Both the climate crisis and the massive gap between rich and poor fundamentally derive from the same thing: Family policies that exploit the nonhuman world as a human resource, and which do nothing to ensure all children equality of opportunity. Those policies prevent human freedom, subjecting us to the will of companies like Exxon through our environment, and creating a hierarchy of power based largely on whether we were born rich or poor.

Wealth was built by externalizing costs on freedom, by being able to consume the nonhuman world, and benefit from the growth not having to invest equally in children allowed.

Older generations of wealthy people often either have trouble understanding this, or simply do not care. Their adult children, who benefitted from more aware systems of education, are different. They have more at stake in the future, understand that large and consumptive families are not sustainable, and can often see their unearned privileges.

TAKE ACTION: Urge Ireland Baldwin online, or find and engage her in person, to publicly admit these truths, and adopt Fair Start family reforms that invest in freedom. She owes us, and the future, the change such a good use of her influence would bring.