Category: Climate Protection

The Rights Of and To Nature – What They Mean for Future Generations. Apr 7, 2021 09:00 AM in Pacific Time (US and Canada)

Join the International Animal Law Committee of the American Bar Association’s International Law Section for a great discussion.

Register here.

As the rights both of and to nature emerge and solidify in the minds of the public, and in law and policy, they will entail greater investment in and empowerment of future generations. This panel will explain why.

It begins with the lead attorney, Jessica Blome, in a case currently pending before the Ninth Circuit that argues the Constitution implies a right to nature, including a regenerative standard for environmental policies, under the liberty doctrine. That right aligns with the international rights of nature groups like Earth Law Center promote, and it would help further them, legislatively and otherwise.

Tony Zelle, will present on those rights, from an international perspective, detailing their history and future. Cat Hughey, will explain what the rights to/of nature entail for reforming our family planning systems, from the United Nations to state ballot initiatives. And finally, Michael Swistara and Max Broad will discuss the local implications of these movements for the District of Columbia, where efforts to promote legislation that would ensure every child a socially and ecologically fair start in life might begin.

April 6, 2021
Guest Author: Time for a New Sustainable Development Goal, One That Truly Works?

Dear World Media,

Hope for the Earth – at last.

Today the United Nations Development Programme presented their apologies for having run down our home and the home of a myriad of other species by choosing to completely ignore the content of the Meadows Report. Finally they acknowledged that the Earth has finite resources and that we borrowed recklessly both from future generations and other species.

As of today a new world Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) has been added:

SDG 0: Small families for all. Its aim is to encourage people to stop at a great maximum of two offspring in the name of justice and fairness: Fairness to others, to other species and even to their own children.

It was finally recognised that a large cohort of elderly people are easier to manage than floods, subsidence, droughts, hurricanes and rising temperatures. It was also realised that the risk of future pandemics locking us all in was not worth carrying on as we are. And last but not least it was realised that they were starting to look ridiculous.

We thank the United Nations for having the humility to recognise that for the last forty years they were led up the garden path by various funders and interest groups. One big cheer for better things to come

Wishful thinker

Take action: Urge UN leadership to abandon the isolation family planning modeling in favor of Fair Start.

About the author:

Esther started being concerned about the wounds inflicted to the Earth aged 11 in 1976. She also understood at that time that there were already then far too many humans, considering their acquisitive and wasteful behaviour. Climate change was on her radar very early on, not least because her father was a physicist specialised in thermo-dynamics who left the oil industry in the 1970s to work on renewables. She had a strong link to nature and has been devastated seeing everything taken over and crushed by the human enterprise and all other species disappeared under piles of concrete in a soul crushing manner. When she was young she wished for a couple of children but as time went on she concluded that if her and her husband had any, those children would have a ghastly future ahead of them, so they didn’t try. As such she represents a growing swath of childfree voices in tune with Dave Benatar South African Prof of Philosophy who wrote a book in 2008 entitled “Better never to have been, the harm of coming into existence”: The Case for Not Being Born | The New Yorker

February 15, 2021
Giving To Help Kids, Animals, the Environment, or Democracy? Help Them All At Once Instead

Social movements that try to protect kids, animals, the environment, and democracy tend to see themselves as distinct, and even conflicting. That’s a huge mistake. The most impactful way to further the core missions of all movements lies in making a simple change: Restructure family planning policies, universally, by 1) promoting delayed parenthood, so that people are ready to actually parent, 2) prioritizing giving all kids a Fair Start in life in any political system of resource and stakeholder redistribution, and 3) encouraging smaller families for all, something which helps enable and pay for the first two moves.

For all four social movements the long-term impacts of changing the way we plan families is incomparable. In other words, long-term thinking, change, and work pays off.

So who would be oppose this transition? Big business and big government both thrive on poor family planning, because it creates a wave of consumers, cheap future labor, and taxpayers. Both use growth to increase and concentrate their power, at cost to the development of individuals, real democracy where every voice matters, and nature. The solution? Social justice movements can unify against these concentrations of power, finding reasonable allies on both the political left and the right, who want effective reform that furthers our widely shared values, the decentralization of power, and our actually reaching sustainable development goals. Want more information? Our peer-reviewed white paper on family planning reform can be found here.

Want to help with this unification of social justice movements against the concentrations of power? Please consider donating to HavingKids.org, or signing up to volunteer at info@fairstartmovement.org.

December 29, 2020
Yale Climate Connections: It’s Time to Tell the Truth

Yale Climate Connections is a crucial media service for understanding the greatest environmental threat facing our species. But a recent article may have missed a key opportunity to further that understanding. The article involved an interview with fertility coach Elizabeth Bechard, and focused on the connection between family planning and our ecological future. Bechard, whose profession involves people having kids, gave this advice:

I personally have, I guess, a spiritual framework that helps me to trust that there’s more going on than meets the eye, and I believe at a spiritual level that the children who come through are souls that chose to be here. And so, you know, if someone deeply desires a child, I would say listen to that.

Is there better advice we can give prospective parents who want to protect their kids’ future? The key lies in Bechard’s own decision not to have a third child, for ecological and other reasons. Choosing a small family is the most effective thing one can do to mitigate the climate crisis – twenty times more effective than other lifetsyle changes like changing one’s diet. And if we go one step further, and collectively shape our family planning polcies around equity, and the distribution of resources that would give every child a fair start in life, we can effectively reverse many of the other crises facing our kids.

If we really care about our kids’ future, shouldn’t we do what is most effective?

TAKE ACTION: 1) Urge Bechard at elizabeth@elizabethbechard.com to tell the truth about the connection between family planning and our shared future, and 2) tweet the Editor of Yale Climate Connections, @bud_ward, and urge him to ask the questions that really matter for our shared future.

July 1, 2020
Who’s Responsible for the Climate Crisis? The BBC Misses the Mark

The BBC recently reported on who might be held responsible for the climate crisis and why that matters. Writer Jocelyn Timperley acknowledges that human activity causes climate change and argues that identifying the prime sources is essential to proposing solutions. She examines the blame that might be assigned to fossil fuel companies, rich people, or wealthy countries.

But the article never mentions family planning and population, even though that is a fundamental driver of the climate crisis, with larger families in wealthy countries creating 20 times the impact on the climate by having children than they do with their other choices or behaviors such as energy consumption. Every one of the causes the article cites depends on population and related factors such as consumer demand. And population, or who we are and who we will be, ultimately flows from universal norms we create. In other words, we exist before we consume, and who we are flows from the norms that surround procreation. So who is fundamentally responsible?

In the mid- to late 20th-century, world leaders including environmental organizations gambled that rising population would bring economic benefits without unacceptable ecological costs and evaded family-planning interventions like a human-rights approach to family planning. Whether someone has one child or five is the personal business of the parents, they said. It’s private, they said. They chose to ignore the increasing impact on equity and our ecologies, the impact that all along was leading to the interrelated crises we face today, such as the impact of the climate crisis on pregnancies, especially those of Black and Hispanic expectant mothers.

They were wrong, having failed to account for greenhouse gas emissions. rising inequality, and the decline of democracy.

We are paying the price of that mistake, and our kids will have it worse.

Why does it matter to know this? World leaders and many nonprofit organizations are making the same mistake today and are exacerbating the situation. If we want to protect our kids, we will do what is most effective and change the way we plan families. What most matters in a degraded future is the quantity, social qualities, and relative positioning of the people who occupy the world.

TAKE ACTION: Contact the head of the BBC, or find and engage him in person, and urge comprehensive reporting regarding a threat as serious as the climate crisis.

June 24, 2020
World Environment Day 2020: Urging 100 Key Influencers to Adopt Sustainable and Equitable Family Planning

Today, Having Kids is urging 100 key world environmental influencers to move from our current and failing and unsustainable approach to family planning to a cooperative system based on what all children objectively need. This new system is based upon a variety of peer-reviewed research papers, and has been featured in Newsweek, Salon, Hello Magazine, and many other popular outlets. That change has never been more vital, given recent reactions to vast racial and economic inequity, the ongoing threat of pandemics, and massive volatility in world population prospects.

Read the full letter here.

Our current family planning system does not guarantee children any minimum level of welfare or equity, and does not take into account impacts on our ecologies, or the relationship between family planning and the building of human rights-based democracies. As our ecological and social conditions continue to deteriorate, it is becoming increasingly clear that the current system failed to account for a variety of factors. It was a mistake, and one that enables policies that Nobel laureate Steven Chu likened to a pyramid or Ponzi scheme.

The alternative we propose, called Fair Start, is simple: communities help parents to plan and wait to be ready before having kids, and ensure resources to give all kids a fair start in life, and smaller and more regenerative families make it all possible. We believe it is the best interpretation of the fundamental right to have children. The Fair Start Model is ten to twenty times more effective at protecting children and our environment, and building human rights and democracy, than other policies that address these issues. For many reasons, it is an overriding human right which can be furthered by all means effective.

According to Executive Director Erika Mathews: “Because our current system of family planning oppresses future generations and puts us all at existential risk, it is illegitimate, and an impediment to the constituting of true democracies.”

June 4, 2020
Connect the Dots Colorado workshop: The Most Effective Way to Help People, Animals, and the Environment

Better family planning ranks as the most effective way to mitigate the climate and other environmental crises, protect children, and reduce inequity. It is also one of the most effective ways to protect animals, getting to the fundamental source of problems like factory farming and the disappearance of wildlife.

From 12-1:30 Mountain Time on Thursday May 14th, 2020 there will be a virtual meeting and discussion of draft legislation that would implement Fair Start family planning in Colorado, as part of the Having Kids Connect the Dots Colorado campaign. This work builds on the theoretical discussion/planning from our 2019 George Washington University forum, https://fairstartmovement.org/forum/, and seeks to crystallize a truly human rights-based approach to family planning in Colorado.

We believe that as tragic as COVID-19 has been, the pandemic also provides a unique opportunity to bring about changes in Colorado that could help mitigate future crises. We know that overcrowding, economic inequality, and consumption of wildlife are each drivers of epidemics, but we also know that none of these drivers can be addressed in isolation. Therefore, we need your help in connecting the dots between access to contraception, economic equity, and environmental protection as we seek to draft a comprehensive Fair Start bill for Colorado.

A Little More about Our Model:

Having Kids advocates for a Fair Start model that encourages parents to have smaller families and to delay having kids until they are ready. It also works to ensure that communities and governments provide the resources necessary to guarantee that all kids have a fair start in life.

The model begins upstream to solve many of the problems that threaten our planet and future generations. Choosing smaller families is 20 times more effective at reducing climate change than adjusting dietary or transportation habits alone. The Fair Start model also helps to reduce the negative impacts on animals that come from factory farming and the degradation of animal habitats related to overcrowding.

Advancing the Model by Promoting Economic Equity:

Having Kids commends and supports Senator Booker’s proposal to guarantee a sustainable child income through baby bonds. We believe that Colorado could continue this momentum by adopting a similar proposal. Given that the current pandemic has exacerbated inequality, as well as the numerous economic, health, and social benefits of waiting to have kids, we propose structuring the bonds in a way that incentivizes delaying pregnancy until at least age 25. Please see our model policy for the District of Columbia and the attached draft law review article as a guide.

Advancing the Model by Recognizing a Right to Nature:

One of our goals is to guarantee that every child has the right to enjoy nature. To this end, we propose amending the Colorado constitution to recognize a right to nature. This concept may sound radical, but twenty one states already recognize a constitutional right to hunt and fish. We believe that if these states can protect an individual’s right to exploit nature, Colorado can perfect the right to enjoy nature. Several countries, including Sweden and Norway, recognize a right to “outdoor access” and can help guide a pathway forward for Colorado.

Other Questions?

If you have any questions or recommendations, please do not hesitate to reach out to Nicole King, a DU Law student who is helping to coordinate this event and to draft any proposed legislation. Nicole has a MA in Global Health affairs and previously worked for Colorado’s Title X family planning program, so she is excited to dive in. Please feel free to contact her at nking@crownlinellc.com or 908-420-7467.

May 3, 2020

Earth Day: Covid-19 Is Showing Us the Fundamental Taboo We Need to Break

I love and want to protect my child, so I don’t want her to have to live in a crowded and polluted future filled with billions more people, many of whom never got what they needed to really grow up and work well with others. When can I say that out loud?

As a mother of one child, I think about the future a lot. What will her environment be like? What will the people with whom she shares the world be like? Will she be safe?  Our society isn’t equipped to provide each child a fair start from the very first days of life, and we know that whether a child gets the education love, care, and attention he or she needs in the first three years of life can determine how they interact with others for the rest of their lives.

And the truth is, her future most depends on one factor, more than any other: family planning. A family choosing today to have one additional child can exacerbate the climate crisis by 20 times that of other choices, such as those around diet or transportation. Beyond that, overpopulation is one of the key drivers of pandemics.
Several studies show that small changes in average fertility rates will have massive impacts on population growth and that smaller families are the best way to confront climate change and other related environmental crises. By 2100, world population could vary by billions of people depending on whether the average woman in the world has one child more or fewer in the near future.  Nothing will matter as much for my kid’s future as the people with whom he will share this world. Who we are matters most of all.

Yes, immediate threats are distracting, but success comes in focusing on what’s important and what’s urgent and from being more proactive than reactive. I can try everything possible within the bubble of our family to ready my child – and all those efforts will go to waste, depending upon what other parents do.  Yet I have to write this post under the pen-name Kelly, because calling for family planning laws that ensure parents are ready before they have kids geared toward alleviating the societal ills bred by income inequality or that support smaller and more sustainable families, is taboo. I actually fear I would be condemned by friends and family, and that my business would be threatened. This is the taboo we need to break.

My child deserves a better future than the one she is on track to get, and the way to break off that track starts with a family planning system whereby we take the resources from the rich to level the playing field for the children of the poor, incentivizing smaller and sustainable families for everyone along the way. That is truly fundamental change.

April 22, 2020

Earth Day: 7 Effective Moves to Restore Nature
Forget all the feel good advertising for “green” products. Want to actually be effective in protecting the environment? Promote: Promote: 1) smaller, more sustainable families, 2) communities and parents working together to ensure that all kids have a fair start in life – including a habitable planet. Now that’s being effective.

Here are 7 next steps:
1. Tell Congress to include Fair Start family planning in the Green New Deal.
2. Overcrowding set the stage for Covid-19, and the next pandemic. Urge the WHO to promote a family planning policy that actually mitigates the threat.
3. Celebrities influence how we plan families. Urge them to lead by example and to choose smaller families.
4. Our governments are so eager to grow populations of consumers, workers, and taxpayers, they are actually flooding failing child welfare systems with more and more kids. Urge them to change course.
5. Shouldn’t the United Nations be promoting child welfare, equity, democracy, and the restoration of nature, rather than using babies to create economic growth. Tell UN Secretary General Guterres to change course, and to flatten this curve.
6. The wealthiest corporations and families in the world have no claim to their astronomical wealth against the right of every child to a Fair Start in life. Find and peacefully / legally engage the people at the top of the population pyramid to fund Fair Start family planning. We have a right to those resources.
7. Protecting the environment starts with recognizing the human right to nature. Support another nonprofit? Urge them to recognize the right, and contact us at info@fairstartmovement.org submit amicus briefs in the recent federal litigation in the United States seeking to enshrine the right.
April 21, 2020