Many promote his dietary focus because they are invested in plant-based companies, companies that embrace growth even though it does more harm to humans and nonhumans than these companies do good. His mistakes here, turning animal liberation into mass consumerism, bleed into his work on Effective Altruism, risking millions of lives with misleading information about entitlements and what has impact. His work siloed off animals from social justice, and the natural alignment we find there.
Cheerful African Ethnicity Infant Carrying Healthy Water for a dehydration concept
He should embrace true animal liberation, and not mislead as to what that means. We don’t liberate animals by humanizing the world.
Solution:
Ask anyone – like Singer – claiming to promote certain values about how their approach to families and child welfare undid and is undoing the values they otherwise promote. Exploiting children to ensure economic growth is the system we are all used to and largely ignore. We do this, rather than requiring equitable investments in their birth and development conditions. That move has now reversed most of the progress in fighting the climate crisis, and inequity. That fundamental injustice, which made a small percentage of mostly white men wealthy by violating human rights, will kill millions.
In the climate crisis reparations in the form of family planning entitlements save lives and restore biodiversity. They return wealth to those who deserve it. We can leave wealth at the top of the economic pyramid, and millions will die, or we can pay it back to the future generations – those on which its true costs are being imposed.
Urge Dr. Aruna Rao to go beyond micro-equity towards macro-equity, the basic norm.
Oxfam routinely makes statements promoting human rights, dignity, and equity.
Those statements could be based on an error/fallacy/impossibility that actually undermines these values.
Fair Start politely submits a few questions for Dr. Rao 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 current political systems 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 U.S. and other constitutions? 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?
Where does Justice really begin?
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 where green/growthwashing has a devastating effect on the nonhumans the organization claimed to protect.
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 – 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 a primary obligation of 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). Our failure to act in accordance with this inversion shows we do not think persons should be politically equal.
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. And yet, we can easily see that we orient from systems of obligation, like written constitutions, without deriving all the way back to just systems of creation.
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 which is predisposed to greenwash. 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. Aro at https://www.linkedin.com/in/aruna-rao-25183716/, 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.
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.
Today, as we reflect on the incredible potential that lies within every child, let us reaffirm our commitment to ensuring that every child, regardless of their background or circumstances, has an equal opportunity for a bright and promising future.
To avoid scams and see the truth you can ask one simple question of any person or group claiming to do good: What have you been doing to deal with the basic connection between children being born, and things like child welfare, the climate crisis, animal rights, or anything else you might claim to care about?
Every child deserves a fair start in life, and it’s up to us to make it a reality!
This moved wealth from women and children into the hands of relatively small group of men, and hid the way just family policies can override political processes and the entitlements they try to assign to the wealthiest and most powerful.
Who has more at stake in the act of creating a child – the adults or the kid? If we really think about it, children do. Adults can and do walk away from the children they create all the time. Children cannot walk away from their lives. So fundamental justice begins from the bottom, like democracy, with child-centric policies that include climate reforms, as described in this Newsweek piece. Prior political theories missed this, and did not account for our birth and development as the most basic power relations and obligations, because they treated power as flowing top down, not truly deriving from people and not about real relations to the extent they ignored ensuring the creation of persons in conditions – and with relations – consistent with minimums like the Children’s Rights Convention.
Not making this change and ending what we might call the #famscam means those least responsible for the crisis – including future generations – will be the most harmed. There is no greater injustice.
And because everything we do originates from the obligations to those around us, a process that is dynamic as persons enter and leave the world, we all have a choice to orient our lives from a relatively just, or child-centric, or unjust fundamental position – and to take direct action to liberate ourselves and others accordingly – as described in the Newsweek piece above.
Freedom begins with human rights and democracy, or the limiting of subjective human influence with objective norms. But because of our failure to orient family policies more around what children need than what parents want, this crucial limiting never occurred.
If you support a child welfare organization: Does it urge communities and parents to ensure minimum levels of welfare for kids, before they are born, in order to avoid less effective interventions later in life?
If you support an environmental or animal protection organization: Does it promote sustainable families, by far the most effective way to ensure a healthy environment, biodiversity, and less animal suffering?
If you support social justice organizations working on racial, economic, gender, or other forms of equality: Do they promote family planning policies that a) level the playing field for all kids so that they truly have equal opportunities In life, and b) advance gender equity by eliminating all forms of pronatalism, or pushing people to have kids?
If you support organizations promoting human rights and democracy: Do they promote family planning policies that will ensure each person has an effective voice in their political systems and is not lost in the crowd?
Fact: The New York Times spent more time reporting on falling fertility rates as a threat to economic growth over the past several years than covering either the beneficial impact of that fall on the climate crisis, or on peer-reviewed research that showed the change in fertility rates could catalyze fundamental changes in United Nations’ policy that could would have the greatest long-run impact on child welfare, inequity, and climate/biodiversity restoration.
In other words, to properly assess costs and benefits we have to first become groups of people capable of doing so in a way that is actually inclusive and reflective of the group constituents.Find and engage Kahn in person to #TellThe Truth and pay what he owes. Freedom entails converting the family norms that created today’s crowding shopping malls into policies that instead build democracy, converting concentrations of wealth and power into universal family planning entitlements that ensure all children have what they need to comprise town halls of self-determining citizens.
While many environmental organizations call for ways to reduce consumption to protect the environment, inevitably they are undoing the progress by accepting and even promoting growth-based family policies that undo the progress.
What’s the solution?
The mass consumption that created the climate-crisis is baked into our political system because we are all – on the left and right of the political spectrum – accepting of family polices that create many consumers and workers for shopping malls, rather than investing more, and more equitably, in children so that they can comprise town halls – functional democracies – where they can be free.
And it’s important to frame this issue in terms of our political role, because while environmental protection is important, it only happens (as all things do) in the context of political systems – in the process of choosing democracy over economic growth.
We can change that, and one step involves targeting the executive directors of large environmental organizations to admit the harm their quiet approach to family policy has caused, and to do better.
TAKE ACTION: URGE HEAD OF SIERRA CLUB BEN JEALOUS – @BenJealous – TO ADMIT THE CLUB CHOSE FAMILY POLICIES THEIR UNDERCUT THEIR MISSION AND CLAIMS OF SUCCESS, AND WHICH – PER STUDIES LIKE THIS – EXACERBATED THE CLIMATE CRISIS.
Recent fundraising efforts by UNICEF are inaccurate. The organization is not pegging family planning policies and practices to the standards of the Children’s Rights Convention. That means children are constantly born into conditions – under the approval of the UN – that violate the Convention. Pulling them out later is not enough.
Fact: UNICEF is reading the Convention in ways that guarantee children will not actually be protected, that their very creation will degrade the social and ecological conditions they need to thrive, and that they will be exploited by the powerful due to the conditions in which they will be born and raised.
That has to change. It is the fundament of injustice, destabilizing societies by trading human rights and democracy for economic growth, and justifying violence by those who claim the world is simply not fair.
The climate and inequity crises the world faces today are worsening. They flow, fundamentally, from family planning policies centered around the Cairo Consensus that are anthropocentric, and do not ensure birth equity for children.
These are the facts:
You and your family, as well as the extreme concentrations of wealth and power operating in the world today, personally benefitted from these policies, which allowed economic growth that externalized ecosocial costs on the global south, and enabled your children massive head starts in life relative to many regions of the world.
These policies violated any reasonable reading of international law, treating the most interpersonal act – creating children – as a personal matter, and in ways that flouted the Children’s Rights Convention – never creating the birth and development conditions all children deserve. These conditions should have been the fundamental baseline for any cost benefit analysis, and failure to use that baseline empowered some at cost to others.
Because these policies also degraded actual participatory democracies, where all people matter and have a say in their governance, you do not hold authority or representative capacity through consent, but rather through the coercive political systems of your member states.
You have the titular authority to make informal statements to change this course, and to help the UN adopt more regenerative and equitable child welfare policies.
Without reforming family planning and child welfare policies you remain in a state of preconstitutionality, opposed to the truly free people constituting a just world using the Children’s Convention as a guiding light. That division is the first border of human power, and justifies action to protect future generations.
