Fair Start Movement

Category: Climate Protection

  • Kids have a right to nature. Tell the UN to recognize it.

    Kids have a right to nature. Tell the UN to recognize it.

    The United Nations is meeting this week to determine new targets for biodiversity, worldwide. Having Kids is petitioning the relevant parties to address the fundamental driver of extinction: Overcrowding caused by poor family planning .

    Read our letter here.

    Human population growth is the fundamental driver of extinction and other ecological and social crise and the greatest contributor to the climate crisis. As our species expands across the globe, it is literally consuming the biodiversity it needs in order to thrive. That expansion, aided by governments and corporations that benefit from the resulting economic growth, is a violation of the human right to nature. 

    The facts are clear: 

    Hence, we are obligated to all advocate for better family planning modeling.

    Take action: Urge the UN biodiversity chief to speak out on the need for a new family planning model by contacting her here: Elizabeth.Mrema@un.org

  • Article: Ensuring Our Survival on Earth

    Article: Ensuring Our Survival on Earth

    Scientists and environmentalists commonly offer a few steps that everyday people can take to help mitigate the climate crisis: reduce your carbon footprint via travel, eat less meat, switch to clean energy.

    But that list typically omits the single most impactful decision we can make: having fewer kids.

    Carter Dillard details why solving our population and environmental problems starts with having fewer kids and embracing a human-rights approach to family planning here at AlterNet.

  • Better Parenting in the Age of the Climate Crisis

    Better Parenting in the Age of the Climate Crisis

    Kudos to Jedediah Britton-Purdy for his eloquent explanation of why he chose to have his young son, James, despite the climate crisis, as many others are forgoing parenting altogether as they take. Jedediah’s hope for the future, and for James’ future, shines through his writing.

    But did he miss something crucial to protecting that future? Hope is not a strategy.

    And if we want to, as Jed says, “build a world that is both safer and fairer,” we should start with the actual building blocks of the future and remember that having a small family is the most effective way to mitigate the climate crisis. It’s more effective on a magnitude of 20 times than things like changing one’s diet or transportation.

    And that’s not taking into account the way better family planning can improve child welfare, reduce inequity, and perhaps most importantly, build democracies that are small and inclusive enough for each person’s voice to matter and to not be drowned out in a crowd.  

    Family Planning and the Environment

    What matters most is that Jed just had James and that he exemplifies the evolved thinking true environmentalism requires by connecting his family planning behavior and its impact on the collective. We can go further and all realize that responsible decision-making like Jed’s can be promoted collectively through better family planning policies and laws that reflect the love Jed obviously has for nature, children, and democracy.   

    TAKE ACTION: Urge the Atlantic, by writing to themasthead@theatlantic.com, to report on the greatest and most fundamental solution to our social and ecological crises: Child-first family planning.

  • Beyond the Environment as Resource

    Beyond the Environment as Resource

    The Washington Post is right to shine a light on the connection between hunting and our environment, a connection that is breaking down as Americans lose interest in hunting. With the decline in hunting comes a decrease in conservation funding from hunting licenses, firearms permits, and more, with wildlife and environmental agencies suffering the consequences.

    This trend screams for a paradigm change in the way humans think about — and make efforts to care for — the environment. We must establish a new paradigm for future generations of valuing nonhumans for more than their ability to kill them.

    Prevailing Attitudes Toward the Environment


    The old paradigm is centered on the idea that the “environment is just a human resource.” This thinking treats the environment as part of a world economy and considers it valuable only if people assign value to it, like any other commodity we buy and sell. This myopic, anthropocentric thinking helped create the climate crisis and the other ecological crises that now threaten our children and future generations.

    Codifying the Human Right to Nature

    What does the shift from this old way look like? It looks like recognizing our fundamental human right to nature. This right rises above and cabins the subjectivity of markets and human shortsightedness. It looks like institutionalizing that right in law.

    That paradigm shift is now before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, in a suit challenging the government’s total abdication of its most basic duties by failing to mitigate, and in many cases by exacerbating, the climate crisis. We have a right to nature — and seeing it is the paradigm shift toward having a truly symbiotic, nonviolent relationship with the ecology that keeps us alive.

  • This Man Is Threatening Our Right to Nature

    This Man Is Threatening Our Right to Nature

    Having Kids promotes our fundamental human right to nature and the sovereignty of democratic communities over economic pyramids driven by population growth, mass consumption and corporate greed.

    TC Energy CEO Russ Girling is a key part of the system threatening our right to nature. He is behind the violence against the Wet’suwet’en peoples of Canada as they defend their land against Girling’s and TC Energy’s attempt to build the Coastal GasLink pipeline across their ancestral lands.

    Given the impact of the project on our degrading climate, Girling and TC Energy are a manifest threat to our children’s future.

    1. Girling and TC Energy are responsible for violating the human right to nature and the sovereignty that derives from it.
    2. As human rights, the right to nature and sovereignty supersede national authority and any other rights the nation attempts to guarantee TC Energy and Girling.
    3. Girling can offset the harm he is causing by pulling back from the Wet’suwet’en lands and repaying the money he and TC Energy have taken. This reparation could include funding Fair Start family planning policies that will build resilience in future generations as they face degraded ecosystems.

    How Can We Stop TC Energy’s Threat to Nature?

    Take Action: We can target the top of the pyramid. We are urging supporters to find Girling, to peacefully and lawfully engage him about fulfilling what our human rights require, and to publicize your bravery. As we obtain information on his whereabouts, we will update this post.
    Please also contact the Hon. Mike Farnworth, the minister of public safety and solicitor general of British Columbia, regarding the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s incursions and to make the points above. Additionally, you can sign this petition or engage him personally if you are in the area.

  • COP25: Don’t Ignore the Greatest Factor in the Climate Crisis

    COP25: Don’t Ignore the Greatest Factor in the Climate Crisis

    Having Kids will be truly speaking truth to power – in the most fundamental way – at the COP25 UN Climate Conference in Madrid next month. It’s time to promote the implementation of a truly human rights-based family planning system. We need a real system of human rights that protects kids and restores nature, and limits the hegemony that people alive today have over future generations.

    Read our letter to the Executive Secretary of the Conference and share widely.

    Last year’s conference focused on industrial emissions. Now it’s time to stop ignoring the most fundamental and biggest factor in the climate crisis: Poor family planning policies.

    We will make clear: 
    1. The Conference must address new family planning policies as the most effective solution to the climate crisis – twenty times more effective than most alternatives.

    2. Human rights require that we put the interests of future children, and hence future generations, first, and requiring a fair start in life for every child is the best way to do that. The Conference must acknowledge the interconnection of the crises we all face, like the inequity in Chile that caused the shift in conference location and which will ensure climate apartheid.

    3. There are specific policies that the Conference can promote. Lets focus on funding research into, approval of, and robust marketing of the male pill, subsidizing delaying parenthood, and ensuring the UN reverses its current and disastrous family planning model.

    Take Action: Add your name to urge the UN and COP25 to recommend smaller families.

  • Deadly Heat Waves? Take Action Against Those Most Responsible

    Deadly Heat Waves? Take Action Against Those Most Responsible

    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.

    Now that we are facing an uncertain future, shouldn’t we ask for the most action from those who are most responsible for the problem?

    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

    The Phelps-Mathews Family
    The Phelps-Mathews Family

     

    Join Erika and Willow to TAKE ACTION.

    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.

     

     

     

  • Kid Activist Asks Surfrider Foundation to Think of the Planet’s Future

    Kid Activist Asks Surfrider Foundation to Think of the Planet’s Future

    Willow Phelps has never shied away from asking the tough questions. That’s a noble trait in anyone, but Willow is only 11 years old. She just sent a letter to the Surfrider Foundation (one of her favorite organizations) about her passion for surfing and protecting the ocean. Willow also asked the organization to stand behind its mission to protect the ocean by embracing an ethic of smaller families. Having Kids stands behind Willow and all kids, who will have to live with the environment we leave for them.

    The Facts are Clear

    Do you have a young activist in your life? Encourage them to contact their own favorite environmental organizations about smaller, sustainable families.

  • He helped create the climate crisis. Tell him to make it right for kids.

    He helped create the climate crisis. Tell him to make it right for kids.

    The climate crisis is the biggest threat to your kid’s future. The federal government is making things worse. Ready to step up for your kids and their future? What would you do to help minimize the harm that climate change will cause them? What will you tell them you did to protect them?

    The truth is, some people alive today are much more responsible for climate change than others. Lee R. Raymond, and those members of his family that are benefiting from the money he made denying climate change, are a great example. As a CEO of ExxonMobil, Lee is more responsible for the threat climate change poses to you and your family than most other people on earth.

    The good news is that there are ways to mitigate the harms of climate change, starting with funding the most comprehensive and effective thing out there: Fair Start family planning reforms. The reform model is simple.  Communities offer substantial resources, like guaranteed minimum incomes, to future parents. Then, in exchange, parents plan smaller families where they can invest more in each child. That simple model is the greatest way to mitigate most of the environmental and social threats that face our children. We can apply better family planning in policy, or through individual actions.  

    The Raymond family should use their millions to fund Fair Start reforms. If they did, it would have massive impact beyond just the sheer amount of money spent. It would symbolize and publicize their acknowledgement of the harm they caused. And it would widely highlight better family planning as the most effective way to make amends for that harm.

    Take action: We believe you can contact Lee here. Please politely ask him to use his millions to publicly fund Fair Start family planning reforms. Lee, it’s time to do the right thing for all the harm you caused.