the ideal of American freedom.

    This is all beyond liberalism or conservatism. We might equally target the lead at the New York Times – Joseph Kahn – for his role, his use of power, in holding up the family system that created John’s wealth.

    Infographic titled What Should You Know About Heat and Pregnancy? showing a pregnant person by a thermometer. It explains how climate-driven heat risks pregnancy, especially for marginalized communities, and calls for climate and reproductive justice.

    Justice means more freedom for all.

    TAKE ACTION: Contact John here through his agents, and urge him to do the right thing, or find and reason with him lawfully and peacefully in person and we will publicize your bravery. Free persons will limit and decentralize the influence others have over them (including climatological influence) by physically constituting just communities, relative to a neutral baseline like a restored climate and nature, such that we are not interfering with the freedom or relative self-determination of others.

    John, using some of his wealth to give back to future generations and reorient what we mean by being free, could lead in this regard.

    Want to be effective? Target other choke point high-value targets like Vladimir Putin (who financed western oil companies) or Joseph Kahn, lead editor at the New York Times, who urges women to have kids to in order to further grow the economy that is ensuring the climate crisis.

    A comparison chart of Current Family Planning vs. Fair Start Family Planning. The left side lists negatives of current planning; the right side highlights positive outcomes of fair start planning for welfare, equality, and environmental protection.
  • Lauren Boebert Is Wrong About Kids, and for Reasons Beyond the Liberal/Conservative Divide. She’s Preconstitutional.

    Lauren Boebert Is Wrong About Kids, and for Reasons Beyond the Liberal/Conservative Divide. She’s Preconstitutional.

    Representative Lauren Boebert recently suggested, in a signal on abortion policy, that human babies might be also be considered an endangered species.

    The comment – combined with an assessment of her policies more generally – shows that Boebert does not orient from a sufficiently just and reasonable position, and thus falls outside of the realm of reasonability necessary to be part of a social contract that is the basis of American freedom.

    Two panels compare family planning types. Left: diverse family illustration with bright colors, labeled Fair Start family planning with positive points. Right: grayscale crowd in a city, labeled Economic growth-based family planning with negative points.

    Here are three reasons:

    In other words, Boebert’s not constituting a just and free society because she is ignoring the necessary development of its members. She believes it’s ok for people you do not trust to have power over you, or she rejects the idea that governance and obligation to follow laws derives from the people.

    Based on research verified in almost a dozen peer-reviews, there is no other outcome if you reject fairness in creation.

    Free people will condition their obligation to follow the law and respect property rights on this change, and on being democratically empowered using a simple inversion test, because only these changes ensure they will not be impacted by others – through even subtle things like the climate crisis and bad parenting – against their will. The obligation to follow the law stems from systems being fair and free, and systems start with family policy.

    Boebert is preconstitutional, promoting an fantasy world of freedom that ignores actual power relations, and their creation or constituting of their relations.

    Take action: Urge Boebert here to adopt Fair Start modeling in her policies to correct all of this, and to be reasonable in a way that enables democracy, and the freedom it allows.

  • ESTHER AFOLARANMI AND THE MEANING OF BASIC JUSTICE FOR ALL.

    ESTHER AFOLARANMI AND THE MEANING OF BASIC JUSTICE FOR ALL.

    By Esther Afolaranmi. Esther is a Law Graduate from Bowen University, and will be working with the Animal Activist Legal Defense Project at the University of Denver this year. Esther has career interests in corporate/commercial law practice, real estate management, family law and a keen interest in human rights. She enjoys and excels at being the voice of the voiceless.

    A comparison chart of Current Family Planning vs. Fair Start Family Planning. The left side lists negatives of current planning; the right side highlights positive outcomes of fair start planning for welfare, equality, and environmental protection.

    Climate crisis infographic
    Cheerful African Ethnicity Infant Carrying Healthy Water for a dehydration concept

    Here is what Esther had to say:

    Climate restoration involves the process of reversing the damage caused by climate change and restoring the natural systems that have been impacted by human activities. The concept of birth equity depicts that every child born into a society has an equal chance at life, regardless of their race, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status.

    The idea of linking climate restoration with birth equity as a legal obligation is what we propose. We suggest that in order to address climate change and restore the planet, we must also consider how we bring new life into the world and ensure that every child has an equal chance at a healthy and sustainable future.

    An Open Letter to ReproAction and the Center for Reproductive Rights: Abortion Rights Can Override Governmental Authority

    This approach acknowledges the fact that certain populations, such as low-income communities and communities of color, are disproportionately affected by the impacts of climate change. By prioritizing these obligations, we can work towards addressing these disparities and ensuring that every child has access to the resources and opportunities needed to thrive and that’s what the Seeds for the Future Project is about.

    The Seeds for the Future campaign aims to address food insecurity, harsh climatic changes, wealth injustices, children’s rights and family size at grassroots in Uganda.

    Infographic about Fair Start family planning, highlighting climate impact, reduced extinction risks, 600% return on investment, findings by Nobel laureate Heckman, and the benefits of smaller families for sustainability.

    We reckon that implementing this concept as a legal obligation (though some may choose to give as charity) would likely be challenging. It would require significant changes to our legal and social systems, as well as widespread support from policymakers and the public. We are ready and committed to championing this cause.

    This is what our partner Robert at Rejoice Africa Foundation said on these matters:


    Drought, hunger , food insecurity, disease , population increase due to climate crisis . People are dying younger than they were dying in past centuries. The Global North is continuing to turn their deaf ears, listening to songs of suffering global South and they only give empty pledges. Global North organizations , donors and foundations have continued to fund nonprofits registered in Global North who come to Global South to generate reports without working on the root cause of the climate crisis .

    Additionally, it would require addressing underlying issues such as poverty, systemic racism, and environmental injustice, which are complex and deeply ingrained in our society. By working towards a more equitable and sustainable future for all children, we can build a healthier and more resilient society for generations to come.

  • Amanda Almeida Talks Family and Love

    Amanda Almeida Talks Family and Love

    Amanda Almeida is an author who lets her heart out and into her work. In her several books – Silhouette, Final Letter, and Weakness – she brings readers into the feelings we will all recognize but from points of view that will make them seem new.

    Here Amanda discusses the impacts of her decisions to break free from the family molds that confine how many others live in order to write her own life story, and to show us her profound and self-authored vision of family and love.

    Her freedom has freed others – ecologically, socially, and in terms of how she shows others what is possible.

    Her freedom is infectious.

    Listen in:

    Amanda Almeida talks family and love.
  • Addendum to the Open Letter sent Jan 29th, 2023 to Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi Regarding India’s Human Rights Obligations in Developing New Family and Population Policies

    Addendum to the Open Letter sent Jan 29th, 2023 to Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi Regarding India’s Human Rights Obligations in Developing New Family and Population Policies

    March 19, 2023

    • On India’s Independence Day on August 15, 2019 India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi called on the central and state governments to implement policies to control the country’s population growth rate: “Population explosion will cause many problems for our future generations. We have to be concerned about population explosion. The central as well as state governments should launch schemes to tackle it,” Modi said in his Independence Day address before the nation’s iconic Red Fort in Delhi according to NDTV. The prime minister also called on Indian couples to have smaller families and praised Indian citizens who have already embraced smaller family norms, saying that having fewer children is “an act of patriotism.”
    • This tracks recent activity in India’s Supreme Court dealing with the central government’s obligation to develop family reforms. See https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/supreme-court-notice-to-centre-on-population-control-plea/articleshow/93945701.cms
    • In November, 2022, the Supreme Court refused to entertain the petitions seeking directions to control the population, saying it is for the Central government to look at the issue of population control. The Supreme Court also said that it was not an issue where the court should interfere.
    •  
    Line graph showing global population (in billions) and CO2 (relative) from 1800 to 2050. Both lines rise slowly at first, then sharply increase around 1950, with population slightly above CO2 in recent decades.

     

    However, in November the Court also ruled that under India’s Medical Termination of Pregnancies Act, 1971 (MTP Act), and its related rules, all women are entitled to safe and legal abortion, regardless of their marital status. This enables legislation that would seek to reduce family size. 

    At the same time, India shows great disparity in equality of opportunity among children. A recent study used two rounds of Indian National Family Health Surveys and concepts of Inequality of Opportunity and Human Opportunity Indices to measure inequality arising out of unequal coverage of full immunization and minimum nutrition for Indian children. The results suggest overall high level of inequality of opportunity with substantial geographical variations. Changes in inequality of opportunity in the two services during 1992-1993 to 2005-2006 were mixed with some geographical regions outperforming others. The findings also call for substantial policy revisions if the goal of universal full immunization and minimum nutrition has to be achieved. See https://www.jstor.org/stable/41487420

    Modi’s call for a smaller family policy can thus be recast as a promoting equity, through measures which mimic calls for reforms to U.S. tax policy using devices such as “baby bonds” which create savings accounts for children, and could be used to incentivize delayed fertility. 

     

    An Open Letter to ReproAction and the Center for Reproductive Rights: Abortion Rights Can Override Governmental Authority

    More specifically: 

    1) Cut all benefits to wealthy families who don’t need the funding. 

    2) Use those savings as cash incentives to power up family planning and early childhood investment systems to a) target child abuse by amending the child abuse law, b) incentivize delaying having kids until parents are really ready, and c) promote more sustainable and equitable families for all regardless of income, as well as fostering and adoption – changes that have twenty times the impact on climate emissions, relative to short term fixes. Those changes – made as part of recognizing our sacred constitutional right to nature –  would create massive long-run savings and catalyze sustainable development. We could start to give all kids a Fair Start in life. d) Back comparable Indian programs to Smart Beginnings (in the U.S.) up in time to focus on family planning, and based upon redistribution of wealth in ways that give all kids a Fair Start in life.

     

    Two panels compare family planning types. Left: diverse family illustration with bright colors, labeled Fair Start family planning with positive points. Right: grayscale crowd in a city, labeled Economic growth-based family planning with negative points.

     

    UN data shows the family planning incentives are effective:  See https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3578697/, and can be scaled and inserted into existing policy regimes, including in India: See https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.development.desa.pd/files/undesa_pd_2021_wpp-fertility_policies.pdf

    These policies better conform to international law. While the Cairo Consensus endorsed a limitless right to have children, see https://www.whp-journals.co.uk/JPS/article/view/678, the actual binding sources do not: See https://openyls.law.yale.edu/handle/20.500.13051/5715?show=full. And as such they evade the problem of a limitless right to have children treating future children as property: See https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/djglp/vol17/iss1/2/

    Moreover, these policies can override conflicting rights and policies because family planning is the first norm from which others derive, accounting for the creation and existence of persons, from whom governance and all of its practical norms derive:  See https://bolognalawreview.unibo.it/article/download/13299/12829

     

    Infographic explaining Fair Start impacts: Smaller families are 20x more effective at reducing climate impact. One million species face extinction. By 2100, population may double. Early childhood programs offer 13% ROI; family planning yields 600% ROI.
    Be effective.

    These policies reverse established externalities in Cairo and other measures which create costs for some while benefiting others:  See https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2009/0817/economic-scene-is-population-growth-a-ponzi-scheme

    The actual policy changes would flow from 1) the UDHR and International Bill of Rights, and a correct interpretation of Article 16, see https://fairstartmovement.org/fair-start-file-update-to-un-human-rights-council-petition-our-overriding-right-to-nature-and-equity/, to 2) mandate scaled  family planning entitlements, like baby bonds, through India’s current family incentives progam. In an effort to encourage Family Planning (FP) adoption, since 1952, the Government of India has been implementing various centrally sponsored schemes that offer financial incentives (FIs) to acceptors as well as service providers, for services related to certain FP methods. 

    The target for such FI’s would be birth into conditions compliant with the Children’s Rights Convention: See https://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/auilr/vol25/iss3/3

    One way to fund these programs involve climate “loss and damage” reparations, see https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2022/11/01/loss-and-damage-what-is-it-and-will-there-be-progress-at-cop27/, which ideally will go to benefit the future generations – through measures that improve birth conditions – most harmed by the crisis.

  • Why Fair Start Is the Best Investment You Can Make

    Why Fair Start Is the Best Investment You Can Make

    We started Fair Start because if you look at most public interest organizations, the claims they make about success in their work omit the impacts of family policy, and are thus misleading, and in a way that has fundamentally exacerbated the climate and political inequity crises we face today and caused massive harm.

    That’s the problem Newsweek recently covered in two editorials here: One regarding the deception, and one regarding the solution – using wealth at the top of the economic system that was made by externalizing climate and inequity costs to fund birth-equity based family planning entitlements.

    It’s the most just and effective way to protect children, animals, the environment, and human rights and democracy. It reorients us and our actions from a fundamentally unjust position to a just one. Documents do not constitute just societies – humans do, and humans and their fundamental relations are a product of the basic norms that account for their creation. This is less about population and more about power, and how we can become free from others.

    While that may sound abstract there are dozens of laser-specific ways to implement the change, and the turn our current system on its head.

    An Open Letter to ReproAction and the Center for Reproductive Rights: Abortion Rights Can Override Governmental Authority

    We end the lies, and the harm they cause, by treating every child’s right to an ecosocial Fair Start in life – including climate restoration through birth equity – as the first and overriding human right under international law. This is not charity. This is justice.

    This is mandating these outcomes as a human right:

    Infographic explaining Fair Start impacts: Smaller families are 20x more effective at reducing climate impact. One million species face extinction. By 2100, population may double. Early childhood programs offer 13% ROI; family planning yields 600% ROI.
    Be effective.

    Changing the standard for family planning makes any donation to Fair Start and partner organizations like Rejoice Africa more effective, by changing the lives of billions over decades using basic values found in the Children’s Rights Convention, than dumping millions into groups that knowingly undo their own progress.

    Line graph showing world population (billions) from 1950 to 2100. It displays observed values, median projection, 80% and 95% prediction intervals, and scenarios for ±0.5 child, with population rising then diverging in future projections.

    TAKE ACTION: End the lies and model true justice instead, bending the arc of growth above down towards justice, by engaging in the Seeds for the Future campaign.