The Secretary General of the United Nations Promised to Mitigate Climate Change and Failed. Maybe His Son Can Help?

The Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres, has promised to mitigate the climate crisis. He is obligated to support doing so in the most effective way possible because of his position. The most effective long-run change alters the conditions in which we permit children to be born, requiring redistribution of resources to incentivize and entitle better family planning. António has refused multiple requests from dozens of organizations to both effectively mitigate the climate crisis and prepare future generations to be resilient in the face of ecological degradation. António has refused to begin policy reforms that would eventually assure that every child born enjoy what they are promised by the Children’s Convention.

Nothing has a bigger impact. This solution operates, or mitigates, on multiple levels. We can bend the curve to benefit future generations, or stay a failed course.

And yet his son, Pedro Guimarães e Melo Guterres, has enjoyed a life of privilege that is relatively free from the ravages of the climate crisis. That’s not right.

Let’s engage Pedro directly to help pay what he owes, and to offset the costs an unfair family planning system placed on others – especially in the global south – while he benefitted as the son of an influential European politician. We can make that ask because just family planning is the first human right. And we can replicate this tactic with all world leaders.

If some will take their own lives to try to bend our world away from the worst of the crisis, the least we can do is short-circuit a political process that’s failed and instead engage with the adult children of world leaders to bend a curve that benefitted them at cost to others. Perhaps this action is too personal? Not really. Ignoring the interpersonal nature of intergenerational power dynamics is what fundamentally created the climate crisis. The children of world leaders can support redistribution of wealth that incentivizes/entitles socially and ecologically just family planning. Urge them to do so.

Contact Ashley@FairStartMovement.org to help us engage Pedro.