Children are being tortured and killed by their parents. They will die in the climate crisis. Why? Because a few men in leadership continue to favor profitable population growth over sustainable and equitable family planning entitlements – something that betters the way we plan families and has the greatest impact – as the first human right. Continuing will ensure those least responsible for climate, inequity and other crises suffer their greatest consequences. We can change course by targeting these men, much the way movements in the past focused on choke points to make true change.

To avoid scams, see the truth, and identify the choke points you can ask one simple question of any person or group claiming to do good: What have you been doing to deal with the basic connection between children being born, and things like child welfare, the climate crisis, animal rights, or anything else you might claim to care about? There are essentially two answers to this question: Those who are actually accounting for children’s rights as the first form of justice in the constituting of actual human power relations, through things like using birth equity as a human right to restore the climate. And those who are not, among whom many are knowingly undoing their own fundraising and other claims, and exploiting future generations and nature to benefit a few.

This question helps us spot the #famscam. It’s a scam run by nonprofits, media and businesses – making it seem like we are reducing or refining consumption, and reducing climate emissions, through abstract top-down reforms, while quietly, bottom-up increasing the number of consumers to maintain profits margins. The pro-growth policies they hid undid roughly 3/4ths of the climate mitigation attempted in the last few decades, and ensured there are more animals in factory farms, less wildlife and nature, and greater inequity, than ever before. That undoing will kill millions.

Anthony Avalos was tortured to death by his parents – for years routinely beaten, whipped and dropped on his head, smashed into the floor or furniture, burned with cigarettes, and denied water and food at times. He is not alone. Roughly five children die at the hands of their parents each week in the U.S. alone.

Many more of us, potentially millions and mostly in the Global South, will die as the climate crisis unfolds.

What’s the connection between these facts? The resources necessary – universally – to incentivize parents to plan their families are simply not there.

They are being taken, and are absent from planning systems, because some men in leadership continue to favor profitable population growth policies over the first human right – sustainable and equitable family planning entitlements. The money is going to them, not moms and kids.

They are assisted by nonprofits, media and businesses that – through growthwashing – hide that growth and its impacts, creating a fantasy world of progress for animals, children, and the environment that is just not there. The pro-growth policies they hid undid roughly 3/4ths of the climate mitigation attempted in the last few decades, and ensured there are more animals in factory farms, less wildlife and nature, and greater inequity, than ever before.

Massive environmental organizations ran campaigns to protect particular tracts of land while quietly backing growth policies that have ensured mass extinction and wildfires on those same tracts of land. Giant animal charities ran million dollar campaigns to expand cage sizes in factory farms for millions animals, or featured vegan products as a form of cutting edge social change, while silently choosing family models that ensured billions of new animals would enter the supply chain.

Why cover up these growth-based or fundamental impacts? The family reforms that would prevent these harms, when correctly researched and assessed, ensure all children a fair start in life by overriding current property rights to ensure that all children get enough of what they need in order to physically compromise legitimate democracies cable of actually and fairly assigning property rights. No theory of obligation to follow the law works unless it accounts for the creation of just power relations, and all power relations are fundamentally created at birth.

People, not documents like national constitutions or even international human rights instruments, constitute free nations. Not telling this truth is killing innocent persons, skewing the baseline for live-saving climate loss and damage funding, including the prioritization of claims, the amount owed, and how they must be used.

Faking progress while hiding deadly growth, especially when we have a right to take the resources that would stop it, will ensure the death of millions. It’s a scam run by nonprofits, media and businesses – making it seem like we are reducing or refining consumption and climate emissions, through abstract top down reforms, while quietly bottom-up increasing the number of consumers to maintain profits.

Continuing will ensure those least responsible for climate, inequity and other crises suffer their greatest consequences.

To avoid scams, and see the truth, you can ask one simple question of any person or group claiming to do good: What have you been doing to deal with the basic connection between children being born, and things like child welfare, the climate crisis, animal rights, or anything else you might claim to care about?

There are essentially two answers to this question: Those who are actually accounting for children’s rights as the first form of justice in the constituting of actual human power relations, through things like using birth equity as a human right to restore the climate. And those who are not, among whom many are knowingly undoing their own fundraising and other claims, and exploiting future generations and nature to benefit a few.

Making the world a better and more free place requires dealing with fundamental human relationships as they are created, and how humans will relate to nonhuman ecologies, not theoretical relationships. And that starts with and requires changing the way we plan actual families, moving from systems based on what parents want to what children need, with the Children’s Rights Convention as a minimal planning standard. That means actually looking forward. It starts with using questions like the one above to call out liars, those who use fake versions of social justice that – when examined – actually start by using future generations to convert the nonhuman world into wealth for a few men.

How could we possibly think we are protecting animals while ignoring the creation of the humans who will harm them? Organizations avoid this issue because it is hard to navigate, and they can make money on low impact campaigns instead. Every problem we face today stems from family policies that inequity and pushed growth over children’s rights – treating us like fodder for shopping malls rather than citizens for town halls. Why keep making that mistake?

This does not have to be about making the world a better place. How are the children being born into the world today limiting your personal freedom? How will they degrade the climate you need to survive, increase other threats to your security, and limit your role in functional democracies – you right to an effective say over the rules under which you must live? How will widening inequality further degrade the communities in which you live? Being free means being obligated only to follow legitimate laws (including laws that protect wealth at the top) which begin by empowering each person to be relatively self-determining – and in a measurable way. It means taking democracy, the limitation and decentralization of power, seriously.

Either way, ask the one question of anyone claiming to work towards a better future.

TAKE ACTION:

• Ask any nonprofit you support this crucial question: What have you been doing to deal with the basic connection between children being born, and things like the climate crisis, child welfare, or anything else you might claim to care about?

• Target concentrations of wealth that were created by using unsustainable and inequitable growth to externalize costs on future generations to now pay those costs back in form of family planning entitlements.

• Urge the United Nations to adopt Fair Start as the first and overriding human right.