Looking closely at at public statements many charities make you will find false and misleading information. The unsustainable growth most never mention is easily undoing the benefit of the impacts claimed, and is accelerating the climate crisis in a way that is killing millions.
This is impact fraud.
Many make the claims because the people funding them rely on growth-driven investments. Greenwashing and growthwashing lawsuits are being filed against the worst of charities.
How wrong are the statements they make? Try three-quarters of the climate mitigation efforts undone by the growth many wealthy funders benefited from at deadly cost to others – and that study was conducted before AI models anticipated new-level heat waves. Let’s not undo what we claim to do with growth that hurts the future – mostly for children of color with no means to fight the growing heat.
It’s simple = take the costs of our wealth and incentivize women having of children only at a time, place and with resources that offset the costs. There are special savings accounts, and debt recognitions, that make this a reality. That halts growth, and compensates those most harmed.
Can you back our efforts by using your money to reverse the universal paradigm – the lie – of parental autonomy towards concrete and well-enforced rules that ensure child equity? Can you give $1000 today to change the universal rule of who we should become as communities – from exploitative to investive?
A phrase like “false premise” sounds like philosophy talk, and hardly relevant to our day to day life. But all it really means is that someone is making an argument, or doing something, which they would justify by referring to something that is not true.
The premise we all live under is that we are obligated do certain things, like follow the law because we are included in legitimate systems of governance that empower each of us. The premise is that there is a legitimate/obligatory “we” (one that creates oughtness) from which we all think and act.
It is a false premise that there is a obligatory “we” from which to live our lives until we change these facts because without a change we start by exploiting and thereby harming, rather than empowering in a way that is measurable with clear benchmarks, others. It is a false premise that there is a obligatory “we” if we start with zero actual protections for infants and animals, and zero actual protections is the case in our legal system today, almost universally.
Ask anyone what policy they are using to functionally protect children as they would enter the world – using a metric like equity for example, and thus indirectly protect the animals humans would otherwise consume. They will have no real answer because to ensure that protection would require obligating would-be parents to plan in specific ways, something that is widely considered forbidden because of an obscure policy mistake by the United Nations between 1948 and 1968.
Fact: The contributions of those who ignore their false premise, like many academics working on population ethics, began with them being born into a coercive legal system of entitlements from which they benefitted at deadly cost to others. That system, the dominant system controlling our actions because it alone is meant to be inclusive and reflective of its subjects, never was because of the falsity described here.
Actual inclusion and empowerment is what creates value and choices in the world. Growth, without minimum levels for those born with nothing, only benefits those who want cheap labor, lots of consumer demand, and a bigger tax base. There is no obligation without including those subject to the obligation, equitably, in the process. No reasonable person would start with that “ought” because constitutions do not start with the exploitation of their constituents, and the loss3 of self-determination. You can see this all around you. How much do you trust those with whom you share the world? And could that have been different had there been different family planning policies in place to give kids what they actually needed – the beginning of justice, where common good is aligned?
Instead governments could reverse this harm with one simple change at the United Nations – using child-rights as their basis for legitimacy, and funding birth equity level family planning entitlements as the priority climate reparations so that women have children at a time, place, and with resources that ensure those children thrive. A legitimate remise, an obligatory we, would start with minimum thresholds of personal welfare, expecting equal access to opportunities, participating in and adhering to political/legal systems that purported to represent the governed through birth and development conditions that ensure a role in making the law and and protecting the capacity for each to choose who has influence (including climatologically) or power over them, using and enjoying an environment relatively conducive to human and nonhuman health, enjoying a right to have a child in relatively safe conditions, etc. Consumers do not need to be emancipated in this way. Citizens do.
And what this means is that processes that would make us a “we” – like an AI managed system of social credit designed around prioritizing resource distribution for birth equity – override those that do not. That process would have more justification for leaning on holdouts than the government, which should become a function of this process, would have to block it. We might begin this process in the animal law/rights and children’s rights movements, where the false premise has had done the most harm and contradicted the things we said we value. Our generations can’t get the benefit of future generations’ political obligation, not to target us for strict liability reparations required by the deadly climate catastrophe for example, because we never met our obligations to them.
What is an example of the #ImpactFraud mentioned above? Many animal or child welfare organizations claiming to do good start from a fundamental policy position with zero actual protections for infants and animals (the false premise), and in a way that undoes the values they claim to further. I was paid to omit the fundamental policies that were undoing the claims I made as an animal lawyer – and by those who wanted to take advantage of growth. I have lived the lies of people and institutions reacting to climate reparations liability by trying to hide that liability, deny their role, reduce the standard, etc.
What are you doing to assure the conditions in which children born and raised, including their environment and role models, are being improved so as not to undo the benefits of the work you discuss?
In asking these question you are looking for the #Impactscam: A growing body of peer-reviewed research had shown the basis of deadly climate greenwashing – which is killing millions – originates with child welfare policies that illegitimate political systems because they ensure no minimum threshold of self-determination or freedom. These policies literally set inequitable standards killing millions of those least responsible for the crisis. And those backing them are choosing to benefit at deadly cost to others, when there are clear alternatives – like moving wealth through externalizing deadly costs into the hands of young women able to save many lives.
These policies illegitimate governance because our generations can’t get benefit of future generations’ political obligation, not to violently target us for reparations required by the deadly climate catastrophe for example, because we never met our obligations to them. At the very least young women demanding birth equity reparations would have greater right to use coercion to protect their children than the state would have to defend existing property rights that harm their children. That said, nonviolence is more effective in achieving justice
Instead of changing the policies many organizations are hiding them – aware that they face liability for greenwashing, where the growth they embraced historically did more harm to their causes than their efforts did good. Many of them are going out of their way to evade liability, and thereby – at least inadvertently – reduce the reparations victims would be awarded.
The most just and effective solution? There are legal actions pending before the United Nations and other agencies urging more inclusive legitimacy. Self-determination derives by definition from conditions of development that ensure the capacity for us to choose who has influence (including climatologically) or power over us – to be free. According to a growing body of research, there would be no legitimate political entity to assign wealth or incentives that precedes this obligation. Who we should be, the “ought” of Children’s Rights and the hard metrics of being a legal person as opposed to an economic person, logically always comes first – before what we should do, and the allocation of other entitlements.
But there are ways to move towards fulfilling this obligation, upstream, and we work downstream on more traditional projects.
Take Action: Work with the Fair Start movement to factcheck claims by nonprofits. Read more here.
Forget the easy categories of the New York Times being liberal or conservative.
Look at how the New York Times has for around the last decade, covered in their reporting and the opinions they chose to promote, family policy both in the United States and abroad.
Their reporting on family planning policy – what it was and what it should be – almost uniformly falls into the left side of this divide in the image below, rather than the right. They routinely backed Trump’s family policy – one based on economic growth rather that birth and developmental equity one that undercuts human rights and democracy based on a handful of clear metrics. They backed systems that fundamentally created consumers and workers for shopping malls, not influential citizens for town halls.
This now means they – the disenfranchised – will suffer the brunt of a crisis for which they were least responsible, including violations of their right to have even one child in healthy and safe conditions. And because of basic vote dilution, voter suppression, and other factors, they will be unable to use democratic processes to protect themselves, and may rationally choose other measures. And in the face of all of this, many governments driven by industry are paying women to have more children with no easy safeguards like “survive and thrive” baby bonds in place, while wealthy families and foundations reliant on growth fund charities engaged in distractivism.
The New York Times has never seriously covered the simple fact that all children deserve a fair start in life, understood as the capacity to control the influence others have over them.
The climate crisis is now killing women and infants, with hundreds of millions at risk, mostly persons of color that had nothing to do with causing the crisis. This is racist ecocide, and trillions of animals likely to suffer and die as the crisis unfolds. Ask anyone making a claim about furthering particular values to account for how the family planning norms, policies and relative ranking of obligations they never accounted for has undone those values and created the deadly climate crisis and vast inequity.
There is a way to reverse this, ensuring all children a fair start in life. A young Nigerian attorney – Esther Afolaranmi – has called on the United Nations to recognize that political legitimacy, the obligation to follow the law, begins by ensuring all children a fair start in life. The changes would prioritize climate reparations as family planning entitlements to ensure legitimate (politically inclusive) systems where children are born only at a time, place, and with resources that reverse climate and other harms and empower them.
Some are blocking this reform. We need to out them.
Of anyone claiming to do right in the world, we simply ask: What are we doing to assure the conditions in which children born and raised, including their environment and role models, are being improved so as not to undo the benefits of the work we are otherwise doing in the world? Yes many are doing good, but they can do better and avoid green-growthwshing by disclosing their current and historic policy impacts on child-welfare.
The process of climate justice starts by recognizing birth equity as the first human right or obligation to others, which means any person can ensure distribution for family planning incentives and birthright entitlements by any means effective – thus crowdsourcing the emergency enforcement of climate justice. This will save countless lives, and reduce the migration and other costs of the climate crisis by trillions of dollars.
They made wealth by using low child-welfare standards to enable growth, turning town halls into shopping malls and influential citizens into disempowered consumers. We can all take that wealth back as reparations to young women and their future generations to reverse the process, legitimate governance, and become free. The biggest obstacle to freedom is knowing how social, or other-regarding, we have to be to be included in a free nation. Well, legitimate governance derives from emancipated people, we all have to be other-regarding enough to invest in young women enough for them to have children that will be emaciated, testable on several levels.
In other words, there is no legitimate “We the people” from which to orient obligation without first addressing the need to reverse and compensate climate impacts on infants. We cannot derive obligation from others by first evading it for ourselves. We cannot derive obligation from its absence.
When we support such systems we are backing a process that undoes the things – like basic health, equality of opportunity, and relative levels of self-determination – that how we all have lived our lives showed we all value. We are included in legitimate systems – living in integrity of who we should be ecologically, and deserving of legal protection, when we extent these basic values to others.
Many have benefitted form unsustainable growth that is likely to kill many in the future. They should now cover the costs, and help avoid the deaths. Older generations made their wealth at cost to future generations, and I’ve witnessed wealthy funders choose to back charities that hid and exacerbated that fact, and sad employees at charities who refuse to speak out because they fear for their jobs.
But who we should be comes first, and we should not be women and infants dying from a disaster the wealthy caused.
This divided social justice / public interest movements into less effective silos – like misperceptions of animal rights – that did not threaten the status quo the way birth-equity (equally empowering shares in your democratic system of voting) would have. This in turn undercut democracy, leading to the oligarchic threats the United States faces today.
This now means they – the disenfranchised – will suffer the brunt of a crisis for which they were least responsible, including violations of their right to have even one child in healthy and safe conditions. And because of basic vote dilution, voter suppression, and other factors, they will be unable to use democratic processes to protect themselves, and may rationally choose other measures. And in the face of all of this, many governments driven by industry are paying women to have more children with no easy safeguards like “survive and thrive” baby bonds in place, while wealthy families and foundations reliant on growth fund charities engaged in distractivism.
Almost every horrible thing – from child and animal torture to deadly inequality, to unbearable heat waves – we see in the world today was fundamentally caused decades ago, circa 1968, by wealthy world leader’s decision to adopt minimalist universal child welfare and family planning policies.
The most just and effective solution way to reverse the minimalist policies would be to treat birth and developmental equity as the fundamental human right. We could use that baseline to recoup extreme wealth (the true costs of which were placed on others) to fund family planning and birth equity entitlements that promote climate and biodiversity restoration, allow young women to equality of opportunity for their children, parental delay to ensure they have children where, when and with which particular resources that will allow the child to thrive, and through delay ensure a universal ethic of smaller or more ecocentric families.
One can imagine modifying GMI systems via a progressive scale of democracy-building payments, inverse to wealth and income and contingent on positionality, that either charged wealthy young women for having a child before their 27th birthday and/or without certain parental readiness benchmarks, or on the other end of the wealth spectrum, covered significant incentives consistently paid out for them to build birth equity and ensure delay. This scale could be combined with other factors that amount to “survive, self-determine, and thrive” financial kits for the most vulnerable children funded by the parents of the least vulnerable children. Dysfunctional versions of such GMI systems already exist and could be easily modified around a universal metric.
We can move that money – which was made at cost to others – to improve birth and development or leave it at the top and millions will die.
Many concentrations of wealth and power have no intention of compensating those they have harmed, and one tactic they use to avoid paying involves using fake activism and nonprofits to decoy many away from this reform.
I worked for several such charities, was urged to omit the truth, and saw the lies firsthand. Concentrations of wealth and power often don’t openly oppose social justice movements. Instead, they imitate, coaptate, and redirect them.
Charities that seem to promote racial and other forms of equity – using employment or minority business preferences – will quietly support family policies that ensure black children are born with 1/10th the wealth of white children, because of the history of slavery and colonization. By ignoring equity in creation as a means towards autonomy for all, they actually exacerbate the situation, entrenching a left v. right dynamic that could be avoided. For example, we use family planning as a vehicle to redistribute resources rather than government, because we value the efficiency of early intervention as well as the equity of a fair start in life.
Everyone has used terms that expressed or implied public benefit that were inaccurate. Measured against the true north of human and nonhuman health, the background systems they usually did not question and in fact implied the legitimacy of, were benefitting the claimant while unleashing significant and increasing harm to infant humans and nonhumans alike. That true north – the harm – is what we can use, regardless of dysfunctional human political processes and language, to assess damages and create new policy. Avoid this untruth by asking the right questions. Look for words the persons and organizations you engage use – words like green, eco, sustainable, equitable, democratic, human-rights based, humane, restorative, regenerative. These and many other terms are inaccurate if not backed by consistent family policies that ensure minimum levels of wellbeing, equity, democracy, nature, and a sustainable right to have children for all, through birth equity entitlements and wealth GMI distributions that ensue parental delay and readiness, equal opportunities for all children, and smaller or more ecocentric families. Many are getting paid to omit the truth at deadly cost to others. Knowing these things – you can demand the truth.
If you read about the controversy swirling around the head of Harvard regarding her recent statements on Hamas, and other instances where the university took a stance on political controversies, you might notice something odd:
In upholding certain values, like democracy, nonviolence, and human rights, Dr. Claudine Gay simultaneously accepts status quo family norms – in the region and elsewhere – that quietly undermine the values. We see this if we focus on the actual creation – through families and childbearing – of power relations.
Claudine might seem to value human rights. She does nothing to end a fundamentally unjust family system based on top down adult choice, rather than a bottom up system where – through entitlements – children are born and reared in conditions that comply with, minimally, the Children’s Rights Convention.
The wealthiest and the charities they fund want to pretend the world was always meant to look like a massive shopping mall, and that climate damages should be evaluated on that basis. The truth is human rights guaranteed functional town halls in biodiverse nature. That is what was lost. That is how we measure the harm.
While charities were touting the benefits of saving a particular forest, ending certain diseases, or enlarging cages for laying hens, they were also ignoring the growth-based economic systems that were enriching their largest billionaire funders. Those same growth-based systems have undone three quarters of the climate crisis mitigation attempts made over the last several years.
That growth, from which these charities and their funders profited, now threatens millions of lives. That growth will cause more animal suffering and ecocide than many of the myopic, window-dressing campaigns these organizations ran and used for fundraising actually prevented.
The wealthiest and the charities want to pretend the world was always meant to look like a massive shopping mall, and that climate damages should be evaluated on that basis. The truth is human rights guaranteed functional town halls in biodiverse nature. That is what was lost. That is how we measure the harm.
But if the basic condition for any rule is that it be fair, and the first rule is that which accounts for our creation and development, e.g. the right of parents to freely have kids, then that rule must be made fair. And fairness begins with all children’s rights to a restored climate and ecosocial birth equity – true relative self-determination.
And we need not wait for governments to recognize and fix the issue. Many are using the correct baseline to cover effective reparations already.
Why don’t we have to wait?
Free people will condition compliance with the law on their being fundamentally empowered by it, and that’s physically impossible without treating an ecosicial fair start in life as the first and overriding human right, a right that includes actual participation in governance – being created for town halls, not shopping malls. Governments cannot assign property rights – to Musk or others – without first ensuring the human rights that justify governmental authority.
Today’s freedom fighters move beyond the outdated idea of national borders and fight for fundamentally liberating family policies that free us all ensuring climate and biodiversity restoration through birth equity entitlements that ensure parenting delay, a level playing field for all kids, and smaller or more eco-centric families.
There is a truth many are hiding via greenwashing and other moves, to avoid or reduce climate liability: The obligation to pay just and effective Fair Start family reparations.
The portion of wealth made at cost to this baseline is subject to that use now as the most effective form of climate reparations today, and many are leading by example, paying those costs to families to avoid million dying as temperatures rise. Government cannot assign wealth until they fulfill fair start obligations, the obligation that justifies their authority. Why? Law is a unique obligation because it can be coerced. After the Enlightenment and the development of democracy, that is so because we assume law represents the will of the governed. Logically then, the first obligation is to have and raise children in a way that actually makes that true.
We caused harm by using family policy to quietly convert public progress into private benefits, and must pay now, compensate the harmed and be free of that obligation. Some of those who benefited the most from not giving what they should have in the past are covering those reparations, via effective programs like Seeds, using hard metrics like the Children’s Rights Convention, climate restoration via birth equity, and Tucker/Dasgupta’s optimality.
These entitlements ensure parenting delay, readiness, reallocation of entitlements for birth and rearing equity, and smaller or ecocentric families that raise influential citizens – not economic inputs with little say over the rules under the rules they must live. We are not bound by written constitutions, but whatever justly constitutes our power relations to make those relations consensual, which comes very close to the ideal of decolonization, ensuring at the same time the protection of the most vulnerable: Future children and nonhumans.
If freedom always requires some level of self-determination, it would be impossible to ensure any version of it without birth and development conditions for all children that meet minimum thresholds so they can self-determine rather than be determined (e.g., climatologically) by others, and one test for whether that is occurring equitably would be treating growth as inverse to self-determination, relative to the absence of human power/nature (which requires, at a minimum, climate restoration). This formula leads to a free and equal future – Tucker/Dasgupta’s optimality.
Who we should be, via children’s rights, logically always comes first – and sets an overriding baseline for all cost and benefit analysis, including climate reparations. One’s positionality, intergenerational and otherwise, is key in this analysis. Money often controls how one sees this work.
Be effective.
Take Action: Find and “pull” high profile levers to be effective family role models by paying what they owe, and bend the arc of who we are becoming towards justice. How? Start by asking public figures claiming to do good in the world to actually tell the truth. Ask them to account for how the family norms, policies and relative ranking of obligations they never accounted for has undone those values and created the climate crisis and vast inequity.
