Fair Start Movement

Category: Climate, Environment & Animal Protection

  • Are COP24 World Leaders Ignoring the Greatest Factor in Climate Change?

    Are COP24 World Leaders Ignoring the Greatest Factor in Climate Change?

    Right now, world leaders are meeting in Katowice, Poland for the COP24 Conference to finalize the negotiations outlined in the Paris Climate Agreement. Unfortunately, the agenda indicates no discussion about the greatest factor in mitigating human impact on climate: sustainable family planning. Much of the agenda revolves around reigning in industrial emissions. Certainly, that’s important, but aren’t we missing the elephant in the room? Those emissions are driven by the demand that people create.

    We’re a already facing life with more deadly acts of nature, like the California wildfires that took 101 lives and the east coast hurricanes that took 87 lives this year. We’re also seeing less habitable land, water scarcity, and the extinction of wildlife at an alarming rate.

    Our kids are depending on us to save their future in the little time left before we reach a point of no return. Most of the world leaders in attendance at the COP24 conference are parents themselves. As illustrated by the list below, a large portion of them are doing their part to set an example by having a small family with no more than two kids.

    List of Speakers for Heads of State and Heads of Government High-Level Segment:

    Leaders with small families:
    His Excellency Mr. Baron Divavesi Waqa, President of Nauru – 1 kid (adopted)
    His Excellency Mr. Mokgweetsi Eric Masisi, President of Botswana – 1 kid
    His Excellency Mr. Raimonds Vējonis, President of Latvia – 2 kids
    His Excellency Mr. Rumen Georgiev Radev, President of Bulgaria – 2 kids
    His Excellency Mr. Borut Pahor, President of Slovenia – 1 kid
    His Excellency Mr. Milo Djukanovic, President of Montenegro – 1 kid
    His Excellency Mr. Alexander Van der Bellen, President of Austria – 2 kids
    Her Excellency Ms. Bidhya Devi Bhandari, President of Nepal – 2 kids
    His Excellency Mr. Pedro Sánchez Perez-Castejón, President of the Government of Spain – 2 kids
    His Excellency Mr. Mark Rutte, Prime Minister of the Netherlands – no kids
    Her Excellency Ms. Ana Brnabić, Prime Minister of Serbia – no kids
    His Eminence Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Secretary of State of the Holy See – celibate
    His Royal Highness Prince Moulay Rachid of the Kingdom of Morocco – 1 kid
    His Excellency Mr. Gjorge Ivanov, President of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia – 1 kid

    Leaders with large families
    His Excellency Mr. Alain Berset, President of Switzerland – 3 kids
    His Royal Highness Grand Duke Henri of Luxembourg – 5 kids
    His Excellency Mr. Sauli Väinämö Niinistö, President of Finland – 3 kids
    His Excellency Mr. Muhammadu Buhari, President of Nigeria – 10 kids
    His Excellency Mr. Ilir Meta, President of Albania – 3 kids
    His Excellency Mr. Frank V. Bainimarama, Prime Minister of Fiji – 5 kids
    His Excellency Mr. Jüri Ratas, Prime Minister of Estonia – 4 kids
    Mr. Maroš Šefčovič, Vice President of the European Commission – 3 kids

    Leaders with an unknown family size
    His Excellency Mr. Mirco Tomassoni (unknown)
    His Excellency Mr. Luca Santolini, Captains Regent of San Marino – (unknown)
    His Excellency Mr. Ambrose Mandvulo Dlamini, Prime Minister of Eswatini – (unknown)
    Her Excellency Ms. Saara Kuugongelwa Amadhila, Prime Minister of Namibia – (unknown)

    Leaders from wealthy countries that have grown rich through colonization have the greatest obligation to reduce their family size and lead by example because of the disparate impact wealthy countries/populations have on the environment, because of the history of exploitation of other countries, and because human rights-based family planning change must account for culture. We all must acknowledge that, and account for the difference. But some change by all is necessary. 

    These leaders have the power to bring a discussion to the forefront on the need for nations to promote smaller families and sustainable family planning. The Fair Start model offers a human rights-based solution that accounts for the needs of future children and the world in which they are born.

    We have asked the Secretary General of the U.N. to issue a new statement on family planning, urging the world to choose smaller families. We are also calling on world leaders to incorporate sustainable family planning into their nations’ respective climate action plans in order to achieve the targets set in the Paris Climate Accord.

    TAKE ACTION
    Tweet UN Secretary-General @antonioguterres with the hashtag #COP24 and ask when sustainable families will be part of #sustainabledevelopmentgoals. And add your name to our letter here.

  • Having Kids Partners On Animal Impact Calculator

    Having Kids Partners On Animal Impact Calculator

    Despite declining fertility rates in the US and a handful of other countries, our population is on track to grow exponentially in the coming decades. At the same time, Earth has entered the sixth mass extinction. It is one that rivals the extermination of the dinosaurs and 76% of life on Earth. However, unlike past extinction events caused by natural global pulses, humans have already caused the extinction of nearly 60% of wildlife. And these trends are accelerating (1). 

    Animals are disappearing and humans are to blame. 

    We will fail our children and future generations if we do not take significant action to mitigate our impact on the planet and wildlife.

    The vast and detrimental changes to Earth’s ecosystems are largely to meet our rapidly growing need for food, fresh water, timber, fiber, minerals, and fuel. They are the result of irresponsible human overpopulation, consumption, and a false-dependency on economic growth (2). It is becoming alarmingly clear that the demand we put on the planet is unsustainable. Although there are been substantial gains in human physical well-being and economic development for a few, the long-term costs are now being experienced in the form of climate change, habitat destruction, pollution, disease, war, displacement, hunger, and mass mortality in humans and nearly all other life forms (3)

    But effective change cannot happen without an informed scientific assessment to guide those strategies. That is why Having Kids is partnering with the Institute for Human-Animal Connection at the University of Denver to research individual impact on other species. Dr. Sarah M. Bexell is serving as the principal investigator on the project titled, the Animal Mortality Footprint Calculator.

    A similar tool has been developed to assess human individual impacts on the natural environment as a whole through the Ecological Footprint Calculator. And while estimates are available about the number of animals typically consumed for food, which measures in the billions in the U.S. alone, this research will go further to consider the cost to other species. The project will develop the algorithms to calculate the average number of animals that die to support the lifestyle of one human individual.

    This information will make a clear case to policymakers, economists, conservationists, environmental and social scientists, the philanthropic community, local communities, and citizens of the urgent need for consequential behavior change in terms of family planning and family size. The Animal Mortality Footprint Calculator will expose the inescapable truth of the direct impact that each person imposes on the most vulnerable beings.

    We know that choosing smaller families is the best way to protect for all animals, including humans.

    Unfortunately, the animal protection community has largely avoided that fact. A key aim of this project is to increase support of the Fair Start Model of family planning by animal advocates as well as communities everywhere.

    We must start a larger conversation on the choice to have smaller families size to protect biodiversity and the planet, and to reduce animal suffering caused by human activity. Sustainable family planning creates a path forward to a habitable world for all kids and animals.

    We will share updates as this research progresses. In the meantime, add your name to our open letter to the U.N, and learn more about the impact of humans on animals.

    1. WWF, 2016
    2. Global Humanitarian Forum, 2009; Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005; WWF, 2014; 2016
    3. e.g., Ceballos, et al., 2015; Cohen, et. al., 2017; Dockery & Evans, 2017; Raworth, 2012; Rockstrom et al., 2009

     

  • Animals Are Disappearing and Large Families Are to Blame

    Animals Are Disappearing and Large Families Are to Blame

    Animals are disappearing. A recent study has determined that just two generations of humans have killed off more than half the world’s wildlife populations. Populations of animals have declined by 60 percent since 1970, according to a report released Monday by the World Wildlife Fund. According to the Washington Post, “the animals that remain will fight against warming oceans choked with plastic, toppled rainforests may zero out fragile species, and refuges such as coral reefs may nearly die off.”

    The loss is directly attributable to the fundamental cause of all environmental crises: Large, poorly planned families and the unsustainable population growth they cause. 

    Many of the environmental crises today are caused by variables that we did not understand when setting environmental polices decades ago, variables like the impact of greenhouse gas emissions. But at that time we did know about one variable – population growth as an underlying multiplier of all anthropogenic impacts. Had we taken family planning more seriously then, we would not be where we are today.

    Poor family planning is enabled by an outdated social model that focuses on what parents want more than on what future children need. It was a system developed for survival in a different time, before we knew what we know today about human impact on the planet, early childhood development needs, and the lasting impact that crowding has on inequality. We are not living in that world anymore. Our cities and towns are becoming increasingly crowded and we’re demanding more than the natural world can comfortably provide. That type of isolated living of the past no longer serves us. It does not account for the nonhuman world. It does not leave room for animals.

    There is a better way. 

    Urge the WWF, at @PavanSukhdev, to publicly support our call on the United Nations Secretary-General to issue a statement on the need for a new and cooperative “smaller family” planning model designed to give every kid a fair start in life.

  • What’s Progressive About Unsustainable Family Planning?

    What’s Progressive About Unsustainable Family Planning?

    In a one-sided piece that really should have been treated as an editorial, The Washington Post (WP) spills much ink lamenting falling birthrates in the United States. The article seems like an opinion-piece prelude to policies like Italy’s recent scheme to bribe parents into having more kids by giving them land in exchange. The U.S. is actually not that far behind, following Trump’s recent cash-for-babies tax credit increase.

    Pushing for larger families, without accounting for every child’s right to a fair start in life and the impact of growth on our environment is irresponsible. Smaller families mean more time, love and energy for each child, a safer and more sustainable environment, and more connected communities where each person’s voice can matter. That strengthens democracy. Promoting higher birthrates to fuel cheap future labor, voracious consumers, and compliant taxpayers is economic nationalism, the end of which we hope is coming. Bigger is not better, and if the WP truly values democracy, it will be more careful when reporting on its fundament, the trends in family planning that literally determine who we are and will be as a people.

    Tweet Marty Baron, Executive Editor of the WP, at @PostBaron and politely suggest fuller reporting on this vital issue.

  • Time for Guaranteed and Sustainable Child Income

    Time for Guaranteed and Sustainable Child Income

    Cory Booker is right. It’s time to target inequality, and baby bonds, as he proposes, are a great way to do it. But what if we could create more equity for kids and protect our environment – the environment our children will need in the future, at the same time? We can. 

    Today the national child-protection organization Having Kids called upon the District of Columbia to adopt a sustainable guaranteed income for children in the District, one pegged to better family planning. The idea is simple: The District can reach many of its goals at once by promoting smaller families so that communities and families can invest more in each child. The policy is centered around every child’s right to a fair start in life, and is designed to address the greatest threats facing the District and nation, including inequality and climate change.

    Can Washington D.C. make a difference by itself? It can for its residents. But it can also lead by example and set a trend – a line of dominoes – for the rest of the nation.

    Read the full letter here. 

    The policy urges the District to adopt a stable community model, where the financial resources formerly required to support growth could be directed to other beneficial investments. Rather than focusing on blunt and unsustainable economic growth, the Having Kids GMI proposal shrinks the wealth gap by specifically contemplating (1) household resources per capita, (2) level of access to public services such as health and education and (3) above all, the relationship between a child’s fair start in life and prospects for success.

    Several studies show that smaller families are the best way to confront climate change, as well as other and related environmental crises. Research also confirms the disproportionate impact of early childhood development on human wellbeing and inequality later in life.

    The current family planning model in use makes our future less secure, healthy and equitable than it should be. Having Kids Executive Director Anne Green said this: “We offer the child-first Fair Start family planning model as a sustainable and equitable alternative. The Fair Start model is cooperative rather than isolationist, is based upon binding sources of international law, and provides a clear human rights-based solution to our biggest problems and a path forward.”

    Tweet @MayorBowser and ask her to adopt sustainable income for kids that is tied to family planning.

     

  • Rubio Putting Profits Before Planet

    Rubio Putting Profits Before Planet

    Yesterday, Marco Rubio explained that when it comes to climate change, his priority is the economy over the wellbeing of the planet. As a Republican with Presidential ambitions, he walks a fine line between climate skeptic and Senator of a state already seeing the firsthand effects of climate change, including sea level rise and stronger hurricanes. It has not even been one week since Hurricane Michael wiped out some towns in Florida. Climate change is not his priority? Michael will undoubtedly be the twelfth billion dollar storm this year, with an expected cost of $30 billion.

    As a father, he is harming his and other children’s future to benefit a small percentage of uber-wealthy people. Rubio has explicitly pushed for larger families and unsustainable families and the cheap labor and hungry consumers they create: That is THE WORST way to exacerbate climate change and other crises in the long term, the timeframe that really matters.

    He and his colleagues push for the deregulation of corporate activities while playing semantics with stances on whether climate change is man-made. But it’s those regulations that protect our planet for all of us, for all of us, not to mention the future that Rubio’s own children with inherit. There will be no way to have a successful economy with the outrageous costs that climate destruction is causing if we continue on this path. We must put greed and consumerism aside to enable a habitable, stable future for the next generation. 

    Last week’s alarming climate change report made it clear that drastic changes in human behavior will need to occur if we are to mitigate the climate ecocide that is already underway. Are we willing to do that? If current trends continue, we are on course for endless drought, flooding, wildfires, heat waves, weather-related disasters, and food and water scarcity. Coastal towns where vast portions of the population reside, including Rubio’s own South Florida which is already flooding, will be swallowed by the seas.  

    Is it fair to subject our kids to that chaotic, unsafe future? By our own nature, we are reluctant to accept uncomfortable facts and problems that are not immediate. But it’s time to face them because our kids have a right to a fair start.

    rubio climate change

    It’s not an either-or proposition. We can have a thriving economy and a sustainable planet. Yes, we need leaders to enforce environmental measures, participate in the Paris Climate Agreement, and call for corporate responsibility. But we all have a responsibility at the individual level as well to reduce our impact.

    The best way we can do that is by choosing to have smaller families – at usually that means one or two kids. Having one less child saves more harmful emissions than changes in transportation, energy, or diet.

    human impact on climate

    Why not set up our kids to thrive in safe, healthy, and sustainable communities where everyone has a fair start in life? Isn’t that the future we want?

    Senator Rubio is morally obligated to take the most effective response to climate change, which has been recognized as a national security threat. That response is better family planning.

    We are calling on him to reverse his stance and to join us in asking the U.N. to recommend smaller families across the globe.

    TAKE ACTION:

    1. Tweet Marco Rubio with a ready-made tweet.
    2. Add your name to our message to the U.N.

     

     

  • Earth Overshoot Day – Take Action Now

    Earth Overshoot Day – Take Action Now

    August 1, 2018 is Earth Overshoot Day.

    Worried that the federal government is actually making things worse, and hurting your kids’ future? You would be right. But you can take action by urging your local government, your town, city or county, to do the most effective thing possible to mitigate climate change and protect the environment.

    Between now and the end of the year, consider using the template below to urge your local government to take a position on the need for better family planning. Send them the draft, and then lobby them hard to do their jobs and protect you, your family, and your future.

    ————–

    Resolution acknowledging that Earth Overshoot Day 2018 is August 1, 2018 and Affirming [add your local government reference here] Commitment to Move Back the Date of Earth Overshoot Day And Provide Affordable and Accessible Family Planning Services

    WHEREAS, Earth Overshoot Day is the date each year when it is determined that we (all of humanity) have used more of the Earth’s natural resources than our planet can renew in that entire year; and

    WHEREAS, In 1970, Earth Overshoot Day was December 29; and

    WHEREAS, This year, Earth Overshoot Day is August 1, 2018; and

    WHEREAS, We now use the resources equivalent to that of 1.7 Earths; and

    WHEREAS, One way to live within the means of our planet is to ensure affordable and accessible family planning services, including birth control and women’s health services; and

    WHEREAS, Better family planning is a proven effective way to improve child welfare, reduce economic inequality, and protect and restore our environment; and

    WHEREAS, Smaller, child-centered families would result in 50% more biocapacity per person in 2100, and more biocapacity makes it easier to have thriving lives for all within the means of the planet; and

    WHEREAS, Investing in smaller, child-centered families through the empowerment of women is also consistent with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). SDG Number 5 General Equality calls for ending all forms of discrimination against all women and girls everywhere, including giving women equal rights to economic resources and promoting gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls at all levels; and

    WHEREAS, Gender equality can also help ensure that we live within the means of our planet because when women are respected as equal partners in the household, at work, and in the community, better social outcomes for their families, including health and educational achievements invariably ensue; and

    WHEREAS, In 2011, nearly half (45% or 2.8 million) of the 6.1 million pregnancies in the United States each year were unintended; and[1]

    WHEREAS, Studies show that family planning programs and preventing teen pregnancy lead to more stable families and allow girls to stay in school longer; and

    WHEREAS, Studies also show that the more education young girls and women receive, the longer they wait to have children; and[2]

    WHEREAS, Some communities have instituted affordable and accessible family planning programs, which have resulted in an average 48% decrease in teen pregnancy; and

    WHEREAS, Family planning programs enable more women to use the birth control method of their choice and empower more individuals to plan if and when to become pregnant; and

    WHEREAS, The United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently released proposed changes to prohibit the use of federal Title X Family Planning Program funding for agencies that provide abortions or abortion-related services; and

    RESOLVED [ add your local government reference here] is committed to providing affordable and accessible family planning services, which is under attack by the Trump Administration, to protect our planet and its resources for future generations.

    [1] https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/unintended-pregnancy-united-states

    [2] https://www.wired.com/story/to-stop-climate-change-educate-girls-and-give-them-birth-control/

  • How Not to Think About Demographic Transition

    How Not to Think About Demographic Transition

    Why is something news? Many journalists would say that things which impact large numbers of people should be reported upon. Late last week many news outlets covered a story about how the trend towards smaller families means the “extinction of the middle child.”

    How this change in family structures will impact peoples’ lives, comprehensively, is beyond uncertain, if It could be ascertained at all. What is certain is that smaller families are the best way to limit what is now a manifest pattern of climate change degrading well-being on earth and threatening our kids’ future. Smaller families are also a great way to mitigate the real extinction at hand – that of other species.

    We may have an emotional reaction to changes in things we are used to, things like the concept of middle children. But focusing on that – and not mentioning climate change in stories about family size – is negligent.

    So what’s the next move? Today the demographic transition to smaller families is thought of almost exclusively in quantitative terms. But it’s impossible to change family size without having qualitative impacts, and opportunities. With smaller families we can more easily work together to plan for and invest more in each child, perhaps even enough to give every child a fair start in life relative to other members of their generation.

    Let’s talk about what matters. Take action today.

  • Push Back On Lobbyists Driving Climate Change and Hurting Our Kids

    Push Back On Lobbyists Driving Climate Change and Hurting Our Kids

    A federal judge recently dismissed a very modest lawsuit to recoup the government’s costs – the ones you pay as a taxpayer – for having to deal with the impacts of climate change. Jay Timmons, the manufacturing trade association lead is one of the lobbyists who opposed the lawsuit as “baseless.”

    Don’t you have an overriding and God-given right to a safe, healthy and natural environment? Isn’t that the very least a government has to assure in order to remain legitimate? How bad does it have to get before we realize the government has failed to protect us and our kids?

    The problem with climate change is that it seems amorphous and overwhelming, so much so that we have a cognitive bias against taking corrective action. The way around that is to understand that climate change is not just randomly happening. It is being exacerbated by very specific people who are enriching themselves, profiting from harming the environment in which we and our children live. Jay Timmons is one of those persons.

    This is not complex. He and his kind are harming the environment in which we live, and threatening our children. Justice means holding him, and others like him, accountable for the harm they have done and the suffering they will cause.

    Take action: Tweet him @JayTimmonsNAM and let him know how you feel. It’s up to us to protect the future. This is the challenge of our age – and we will rise to it.