Fair Start Movement

Tag: Population Economics & Demographics

  • World Population Day Letter to Warren Buffett: Please Give to Kids for This Reason.

    World Population Day Letter to Warren Buffett: Please Give to Kids for This Reason.

    Please Fund Children’s Bonds Because Children Deserve Them

    Dear Warren,

    Fair Start Movement’s mission is to replace parent-centric subjective family planning systems with a child-centric model that ensures children are born and raised in conditions consistent – minimally – with the Children’s Rights Convention. Thank you for being a leader in the efforts to assure family planning needs are being met worldwide.

    Given recent discussions of your possibly funding a world children’s savings bank, if these reports are true, we urge one simple guideline for such a plan. We urge that the gift recognize that the wealth of many was built on a system of unsustainable growth, per one Nobel Laurate, that included billions of persons having and raising children in conditions that did not satisfy the standards children and their parents deserve, the standards eventually codified in the Children’s Rights Convention. That explosive and unsustainable growth – at increasing cost to children as the climate worsens – enabled the wealth. Because that wealth was produced under a system that externalized its costs, disadvantaged children have moral and legal claim to part of the wealth as a form of restorative justice.

    If your plans are to give as reported, please say it is because the children are entitled to it, and as part of a fair system of ecosocial family planning, one which actually complies with the requirements of the international human rights regime.

    A comparison chart of Current Family Planning vs. Fair Start Family Planning. The left side lists negatives of current planning; the right side highlights positive outcomes of fair start planning for welfare, equality, and environmental protection.

    A secondary guideline would structure the investment in the most effective way possible, setting aside part as Fair Start family planning incentives/entitlements/reparations, but the first guideline we urge is the most important.

    Without this change, we risk a future where the system by which we made our wealth does more harm to future generations than our philanthropy can do to help them.

    Thanks for considering, and for your work to date.

    The Team at Fair Start Movement

  • Organizations Joining for World Population Day at the U.N.

    Organizations Joining for World Population Day at the U.N.

    Groups urging Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to recommend smaller families.

    A coalition of child protection, animal rights, and environmental organizations are coming together for World Population Day on July 11th. They hope to urge U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to issue a statement on the need for smaller families and sustainable family planning as a vital step toward attaining the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals. Activists will also gather at the U.N. for a peaceful demonstration to mark the day and to raise awareness on the issue. The event will take place from 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m.

    Read the Secretary-General Guterres letter here.

    The groups led by Having Kids and U.K.- based Population Matters also include OneProtest, World Population Balance, Earth Overshoot, Population Institute Canada, Sustainable Population Australia, In Defense of Animals, 34 Million Friends of UNFPA, Wilderness Watch, New Yorkers for Clean, Livable, and Safe Streets, and Seeding Sovereignty,

    The facts are clear: 

    “Our world leaders have failed to recognize the greatest driver of climate and other anthropogenic impacts – unsustainable family planning. We’re working hard to change that by bringing organizations together representing a range of global issues. It’s time for those causes and the media to talk about the most effective way we can protect the future for the next generation,” said Ashley Berke, Director of Communications at Having Kids. 

    Robin Maynard of Population Matters says, “There’s an ever-growing scientific consensus that population growth is a primary driver of climate change and biodiversity loss. The equation is simple: too many of us, taking too much (especially, but not uniquely in rich, developed countries) from a finite planet. This is a global problem, demanding global action. The Sustainable Development Goals are the mechanism through which the international community seeks to achieve a sustainable future – but unless the SDGs incorporate the goal of achieving a sustainable population through people choosing smaller families, they will not succeed in that noble mission.”

    TAKE ACTION:
    Add your name to our letter.
    And if you’re near NYC, join us at the U.N. on Thursday, July 11th for World Population Day. RSVP here

  • Despots Use Population to Undermine Democracy. Target Their Base. [w/ Russian Translation]

    Despots Use Population to Undermine Democracy. Target Their Base. [w/ Russian Translation]

    If power derives from the people how we are created matters most of all. Let’s look at Putin and population policy.

    Обратитесь к дочери Путина, Катерине Тихоновой (Контакты — «Иннопрактика» (innopraktika.ru)) с просьбой осудить вторжение и поддержать реформы «Справедливого Старта», которые имеют фундаментальное значение для демократии. 

    What’s unfolding in Ukraine is fundamentally the fault of the United Nations, and a system that – through unsustainable and inequitable family policies – allows top-down power over bottom-up democracy. And while using economic sanctions to respond to military action is a step in the right direction of ending violence, it’s time to go to the next level and empower people over despots from the ground up. The ultimate mistake lies in allowing nations to use future generations to grow their power, rather than empowering future generations as democratic citizens with a voice.

    Putin’s patriarchal family policies – permitted by the United Nations – are a perfect example of what is wrong. They push women to have children to expand state power.

    Imagine if the wealth being spent by Russia on the war in Ukraine were used to improve birth conditions for all children. The impact would be incomparable.

    demographic decline

    Fair Start is pushing back, urging world leaders to make family policies that empower kids for democracy.

    Fair Start is urging Putin’s daughters Katerina Tikhonova and Maria Vorontsova (who can be engaged publicly) wherever they appear to denounce the invasion, use their influence to support democracy in Ukraine, and to support Fair Start reforms that put democracy at the base of who we should be. They had more than a fair start and should want a better beginning for future children in Russia.

    Take action: 

    1. For now we are personally urging our Russian-speaking supporters to politely ask Putin’s daughter Katerina Tikhonova (reachable at Контакты – “Иннопрактика” (innopraktika.ru)) to denounce the invasion, and support the Fair Start reforms that are fundamental to democracy.

    2. We suggest asking International Criminal Court leadership,@IntlCrimCourt and @KarimKhanQC to open an investigation into the commission of war crimes in Ukraine.

    2.  Urge your representatives in Congress to support removing Russia from SWIFT, and to support imposing a NATO no-fly zone. Also, please sign this petition to support the SWIFT action. 

    Build democracy with people, not just policies. 

    Build democracy with people, not just policies. 

  • Justice Without a Fair Start in Life? Don’t Fall for It. Help us Target Companies Greenwashing and Hurting Our Kids.

    Justice Without a Fair Start in Life? Don’t Fall for It. Help us Target Companies Greenwashing and Hurting Our Kids.

    Welcome to the Tell the Truth Campaign

    Which corporations and nonprofits are benefitting from unsustainable and inequitable family planning – the biggest driver of the climate and inequality crises – while pretending to further environmental and social justice? Federal Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) disclosure requirements provide an opportunity to find out and act. Support Fair Start’s campaign for an executive order to require disclosure of policies and advocacy around the biggest factor of all – families – so that we can hold bad actors accountable.

    Infographic showing that one child can produce 20 times more greenhouse gas than can be saved by driving a fuel-efficient car, recycling, or using energy-efficient appliances and light bulbs.
    Why not be effective?

    We are urging the Biden Administration to do what should be painfully obvious by now – actually account for the greatest driver of the climate and other crises that gave need for a new ESG disclosure framework: Our family and population growth policies.

    Nothing has a greater impact. Full stop.

    Why report at all if we do not account for the underlying driver/multiplier, and the volatility inherent in it?

    We need to know who, among us, promotes putting an unlimited number of children, without any guaranteed levels of preparation, equity, or influential role in their democracy, into an increasingly degraded ecological future. And in terms of the past, we need to know which groups said they were making progress, knowing the growth they supported was undoing that progress the whole time and moving wealth away from effective investments in children and into the hands of people at the top of the wealth pyramid.

    ————————————————

    TAKE ACTION:

    Read our letter urging Biden to issue an executive order here, and urge any organizations you work with or support to join our call for the order.

    ————————————————

    Support the Truth. Support Fair Start.

    Governments are failing children’s right to an eco social fair start in life. We know that early childhood experience is pivotal to lifetime outcomes. Why are we waiting for adverse childhood experiences to occur before acting? 

    Children deserve equitable conditions, right from the beginning. A fair start in life is the first human right – it overrides all others. It is what children are entitled to under the Children’s Rights Convention, and what allows them to eventually be free from the power of others, and truly self-determining. Because legitimate governance derives from people, who derive from the norms that create them, there are no such things as just societies, political legitimacy and freedom without the sort of Fair Start reforms discussed in this site. Without them we are always proceeding from, or reconstituting our political societies, from an unjust position. 

    Ensuring an eco-social #fairstart in life for all kids can have ten to twenty times the long run impact on the key social and ecological crises we are facing today relative to other interventions.

    It is the most effective and just thing we can do. And there is no justice without it.

    Infographic illustrating the impact of human activity on the planet and animals, showing links between family size, resource use, global warming, extinction, and proposed solutions like smaller families and sustainable practices.
  • Democracy Before Economy: Tell the NYT the Difference Starts with Fair Start

    Democracy Before Economy: Tell the NYT the Difference Starts with Fair Start

    Is it time to put democracy before economy?

    Jesse Wegman asks the question on many minds given the political crises we in the U.S. now face: What about amending our constitution? But can we back out of that question and ask what he means by “us,” or the people who would do the amending? Given that government derives from the people, that is the key question.  There is no such thing as human rights and democracy without accounting for the just and fair creation of the people who would comprise such systems.

    That is where we have to start. And today’s populace was created to fill shopping malls – not town halls. We know this from the ubiquitous references to a “baby bust” in reaction to falling fertility rates. We are used to creating lots of people with the economic capacity to consume, work, and pay taxes, not fewer and highly developed people capable of collectively operating a democracy where each sovereign voice actually matters.

    sustainable family planning

    Our current family planning policies, which encourage economic growth irrespective of individual levels of child welfare, fair starts in life, and environmental  consequences, have made things worse. The United States is a largely unrepresentative democracy where family planning policies are designed to create large future populations of consumers, workers, and taxpayers, rather than a sustainable number citizens capable of collective self rule. They create people for shopping malls, not town halls.

    By starting at the source, and using Fair Start family planning to decentralize concentrations of power, including governments, large corporations, and wealthy families and individuals, we can shift resources to empower and free future children

    Let’s first address the root questions of who we are and should be when we talk about amending the Constitution, and embrace reforms that will enable future generations to take the idea of amending more seriously. 

    TAKE ACTION: Urge the NYT editor @ @deanbaquet to take human rights and democracy seriously, and embrace Fair Start as the fundament of justice.

    Several hands of children placed together in a supportive stack, with the text: The most powerful social justice is a fair start in life. and Having Kids: Planning a fair start at the bottom.
  • World Population Day: Young Women, Sustainable Families, and Our Right to Take the Wealth Our Kids Deserve

    World Population Day: Young Women, Sustainable Families, and Our Right to Take the Wealth Our Kids Deserve

    The climate and nature crises that our planet faces are rooted in both population and consumption.  We cannot waste precious time by pointing fingers between consumption and population – we need to talk about both in tandem, as our survival and quality of life, and those of our children, depend on it. 

    On the heels of Independence Day demands from people like Cassie King for the resources all kids deserve to ensure their eco-social Fair Start in life, and others who see their future child’s entitlement to birth equity as a sustainable family planning incentive, dozens of young women have come forward to speak out for more sustainable families. It’s a message for every young person’s future on planet earth.

    On World Population Day, July 11, 2021, GirlPlanet.Earth will launch as an informal forum for global dialogue by women and teenage girls from around the world on population, consumption, planetary boundaries, and personal choices.  Featuring the voices of women from Africa, Europe, North America, Central America, and Asia, GirlPlanet.Earth will enable honest, authentic, lively conversations between women and girls about our future.

    A group of students sit at desks in a classroom, attentively listening and taking notes. The focus is on a girl in a plaid shirt, resting her chin on her hand and looking forward thoughtfully.
    Courtesy of the Urban Institute.

    Join the conversation.

    In addition to young voices pushing back on unsustainable population growth, this Sunday – World Population Day – key experts will make clear the pathway to an optimal world population, at this special event.

    Having one fewer child actually reduces your carbon footprint more than any other single move you can make. We owe it to future generations to ignore advertiser-bound media pushing women to have kids to grow their economies. Instead, those intending to have small and sustainable families should approach concentrations of power for the wealth – and birth equity – their child has a fundamental right to under the Children’s Rights Convention and other human rights instruments.

    Infographic showing ways to reduce carbon emissions: reducing fertility rates, doubling car fuel efficiency, increasing wind energy 50-fold, and tripling nuclear energy. Includes icons of a car, windmill, and nuclear symbol.

    This is the time to restart the conversation about family sizes, resources, population, personal choice, climate change and the future of our planet. The science is clear – we get the best outcomes, for everyone, when families plan for and invest more love, time, and attention in each child. 

    Stabilizing our human population, even through the most fundamental educational and economic advancement of women, has been taboo for too long.  Humanity has made terrible mistakes through coercive practices and policies, and stabilizing our population needs to be instead profoundly rooted in improved justice, education, and economic opportunity, especially for women and girls.  

     

  • WaPo and the Population v. Consumption Debate: Three Questions to Move Forward on What Is Destroying Our Environment

    WaPo and the Population v. Consumption Debate: Three Questions to Move Forward on What Is Destroying Our Environment

    Kudos to Sarah Kaplan for covering the ongoing debate over whether population growth, or things like inequity, technology, and patterns of consumption, are to blame for the climate and other ecological crises.

    Is it wrong to blame overpopulation for the climate crisis? Perhaps it’s better to reframe the question: Is it wrong to blame overpopulation alone for the climate crisis?

    Of course.

    There are always multiple factors at play, from the growth that fundamentally creates demand to the inequity that’s driving overconsumption and the colonization of nature. The key to success is not to take any of the relevant factors out of our policy reforms, including the fundamental source of the Anthropocene: Treating the planet as a human resource in the design of our systems, from the economy to family planning. Doing so would replicate the mistakes that lead to the crisis. Instead let’s work together to give all kids a #fairstart in life.

    Here are three questions to help tie all of the relevant factors together, and move forward.

    Infographic showing ways to reduce carbon emissions: reducing fertility rates, doubling car fuel efficiency, increasing wind energy 50-fold, and tripling nuclear energy. Includes icons of a car, windmill, and nuclear symbol.

  • Alexandra Paul is Speaking Truth to the Power of Unsustainable Growth

    Alexandra Paul is Speaking Truth to the Power of Unsustainable Growth

    Kudos to Alexandra Paul for pushing back against the constant media messaging – often promoted by their advertisers – that falling fertility rates are a bad thing. Her recent letter, published in the LA Times, points out what should be obvious: Growth is not sustainable. She is speaking that truth to the powerful – media and corporate conglomerates – who would exploit future generations as cheap labor, and the Earth with them, to continue growth-fueled profits.

    The move towards better planned families is 1) the product of decades of intentional interventions to stave off disaster, 2) emblematic of the liberation of women, and 3) the most effective tool – on a scale of 20x the impact – we have to fight the climate crisis.

     

    Infographic showing ways to reduce carbon emissions: reducing fertility rates, doubling car fuel efficiency, increasing wind energy 50-fold, and tripling nuclear energy. Includes icons of a car, windmill, and nuclear symbol.

    But the fight is hardly over. Fair Start is one such approach to implement this.

     

  • Joyce Tischler: Protecting Animals Starts With A Better Population Policy

    Joyce Tischler: Protecting Animals Starts With A Better Population Policy

    Joyce Tischler is widely considered to be one of the founders of modern animal law and a leader in the field of animal protection. She is affectionately known to the many who admire and follow her as the “mother of animal law.” She has inspired generations of animal law attorneys.

    What few know about Joyce is that she is also mother to her wonderful daughter Margeve, and understands the crucial connection between family planning and protecting nonhumans. Nothing has a greater impact.

    Let’s learn more from Joyce, on a topic few are willing to even discuss, and please share the video and graphic beneath the video if you want people to know how to have the biggest impact on animals.

    We can do better. Take other actions here.

    Infographic showing humans impact on global warming, wildlife extinction, and habitat loss. Highlights overpopulation, animal farming, emissions, and advocates for smaller families and green energy as solutions. Hand-drawn charts and illustrations.