Fair Start Movement

Category: Climate Protection

  • Skip the Toys and Plant Trees Instead

    Skip the Toys and Plant Trees Instead

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    To celebrate the birth of the first child of King Khesar and Queen Jetson, households in Bhutan planted trees. The move comes as part of a larger initiative in Bhutan, which has pledged to remain carbon neutral. It’s holding up its promise by becoming one of the few countries in the world to have negative carbon emissions.

    Having a child? Maybe skip some of the toys, clothes, and other things kids don’t need as much as a safe future in which he or she will thrive… and plant trees instead. The Having Kids model supports forward thinking like this.

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  • Singapore is Working Against Itself

    Singapore is Working Against Itself

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    Like many other countries at the Paris climate negotiations last year, Singapore promised to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. Although some experts criticized those promises as insufficient, others say they are unrealistic. Singapore’s Environment and Water Resources Minister Masagos Zulkifl called the plan “very aggressive, very ambitious.” Singapore’s goal is to hit an emissions peak by 2030.

    “This is a huge challenge because we still need to have an economy that will support our people’s livelihood and at the same time, not produce even more emissions for that purpose,” Zulkifi said.

    But even while Singapore struggles to lower its emissions, it’s also working to increase emissions by increasing family size as it addresses what it calls a national baby shortage. What’s an alternative? Instead of pushing for larger families and working against its own climate plan and an obvious social trend towards smaller families, Singapore could be designing its family modeling around families working together to make better investments in each child. The Having Kids model can help.

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  • The Oceans Our Kids Will Play In: Hot, Acidic, and Empty?

    The Oceans Our Kids Will Play In: Hot, Acidic, and Empty?

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    We hear a lot about rising temperatures over land as our planet’s atmosphere continues to degrade, in large part thanks to a population headed towards ten billion people by 2050. But the fact is that our oceans are in many ways ground zero for climate change. They’ve continued to warm and become more acidic after absorbing much of the heat and carbon dioxide caused by human growth. New studies also show that, while the oceans themselves are changing, the fishing industry worldwide is decimating whole fisheries to feed the world’s growing population. Yet in the face of all of this change, some are pushing for even larger families and even more consumption:

    The UN population division’s latest work on low-fertility and aging is eye popping and is meant to inform policy makers about their options. It includes ominous predictions about economic and social ills and shows how the crisis is most acute in countries that are poorest. “Population aging must be understood and addressed by all countries,” John Wilmoth, the lead demographer at the UN Population Division, said at a gathering at UN headquarters in November.

    At Having Kids we value our oceans, nature, and a safe, clean, and healthy future for children over the unsustainable and population-fueled economic growth that has lead us where we are today. It’s time to move towards a better model of parenting and to stand against those whose greed threatens our oceans, our children, and our future.

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  • Mixed Messages on Climate Change & Unsustainable Growth

    Mixed Messages on Climate Change & Unsustainable Growth

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    We’re hearing mixed messages about the state of our planet and the people on it. On the one hand, census reports show that the United States, which is struggling to deal with its current carbon footprint in order to protect future generations from climate change, will become a lot more crowded in years to come. Yet some thought leaders in Washington are pushing for faster growth “because it will help us sustain our labor force” and “increase consumer demand for lots of products that young people and young adults and young householders need.” 

    Businesses may benefit in the short term from a growing supply of workers competing against each other for jobs and long lines of customers to buy their goods and services, but the long term effects are much less clear. The approach raises many questions and highlights the mixed messages we’re receiving. Doesn’t this growth make it harder to mitigate climate change, which is already a major issue? Does having more kids mean less time and energy will be invested in each child? How does crowding affect kids’ quality of life, the connection between people and their community, their connection to nature, and our ability to work together to define the future? Are we all better off, in the long run, with small families working together to invest more in each child?

    These are important questions, and they need answering. Let’s start the conversation

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  • What if you could help children and parents, protect the environment, and let people be more free and equal, all at the same time?

    What if you could help children and parents, protect the environment, and let people be more free and equal, all at the same time?

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    You can.

    It’s called the Responsible Parenting model, and it’s simple: Smaller families work together to invest more in each child.

    For example, parents can use part of the resources they would have spent having a third child to instead connect with and help other parents plan for and invest in a collegiate scholarship trust for their first or second child.

    When smaller families connect using the Responsible Parenting model it makes everyone more free. The model frees children by giving them a better start and more opportunities in life, frees parents by giving them more time off while also protecting their children’s future, and frees all of us by building smaller, sustainable, and more connected communities where each person has more of a say in their governments and their lives.

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