What are you doing to assure the conditions in which children born and raised, including their environment and role models, are being improved so as not to undo the benefits of the work you discuss?
In asking these question you are looking for the #Impactscam: A growing body of peer-reviewed research had shown the basis of deadly climate greenwashing – which is killing millions – originates with child welfare policies that illegitimate political systems because they ensure no minimum threshold of self-determination or freedom. These policies literally set inequitable standards killing millions of those least responsible for the crisis. And those backing them are choosing to benefit at deadly cost to others, when there are clear alternatives – like moving wealth through externalizing deadly costs into the hands of young women able to save many lives.
These policies illegitimate governance because our generations can’t get benefit of future generations’ political obligation, not to violently target us for reparations required by the deadly climate catastrophe for example, because we never met our obligations to them. At the very least young women demanding birth equity reparations would have greater right to use coercion to protect their children than the state would have to defend existing property rights that harm their children. That said, nonviolence is more effective in achieving justice
Instead of changing the policies many organizations are hiding them – aware that they face liability for greenwashing, where the growth they embraced historically did more harm to their causes than their efforts did good. Many of them are going out of their way to evade liability, and thereby – at least inadvertently – reduce the reparations victims would be awarded.
The most just and effective solution? There are legal actions pending before the United Nations and other agencies urging more inclusive legitimacy. Self-determination derives by definition from conditions of development that ensure the capacity for us to choose who has influence (including climatologically) or power over us – to be free. According to a growing body of research, there would be no legitimate political entity to assign wealth or incentives that precedes this obligation. Who we should be, the “ought” of Children’s Rights and the hard metrics of being a legal person as opposed to an economic person, logically always comes first – before what we should do, and the allocation of other entitlements.
But there are ways to move towards fulfilling this obligation, upstream, and we work downstream on more traditional projects.
Take Action: Work with the Fair Start movement to factcheck claims by nonprofits. Read more here.
Almost every horrible thing – from child and animal torture to deadly inequality, to unbearable heat waves – we see in the world today was fundamentally caused decades ago, circa 1968, by wealthy world leader’s decision to adopt minimalist universal child welfare and family planning policies.
The most just and effective solution way to reverse the minimalist policies would be to treat birth and developmental equity as the fundamental human right. We could use that baseline to recoup extreme wealth (the true costs of which were placed on others) to fund family planning and birth equity entitlements that promote climate and biodiversity restoration, allow young women to equality of opportunity for their children, parental delay to ensure they have children where, when and with which particular resources that will allow the child to thrive, and through delay ensure a universal ethic of smaller or more ecocentric families.
One can imagine modifying GMI systems via a progressive scale of democracy-building payments, inverse to wealth and income and contingent on positionality, that either charged wealthy young women for having a child before their 27th birthday and/or without certain parental readiness benchmarks, or on the other end of the wealth spectrum, covered significant incentives consistently paid out for them to build birth equity and ensure delay. This scale could be combined with other factors that amount to “survive, self-determine, and thrive” financial kits for the most vulnerable children funded by the parents of the least vulnerable children. Dysfunctional versions of such GMI systems already exist and could be easily modified around a universal metric.
We can move that money – which was made at cost to others – to improve birth and development or leave it at the top and millions will die.
Many concentrations of wealth and power have no intention of compensating those they have harmed, and one tactic they use to avoid paying involves using fake activism and nonprofits to decoy many away from this reform.
I worked for several such charities, was urged to omit the truth, and saw the lies firsthand. Concentrations of wealth and power often don’t openly oppose social justice movements. Instead, they imitate, coaptate, and redirect them.
Charities that seem to promote racial and other forms of equity – using employment or minority business preferences – will quietly support family policies that ensure black children are born with 1/10th the wealth of white children, because of the history of slavery and colonization. By ignoring equity in creation as a means towards autonomy for all, they actually exacerbate the situation, entrenching a left v. right dynamic that could be avoided. For example, we use family planning as a vehicle to redistribute resources rather than government, because we value the efficiency of early intervention as well as the equity of a fair start in life.
Everyone has used terms that expressed or implied public benefit that were inaccurate. Measured against the true north of human and nonhuman health, the background systems they usually did not question and in fact implied the legitimacy of, were benefitting the claimant while unleashing significant and increasing harm to infant humans and nonhumans alike. That true north – the harm – is what we can use, regardless of dysfunctional human political processes and language, to assess damages and create new policy. Avoid this untruth by asking the right questions. Look for words the persons and organizations you engage use – words like green, eco, sustainable, equitable, democratic, human-rights based, humane, restorative, regenerative. These and many other terms are inaccurate if not backed by consistent family policies that ensure minimum levels of wellbeing, equity, democracy, nature, and a sustainable right to have children for all, through birth equity entitlements and wealth GMI distributions that ensue parental delay and readiness, equal opportunities for all children, and smaller or more ecocentric families. Many are getting paid to omit the truth at deadly cost to others. Knowing these things – you can demand the truth.
Ask anyone claiming to do good to account for the fundamental creation of power relations, or how they are ensuring children are only born and raised in conditions that lead to democracies or self-determining persons thriving in biodiversity. We urge those making the claims and backing the policies that do not reflect this basic justice to instead choose 2) bottom-up investing in equitable family planning and child development entitlements that protect and empower children, and also restore democracies and biodiversity. This will save many lives, as child rights override economic growth, and ecocentrism replaces Anthro-centrism, as a baseline for policymaking.
Who is blocking freedom today?
If freedom is really about living some relative level of self-determination (relative because we are created by others), it probably requires creating and raising children in conditions that comply minimally with the Children’s Rights Convention and ideally in conditions of climate restoration and birth equity.
Why? By definition children can’t become relatively self-determining as they grow – rather than be determined, ecologically and socially, by wealthy and powerful others – without these conditions. If we are really self-determining and politically equal, that means we are invested in and empowered enough to offset each other’s capacity for self-determination equally as nations grow, so that each person can influence the rules under which they have to live and be free enough – as if in a functional constitutional convention – to look into each other’s eyes without fear or deference.
That is the beginning of freedom in terms of fundamental power relations, actual relations. If we don’t offset as our numbers grow, something is going wrong at the base of our democracies. This fact also gives us a qualitative basis for determining and meeting optimal world population ranges that track what many decorated theorists have suggested.
Why does this matter? Today most political systems do the opposite, urging women to have children with no minimum standards for care in order to create wealth for a few, at cost to values we all share – minimum thresholds of personal welfare, expecting equal access to opportunities, participating in and adherence to political/legal systems that purported to represent the governed, use and enjoyment of an environment relatively conducive to human and nonhuman health, etc.
Consider this fact: People, not documents, constitute nations, and the creation of their power relations through birth and development – by definition and inevitably – determines whether they are relatively self-determining or determined by others. These relations are part of the implied “we” in every statement, the often-unspoken presence of the dominant political/legal system – usually the nation – from which the statement is orienting. How would you ever really account for inclusive power relations to allow a say in what the law should be without starting at creation, and accounting for the move from minor to adult that makes persons full citizens capable of making the rules.
You would not, and the failure to halt the climate crisis is evidence of this. And there is a clear formula to assess reparations. The would-be mother would truly be constituting democracy, speaking the truth and logic of self-determination to power.
The border of freedom is not between nations, but in how we have and raise children. And becoming free involves empowering them, and each other, through birth equity entitlements, delaying having kids until parents are ready to parent well, and a universal ethic of smaller or more eco families.
If you read about the controversy swirling around the head of Harvard regarding her recent statements on Hamas, and other instances where the university took a stance on political controversies, you might notice something odd:
In upholding certain values, like democracy, nonviolence, and human rights, Dr. Claudine Gay simultaneously accepts status quo family norms – in the region and elsewhere – that quietly undermine the values. We see this if we focus on the actual creation – through families and childbearing – of power relations.
Claudine might seem to value human rights. She does nothing to end a fundamentally unjust family system based on top down adult choice, rather than a bottom up system where – through entitlements – children are born and reared in conditions that comply with, minimally, the Children’s Rights Convention.
Fair Start politely submits a few questions for Dr. Gay to consider: How are you accounting for children being born into the world (the creation of actual power relations), and whether the political systems we all back with our taxes, and otherwise, are investing in those children to give them a fair start, or exploiting them for growth? Did you assume the legitimacy of the Supreme Court’s decision without conditioning that legitimacy on the creation – via the obtaining of children’s rights – of fundamental childhood relations in a way that actually empowers people, consistent with what is implied our being free and equal persons by the preamble of the Constitution? Admissions equity aside, would you consider supporting family planning entitlements that ensure parental delay and readiness, climate-safe migration, leveling the playing field for all kids, and smaller or more ecocentric families such that each person plays an equal and influential role in creating the rules under which they must live?
Without the fairness in creation we may be quietly undoing the values we want to further. And by making statements about furthering articular values at a micro level without addressing them at a macro level, we are reinforcing a system that is fundamentally unjust, one that hidespower to reserve it. The connection, in the case of the animal rights movement, was recently exemplified by a dispute at a well known organization. It was previously exemplified by media around our ask of the British royal family, and its obligations to others.
The error simply involves the failure to derive political obligation all the way back towards intergenerational justice, rather than stopping the analysis – as is common – at static baselines. The basic condition of any rule is that it should be fair, but the first rule does not regard how we should act, but rather whom we should be. Returning to the preeamble question above, if the condition were met we would be able to break each fundamental polity into a functional constitutional convention at any time. That is not the case in the United States today.
If governance derives from the people then constitutionalism, or the limitation and decentralization of power, starts with the creation of relations, not written documents. That process is antecedent to government issued entitlements – like rights to extreme wealth or the authority of institutions like the Court – that ensure massive ecosocial inequity. Because of this error we do not really empower people, as we ignore the fundamental creation of their power relations, and as such our language and actions create a fantasy world of freedom that never sufficiently limits and decentralizes power. If freedom always requires some level of self-determination, it would be impossible to ensure without birth and development conditions for all children that meet minimum thresholds so they can self-determine rather than be determined by others, and one test for whether that is occurring equitably would be treating growth as inverse to self-determination, relative to nature (which requires, at a minimum, climate restoration).
Free persons will condition their obligation to follow the law on their being empowered – relative to the ideal – to determine it, and how it limits and decentralizes the power others have over us.
The climate crisis exemplifies the need for this perfectly, and calls for fundamental macro change with every micro change we seek so that we do not undo our values and accept any obligation to follow the laws when the systems that make those laws cannot possibly be inclusive and participatory, and are not reflective of the will of those they control.
Our lives and freedom are determined by obligation, and the dominant one is law. The fundamental creation of power/obligation relations – our birth and development – should have been determined over the last several decades by incentivizing resources that would have ensured birth equity for all children, and equal influence over the laws under which we must live. That never happened, but climate reparations are a chance to change.
The Fair Start certification program standards track capital itself, and forthcoming state attorney-general complaints, Lanham and other tort litigation – tied to climate loss and damage cases – will target relevant green/growth-washing claim, in many contexts. Because green/growth-washing comes from business, charities, media, politicians, academics, etc., all of whom are responding to capital. Much of that capital hides behind philanthropy, but the reality is that relative to the Children’s Convention and in light of climatological impacts on infants, the wealth doled out does less good than the harm created by the system of inequity and growth that created it.
These complaints will target harmful, preconstitutional, discourse: Statements about furthering particular values at a micro level without addressing them at a macro level, which has the effect of reinforcing a system that is fundamentally unjust and undoing the of the values we proclaim. Effective Altruism exemplifies this, assuming ownership in its very name of wealth taken from women and children.
To be clear: Rejecting family reforms like fair start means we are knowingly inflicting ecological and other harms on others, via the system that enriches us all at cost to those others.
TAKE ACTION: Contact Dr. Gay at cgay@gov.harvard.edu, and urge her 1) consider these questions as well as Humane Family reforms, and to 2) back changes in international law that would make Fair Start the first peremptory norm, such that it would authorize using extreme concentrations of wealth, the costs of which were externalized, to ensure children’s rights, the actual foundation of justice.
Always ask this question about fundamental power relations (a better concept than population), the place where many hide injustice.
Ask anyone claiming to do any form of good, whether they are conservative, liberal or otherwise inclined, how they have accounted for children being born into the world, and whether they are investing in those children to give them a fair start, or exploiting them for growth. Do they support family planning entitlements that ensure parental delay and readiness, relocation, leveling the playing field for all kids, and smaller or more ecocentric families? Or are they putting millions of innocent lives at risk to make money?
Family planning, for decades, should have been determined by the incentivizing presence of ecosocial birth equity resources. Instead – according to one Nobel laureate – that wealth went to the top and created the climate crisis and vast inequity. Those continuing that system are skewing the baseline for climate reparations, benefitting themselves at cost to others, and putting millions of lives at risk.
No theory of obligation to follow the law and respect the rights of others (including their claims to own their wealth) works unless it accounts for the creation of just power relations that give all a fair level of influence, and all power relations are fundamentally created at birth.Ignoring that fact is a scam that benefits some at cost to others, rather than discursive act of constantly reconstituting democracy – from the roots – through birth equity as an equal share of the powerpie, so that all can freely negotiate things like written constitutions, contracts, corporate formations, employment relationships, etc. and other things that define our day to day lives.
Ending the greenwashing, the lies, can save lives. The most effective way to save children, animals, the environment, and human rights and democracy is through Fair Start reforms. Don’t get scammed.
Can this work in practice? Yes, we can derive obligation all the way back. Look at the Seeds program in Uganda, and give if you can. We are changing the fundamental nature of obligation, doing what the United Nations and other organizations that failed to uphold basic human rights should have done decades ago.
We end the lies, and the harm they cause, by treating every child’s right to an ecosocial Fair Start in life – including climate restoration through birth equity – as the first and overriding human right under international law. This is not charity. This is justice.
This is mandating these outcomes as a human right:
That fundamentally flows from family planning in the United States today, a system supported on the political left and right by elites who see women having fewer children as a threat to their profit margins. It’s a system designed to fill shopping malls with lots of people and politically disempower them in the process.
The story we were sold is that the United States was the land of self-determination, and democracy – hence the Second Amendment, because ultimately power derived from the people, not politicians.
The reality is our day to day lives are being determined by Exxon as the company degrades our and our children’s environment, politicians who cannot – just based on the numbers – their constituents, parents who raise their kids by torturing them (five die a week at the hands of their parents), and billionaire inheritors overseeing people who don’t make enough money to survive.
Where is the freedom in that? We don’ have to live in town halls – but our day to day lives are not free if our day to day relations do not reflect that level of personal empowerment.
Target those who have the power to tell the truth about what drives mass shootings in America, and how to fix the problem.
The problem, demand for a limited resource in a growing population plagued by inequity, stems directly from the Commission’s tacitly acceptance of family models – the fundamental environmental issue – that created and exacerbate this and hundreds of other use scenarios.
Let’s stop pretending to solve the problems we are ourselves are creating, upstream.
TAKE ACTION: Urge the Commission and Donne Brownsey, at Donne.Brownsey@coastal.ca.gov / executivestaff@coastal.ca.gov / (415) 904-5202 , to adopt Fair Start modeling and to lead others towards true solutions.
