The New York Times recently reported on the demand by many countries for loss and damage funding due to the climate crisis.

The reporting is based on a false assumption, and thus misinforms readers in a way that exacerbates the crisis and its impact on the most vulnerable people.

The reporting assumes the funding is contingent on the decision-making authority of current governments, like the Biden Administration. That is incorrect. There is a fundamental and existential human right to a safe environment now understood to require climate restoration, and such rights override governmental authority and authorize direct demands for payments – citizen to citizen if used to further the right.

Ignoring that right will lead to children being born into conditions in which they will needlessly suffer, while a handful of wealthy companies – many of whom advertise in the New York Times – profit from the status quo.

By hiding this fact, the reporters place excessive control in the hands of the leaders who caused the crisis and ignore the fundamental driver – power relations between people. Thus, these leaders are not properly held responsible, and the role power relations play in climate injustice is unrecognized. This is especially true given that family reforms and the correctly constructed right to have children (born into a healthy environment) precede and override competing rights and interests, like the property rights that prevent funding for effective family planning incentives/entitlements.

The existence and implications of that right are a fact, a much more important one than many of the facts covered in that article.

TAKE ACTION: URGE @SominiSengupta, @LFFriedman, and @bradplumer to cover the fundamental right to a free and fair future, by all means effective.