Climate change and other population-driven crises are the greatest threats to our oceans. Better family planning policies are the greatest solution.
So why is it still taboo to talk about? Why do so many concerned parents have to remain anonymous in order to speak out?
Urge the Surfrider Foundation to lead the way to transparency and sustainability by talking a stand on the need for better family planning policies. Tweet @surfrider and urge them to consider the letter below.
The science is clear that delaying pregnancy, planning ahead, and working together to invest more in every child is the most effective path towards sustainable development.
The regressive view of women as mothers-in-waiting persists partly because so many public figures are pushing it.
Jeff Jacoby is one of the loudest voices pushing women to have more kids, and to thereby accelerate climate change, species extinction, and a host of other ecological ills. And it’s not just about nature. Unsustainable family planning is the hidden cause of social crises as well, from rampant child abuse to growing inequality.
So why should women have more kids, according to Jeff, who criticized Meghan and Harry for declaring they would stop at two kids for environmental reasons? Jeff, who himself only has two kids, had this helpful bit of information:
The Talmud records that when the enslavement of the Hebrews in ancient Egypt grew unbearable, their leaders advised couples to stop having babies — why raise more children to face a life of slavery? Eventually one of those leaders was persuaded he was wrong, and that childrearing should go on even in the teeth of murderous oppression. So he and his wife had another baby. That baby, named Moses, became the liberator who led his people to freedom.
Jeff goes on to claim that the solution to population-driven climate change is to create more people in the hopes that one of the children will have a solution to the problem. He then credits population growth for a lot of modern advancements. In reality, progress comes from investing in people, not just creating as many as possible and hoping for the best.
Not All Women Will Be Mothers
Regardless – the point is this: Jeff is ensuring a culture where women are pushed to be mothers. He’s doing it for religious reasons, while hiding behind nonsense arguments, and at a time where doing so is a manifest threat to the welfare and freedom of future generations. That goes beyond free speech to something worse than climate change denial – towards encouraging the exacerbation of a manifest threat to our species.
Parents who care about their kids should stand up to mouthpieces like Jeff. What does he tell his kids, Caleb and Micah, about climate change? Does he tell them that the destruction of our atmosphere is God’s will? Does he tell them that child abuse, vast inequality, and levels of education that bring down democracies come from above? Jeff should answer these questions. Why? Because he’s forcing his view on your kids future too. What we do now will impact the wellbeing of future generations in ways not seen before.
Ask Jeff to answer these basic questions by tweeting him at @Jeff_Jacoby or message him on FB at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jeff-Jacoby/123656506578, and stand up to the men who push women to have kids, and thereby endanger our future.
Congratulations to royal family members Harry and Meghan for publicly embracing the idea smaller families, and opening up about the the ecological and social impact of family planning.
Shortly after, we wrote to Meghan and Harry as well. Is it time to abandon the idea that the number of children a person has, and the conditions in which she/he has them, is “nobody’s business?” We think it is.
THE FACTS ARE CLEAR:
Kudos to Meghan and Harry. Now we need to begin to factor in equity, and cooperatively plan to give all kids a fair start in life.
Take Action: Urge the United Nations to follow suit and embrace a better family planning model.
July 2019 is likely to be the hottest month ever on Earth. A heatwave is currently settled over the U.S., and it’s deadly.
What’s worse, these extreme temperatures brought about by climate change trigger an increase in emissions. Our world’s explosion in population and poor family planning has caused a catastrophic feedback loop.
When we look at climate change, we know human impact is the problem, but we don’t all have the same impact. While there are of course things individuals can and should do to address the problem, the fact is that some people are more responsible than others for the large-scale destruction of our environment.
Yes, the average person in a developed nation is partly responsible due to consumerism and technology that puts pressure on the environment. But for generations, CEOs and other power players have opted to suppress science, progress, and environmental stewardship in favor of knowingly pushing the environment toward a point of no return.
These people are more responsible for the threat climate change poses to you and your family than most other people on earth.
Let’s ask the CEOs to fund the most comprehensive and effective thing out there: Fair Start family planning reforms to help reverse the damage they’ve done.
Here’s how it works: Communities offer substantial resources, like guaranteed minimum incomes, to future parents. Then, in exchange, parents plan smaller families. By doing so, they can invest more in each child and have a smaller impact on the planet than they otherwise would have with a large family. Family planning and climate change are intersectional. An increasingly crowded planet means more impact on the planet.
Nothing will change if we don’t demand it. Now it’s time to use your voice.
Sincerely,
Erika and Willow
Pick one of these CEOs, or another person who’s profiting off the destruction of our kids’ futures, and urge them to direct their money toward giving kids a Fair Start. They owe it to the next generation to undo the harm they’ve caused. We can’t wait to hear what you do: email us at info@fairstartmovement.org.
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It’s great that Grist, the environmentally minded media outlet, is recognizing that media isn’t doing their jobs when they spend a lot more time covering news of the royal baby than climate change. But is it time for Grist to aggressively report on better family planning policies as the most comprehensive and effective way to mitigate the variety of harms climate change is causing?
Environmentalists have long treated family planning as a taboo subject. It’s glaringly absent from the Green New Deal. But it’s time to break taboo. The businesses that are destroying our environment are breaking it, and urging parents to produce more babies to increase consumption, and to increase a glut of cheap labor and taxpayers for the future.
A better family planning model and policies – with a focus on smaller and more equitable families – are likely the most effective solution to most of the world’s crises today. Remodeling family planning is the most comprehensive and effective way to promote the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, and in some cases proves twenty times more effective than other reforms. Simply stated, the current family planning model used by the United Nations is the fundamental source of the problem. It ensures unsustainable population growth in a way that degrades equality, democracy, and our environment.
This archaic model predates our understanding of climate change, the impact of early childhood development, the way birth conditions and early childhood can exacerbate inequality, etc. Many better models have been proposed, including one by leading political theorist Sarah Conly, and Having Kids’ own model, the Fair Start approach (detailed here).
Contact Grist CEO here and urge him to help Grist to break the taboo and aggressively report on better family planning policies. It’s the most comprehensive and effective way to mitigate the harms of climate change.
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The Washington Post recently reported on a troubling trend in the United States: attacks on the value of higher education. The Washington Post is correct that education matters for democracy. A society made up of uneducated people, vast inequality, and greed as the primary motivator is the antithesis of a democracy. Democracy must come before economics.
But if the Washington Post values democracy over economics when it comes to education policy, why does it reverse that stance when it comes to family planning?
The Washington Post has itself promoted ideas that have created the situation they now bemoan. For example, they encourage Millenials to have more kids because “it’s good for the economy”. However, we know that encouraging fertility for the sake of the economy only serves to drive further inequality and weaken democracy.
If we value democracy, we have to ensure that the conditions in which people are actually born and raised foster democracy. Downstream and after-the-fact approaches are a farce, and build inequality more than democracy. Yes, education matters for democracy. But not family planning matters even more. Why? The point of education is to ensure free and equal citizens, but family planning – more than education – determines the people we become.
The Washington Post isn’t connecting the dots, and suffers (as we all do) from temporal myopia. The myopia is not limited to the issue of education. It’s overriding in things like our view of child care policies (where else do we ignore the source of need), preventing mass extinction, and certainly in climate change mitigation, where we routinely ignore the most important behavior change.
What’s the solution? Through better family planning policies we could afford to make college free and obligatory. That may be what real democracy requires.
We can break our temporal myopia, and change the way we see the world.
Take action: Urge Washington Post’s editor @PostBaron to embrace democracy at its source, and abandon its promotion of economic-growth based family planning.
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Fox News personality John Stossel said “there’s nothing wrong with inequality.”
Are Stossel and Fox News ok with the 41% of U.S. kids living in or near poverty and the life long harm caused by disadvantages early in life?
There’s no question – inequality is harmful to kids. Studies have documented examples of rising inequality decreasing child welfare:
Children who grow up poor are more likely to be poor as adults. Furthermore, the likelihood increases with each year of poverty that is experienced. – PBS Frontline
The longer you grow up in poverty, the harder it is to graduate. PBS Frontline
Disparities have been created through histories of discrimination and opportunity denial, and they dissipate slowly.– Population Studies Center and Survey Research Center
The child poverty rate for blacks and Hispanics is more than double the rate for whites and Asians. Higher unemployment rates and lower earnings contribute to the gap. – National Geographic
INEQUALITY IS RISING
We all believe in fairness, whether liberal or conservative. But some fail to recognize that the playing field is not level. The reality is that socioeconomic status is inherited.
Although overall poverty is declining, poverty is increasing among infants, especially for black and Hispanic children. Social mobility is declining and the condition of those in severe poverty is worsening. That is why a more equitable system to ensure a fair start is as important as ever.
“The proportion of U.S. children who go on to earn more than their parents has dropped sharply since 1940, when the rate topped 90 percent.” – Equality of Opportunity Project
The bottom line? Inequality harms kids and it’s getting worse.
As 2020 candidates propose solutions to inequality, will the response from the right be to deny that inequality is a problem? Inequality must be addressed to give kids a fair start. Fair Start family planning offers a real social contract that brings reasonable people on left and right together.
This can be accomplished with a cooperative family planning framework. Fair Start family planning brings us together to invest in all kids, to improve equity and create a better society.
TAKE ACTION
We can do something about inequality. Help get a guaranteed minimum income (GMI) for kids in Washington D.C., where inequality is higher than any other state in the U.S. GMI that is tied to family planning is even more effective. Ask D.C. Mayor Bowser, @MayorBowser to pursue GMI tied to family planning to give kids a fair start.
Despite attempts the United Nations and others to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, levels are now at an all time high. The growth in emissions tracks world population growth, which is the greatest driver of climate change and a threat multiplier.
What can you do to protect yourself and the ones you love?
Understand that you have a fundamental human right to resources to ensure your child a fair start in life. Choosing to have a smaller family is, without comparison, the best way to mitigate the threats of climate change. The right to nature and a fair start in life is the first and supreme human right. If you are willing to plan responsibly, you have a moral claim against those that are able to pay – including the government and wealthy individuals.
Demand your rights, and help others make their demands. Communities who are most impacted by climate change, and are literally being driven from their homes, and morally entitled to target those most responsible for Fair Start funding (which would include offsetting the impacts of climate change). Help them do so, by directly confronting those responsible, or calling for governments to recognize and protect the fundamental right to a fair start in life. Would-be mothers who are concerned about the future, and are forgoing having children, have a moral claim against those who are creating the predicament. Engage those people directly, and speak out against government policies that promote having larger families that threaten our future.
Having Kids means caring for the future, and that means taking effective action now. Let’s change to conversation from what parents want to what kids need.
An egregious case of child abuse in Texas made national headlines in February when authorities discovered two children held in a dog cage and two more malnourished and living in filth. While the parents’ case moves through the legal system, the national child-protection organization Having Kids is urging Governor Greg Abbott to take immediate action to stem the tide of child abuse in Texas. The organization sent a letter to Governor Abbott encouraging him to adopt a new and better approach to child welfare and family planning, beginning with Fair Start orders.
Fair Start orders can be issued at a judge’s discretion, in the event of conviction and probation, to prevent a party from having children for a limited time period as a condition of probation. The state would not consider putting helpless children back into a convicted abuser’s care; the state should similarly consider the right of a child not to be born to a known abuser for a period of probationary time.
We are offering to assist Governor Abbott and relevant Texas agencies in implementing new policies to prevent child abuse.
Having Kids wants more for the children of Texas than the state’s after-the-fact reaction to such horrible abuse. Erika Mathews, Executive Director of Having Kids says, “Texas is currently embroiled in a class action lawsuit regarding the failures of its foster care system, and the state regularly has more child abuse deaths than the national average. It’s time for the state to fulfill its obligations to present and future children by moving toward a human-rights based and child-first family planning policies.”
The current model of family planning – which makes having and raising kids the exclusive business of the parents – ignores every child’s right to a minimum standard of wellbeing not only at birth, but throughout childhood. The parent-centered family planning and parenting paradigm is a violation of the rights of children to be protected. Instead, Texas must move toward the Fair Start model, which will benefit children and the state. Fair Start orders are a first step.