The founder of Patagonia, Yvon Chouinard has given away the company to an environmental trust and non-profit. All profits will go to the organizations to fight the climate crisis and pursue other environmental goals.

The act is courageous and begins to break down the barrier that prevents us from talking about what the wealthy owe in light of the climate, inequity, and other crises we face today.

This quote by Patagonia leadership is key:

“The current system of capitalism has made its gains at an enormous cost, including increasing inequality and widescale uncompensated environmental damage. The world is literally on fire,” Charles Conn, chair of the Patagonia board, said in a statement.

The statement gels with recent calls by Fair Start urging Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to treat investments in early childhood as the human rights entitlement of the children who would receive the money because the wealth given was actually made by externalizing costs against the fundamental baseline of free and equal communities. Wealth, in many cases, was “made” through a system of unsustainable growth, ecocidal policies, and massive inequity among children, that is now imposing immeasurable harm on future generations.

The most effective way to pay the true costs of the wealth entail funding Fair Start family planning measures designed to build the free and equal communities human rights require.

TAKE ACTION: Urge @Elonmusk to consider the same moves that Patagonia chose with the companies he oversees, which rose to prominence through the same process.