Let's Start Honouring the Children

I was reminded again today of the vital new philosophy or worldview suggested by Raffi Cavoukian, a world-renowned Canadian children's singer/entertainer who has turned his focus to the adults of the world, knowing that it's adults who make the decisions. (Too bad it's not the kids! See Speak for the Children.)

Child honouring is the simple — but transformative and, for many cultures, revolutionary — notion of putting the children at the centre of deliberations and actions. A sort of golden rule:

Do unto the world what will be best for all the children.

I said it was simple! But it makes a damned good guiding principle, doesn't it? Especially if one understands that children are more sensitive to famines and environmental toxins and other degradations than adults are — in the literature, they are called a "susceptible sub-population."

So if we care about the children of the world, and we love the special children in our own lives, please, can we start implementing the precautionary principle? I commented the other day to someone who knows our prime minister that I think he must hate his children. She responded that he probably loves them more than anything in the world (besides his cats) — he just "doesn't believe in climate change."

"Well," I responded, "that's the same as hating his children." He is certainly condemning them to a hellish future, and that — to me, at least — does not come across as love.

It is time to put the children at the centre of our moral compass!

p.s. Somalia and the United States of America are the only two countries who have not ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. That sort of fits the US attitude to the climate change crisis as well, doesn't it?

27 Days - Speak for the Children

Someone sent me an email recently, encouraging participation in a climate rally. "Speak for the Climate" was the subject of the email, and it really got to me. But it took me a moment or two to realize why.

The climate does not need anyone speaking on its behalf. It is not a living thing. It is not suffering. Even if it were alive, however, I'm sure it would be an extrovert, and an assertive one at that!

No, the climate does not need anybody speaking for it.

The children, on the other hand, need many advocates. The children of all species are, for the most part, voiceless and powerless in this struggle to safeguard the planet and their future.

Two ideas for giving young people a voice have come my way recently. The first is that we should allow adolescents to vote. The obvious reason these days is that the older a voter is, the less he or she cares (or seems to care) about the future. So the people whose lives we are threatening most by not taking strong action to get to zero carbon emissions are the people who have no say and cannot participate politically.

"I say, allow them [children] the right to vote at birth, but give that right to the parents until the child turns the age of majority. Variation 1: make your vote proportional to your remaining life expectancy. To make it easy, consider the normal life span to be 100. Infants get 100 votes, 100-year olds, get 1 vote."

— Goesta Berling

Kind of a cool idea (even if I did find it at Halfbakery.com). The second reason to give teenagers the vote, as explained by a friend recently, is that young people are still passionate and apt to vote for the Earth. The older we get and the more responsibilities we take on, she said, the more we vote for our own security — mainly financial security, putting the Earth much lower on our list of priorities.

The second idea is to create a children's ombudsman, voted in by young people in each jurisdiction. This position would be held by a youth and yet be considered a senior level portfolio. Kind of like having a kid looking over your shoulder every time you make a decision, reminding you to keep the children in mind.

This reminds me of something Raffi (the Canadian children's singer) proposed around the beginning of this century: child honouring. It's not unlike the concept of intergenerational equity, a principle of sustainable development. Raffi developed a Covenant for Honouring Children, which is a beautiful document. According to the Centre for Child Honouring website, "Child Honouring is a philosophy—a vision, an organizing principle, and a way of life—the children-first way of sustainability."

In any case, we all should be speaking for and thinking of the children, of all species, in every decision we make that might affect the Earth and the future.