Fair Start Movement

Category: Wildlife & Animal Welfare

  • 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.

  • 5 Ways Thoughtful Family Planning Can Protect Children, Wildlife, Our Democracy – and the Future

    5 Ways Thoughtful Family Planning Can Protect Children, Wildlife, Our Democracy – and the Future

    This is third in a series of AlterNet articles on population growth.

    The first explored the trend toward smaller families. The second examined a new family planning model that can capitalize on that trend. The current piece – 5 Ways Thoughtful Family Planning Can Protect Children, Wildlife, Our Democracy – and the Future – explores ways to implement that change.

    Click here for the article.

    This article was made possible by the readers and supporters of AlterNet.

     

  • Our Children Deserve a World Filled with Wildlife

    Our Children Deserve a World Filled with Wildlife

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    All of us have been able to live on a planet where we can bear witness to wild animals living, playing, hunting, and loving in their own worlds. Our children may not be able to do the same — at least not in the same way we have.

    According to a recent World Wildlife Fund report, wildlife populations continue to plummet. And while there is debate about the exact rates of disappearance, even critics agree that the 20th century saw massive loss of wildlife. And the trend is continuing.

    What does that have to do with the Having Kids model? The underlying drivers of things like mass extinctions, anthropogenic climate change, ocean acidification, and crowded cities include family size and consumption. And the solutions to those causes include reordering basic values that underlie our human rights and democratic systems, and thinking about the natural world. We need to be intentional about the way we create communities and consume resources in order to protect habitats and the animals we have all grown to love. The Having Kids model is the only family model that addresses, and balances, all of these things.

    Children have a right to a world with wildlife. Let’s give it to them.  

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