There is a subtle a mistake in our thinking and work that is exacerbating the climate, inequity and other crises we all face today.
To ensure justice and freedom for all, our thinking and work would have to start with family planning policies that create birth and development conditions for all children consistent with the Children’s Rights Convention.
It externalized the costs of the extreme wealth we see today, against the most fundamental baseline for true cost / benefit analysis. Many have tried to hide that baseline, because its use in assessing the climate reparations described below would mean wealthy families and nations would have to pay substantial amounts.
Climate reparations are a chance to reverse this mistake and ensure Convention compliance through climate restoration and birth-equity family planning entitlements, which pay that specific percentage wealth made – through growth and otherwise – by externalizing costs against a baseline of ecosocial child development consistent with the Children’s Rights Convention.
We cannot be inclusive without this change. We are otherwise not empathetic enough, giving kids what they need under the Convention, to constitute legitimate communities. And as such, we are never actually limiting the power others have over us. We should not be forced to live in a world impacted by children who did not get what they needed growing up just because wealthy investors want to use them as cheap labor and hungry consumers. That is oppression on all levels, and free people will target those behind this process to end the it, and to limit the power others – those with whom we share the world – have over us. They power up, bottom up.
Engage in the #WholeTruth campaign to urge leaders, nonprofits and businesses to tell the truth about their approach to families, and the impact it has and will have on whatever they claimed to do, or will do.
Call in (rather than out) those who refused to invest enough in family planning that complies with the Children’s Convention, including the climate restoration and birth equity in envisions. That refusal signifies not being sufficiently other-regarding to constitute just communities that actually empower, and thereby liberate, us all.
Test people and institutions to see whether they are fundamentally unjust and a threat to freedom: Will they sign a letter to the the Climate Conference of the Parties urging them to support fair starts in life over growth-based profits?
While many environmental organizations call for ways to reduce consumption to protect the environment, inevitably they are undoing the progress by accepting and even promoting growth-based family policies that undo the progress.
What’s the solution?
The mass consumption that created the climate-crisis is baked into our political system because we are all – on the left and right of the political spectrum – accepting of family polices that create many consumers and workers for shopping malls, rather than investing more, and more equitably, in children so that they can comprise town halls – functional democracies – where they can be free.
And it’s important to frame this issue in terms of our political role, because while environmental protection is important, it only happens (as all things do) in the context of political systems – in the process of choosing democracy over economic growth.
We can change that, and one step involves targeting the executive directors of large environmental organizations to admit the harm their quiet approach to family policy has caused, and to do better.
TAKE ACTION: URGE HEAD OF SIERRA CLUB BEN JEALOUS – @BenJealous – TO ADMIT THE CLUB CHOSE FAMILY POLICIES THEIR UNDERCUT THEIR MISSION AND CLAIMS OF SUCCESS, AND WHICH – PER STUDIES LIKE THIS – EXACERBATED THE CLIMATE CRISIS.
A lot of politicians are pushing to relax or eliminate child labor laws. This is the result of free-market economics where there is no real right or wrong, just the power of one’s wealth. But this nonsense was enabled by liberals who proclaim to support human rights but simply refuse to give all kids a fair start in life, the one move that would not only end child labor, but change the fundamental power dynamics that make it even possible.
Politicians chipping away at child labor laws are thus vulnerable because their political authority relies on their supporting fair starts in life for kids. Very few support that, and they usually have uber-privileged children. We have a right to a proportion of the wealth of these families, the wealth those privileged children would otherwise inherit, because using it to invest more in all kids is the beginning of just and legitimate systems of governance.
TAKE ACTION: CONTACT STATE SENATOR JASON SCHULTZ OF IOWA AND URGE HIM TO PAY WHAT HE OWES. HE SHOULD PROTECT AND NURTURE ALL CHILDREN SO THAT HIS DAUGHTERS, JOSIE AND CAMRYN, LIVE IN A BETTER WORLD ONE DAY.
Recent fundraising efforts by UNICEF are inaccurate. The organization is not pegging family planning policies and practices to the standards of the Children’s Rights Convention. That means children are constantly born into conditions – under the approval of the UN – that violate the Convention. Pulling them out later is not enough.
Fact: UNICEF is reading the Convention in ways that guarantee children will not actually be protected, that their very creation will degrade the social and ecological conditions they need to thrive, and that they will be exploited by the powerful due to the conditions in which they will be born and raised.
That has to change. It is the fundament of injustice, destabilizing societies by trading human rights and democracy for economic growth, and justifying violence by those who claim the world is simply not fair.
Countless media stories today are flooding our brains with stories of an underpopulation crisis, falling fertility rates, and women liberated from being mothers-in-waiting.
You would not see many abortion bans either. These conversations are premised on the idea that we can exploit children as cheap labor and voracious consumers.
But the truth is we do actually have to invest that level in kids, at least the minimum spelled out by the Children’s Rights Convention.
People like Elon Musk may be bemoaning falling population numbers, but the children of his native South Africa – and intending mothers – actually have a claim to his wealth to bend the arc of de-growth even further. He certainly owes it, born a rich white kid who fled South Africa with wealth during apartheid.
How those families take what they deserve, the distraction of effective altruism aside, is another matter.
While a lot has been said about the failures of effective altruism as an ethic, few see a fundamental flaw in its design: The assumption that the wealth referred to in the concept was fully owned by the wealthy donors – like Peter Singer – who kindly would choose to give it away.
That’s incorrect. There is a baseline error at work in the movement.
Instead family policies treated children as consumers, irrespective of their political voice, and cheap future labor in whom we did not have to invest much. That allowed growth, which fundamentally created the climate crisis.
Given that the Convention spells out the minimum standards necessary to ensure children what they need to build legitimate systems of human rights and democracy, our governments were never authorized to assign the property rights wealthy people – like those who conveniently favor Effective Altruism – think they have to their wealth. They would first have to pay the proportional costs, through things like family planning reparations to future generation, to own that wealth.
Be effective.
People like Elon Musk may be bemoaning falling population numbers, but the children of his native South Africa – and intending mothers – actually have a claim to his wealth to bend the arc of de-growth even further. He certainly owes it, born a rich white kid who fled South Africa with wealth during apartheid.
How those families take what they deserve, the distraction of effective altruism aside, is another matter.
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.
The population issue in Africa is unquestionably significant and of serious concern. High birth and death rates, rising population size and density, and an increasing dependency burden all translate into higher demands on African governments, with issues bordering on underemployment, persistent poverty, crime, and political unrest, causing serious stress in many African economies.
The pertinent questions to be answered are:
Does having multiple children effect a family’s current state of well-being and prospects?
Does a rapid population growth harm the economy’s ability to function as a whole to reach and sustain general well-being?
Will African nations be able to raise the standard of living for their citizens in light of the present and projected rates of population growth? To what extent can basic social services like housing, transportation, sanitization, and security be provided for its citizens?
How will African nations manage the enormous growth in their labour forces over the coming decades? Will there be plenty of job opportunities or will it need a significant effort to keep unemployment rates from rising?
What are the effects of increased population growth rates on the likelihood that the world’s impoverished will be able to escape the agony of absolute poverty? Will the global food supply and distribution system be adequate not only to feed the predicted population growth in the upcoming decades, but also to raise nutritional standards so that everyone especially children can eat well?
Will African nations be able to raise the standard of their health and educational systems in order to give everyone at least a shot at receiving appropriate health care and a foundational education in light of the population expansion that is expected? In light of the aforementioned concerns, it is crucial to frame the population issue in terms of qualities of human life rather than just numbers or densities: prosperity instead of poverty, education instead of illiteracy, and ample opportunities for the next generation of children in place of current restrictions. If population trends are positive, they expand man’s alternatives and provide him more options. Population control therefore serves as a tool to improve living, not as an end in itself. This is what the concern about population is about, or ought to be for Africa.
When you’ve done something wrong it’s easier to distract than make amends. And when it comes to family and population policy, a lot of influential people did a lot of wrong.
Here are three types of men pushing that lie. And we can stop them by telling the truth: We have the right to take back the wealth they took, and compensate future generations, by all means effective.
The Investor
Rather than create value, say through true innovation that creates real value, some men rely on women to have kids to grow economies by literally adding bodies. Elon Musk is a great example, though there are many others that qualify.
The Politician
Politicians generally sit atop a pyramid of people, and they expand their power by growing the base. Mitt Romney is a great example of this, and they generally serve the Investor-types, not the people under them.
The Economist/Academic
These are the men who promoted unsustainable systems because it would create amazing short-term benefits while foisting the costs on women, and future generations. Paul Morland and Will MacAskill are great examples of these sorts. They provide legitimacy for the Investors and Politicians.
How do we stop them? We can make them tell the truth: The climate and inequity crises facing the world today are causing, and will cause, immense suffering. These crises fundamentally flow from the policies that enriched these men by putting costs on others. Because family policies are primary, we do not need governments permission to take back the wealth these men took.
