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By: Joe Robison, Alliance to Save Energy, and Deepika Arora Sadahiro, Willow

The U.S. federal government operates more than 350,000 buildings and spends over $6 billion annually on energy. Many, especially federally supported housing, rely on outdated systems that drive up costs and limit performance. As affordability and reliability take center stage, smarter, low-cost control technologies offer a clear path forward.

Smarter building controls—like smart thermostats, sensors, and automated HVAC systems—optimize energy use by responding to real-time conditions instead of fixed schedules. The result: lower energy use, reduced utility bills, and improved comfort for residents—without major infrastructure upgrades.

Low-Cost Upgrades, Immediate Impact

Unlike large-scale retrofits, smart controls are low-cost and quick to deploy. Smart thermostats alone can reduce HVAC energy use by 10–15%, with even greater savings depending on building conditions.

For federally supported housing, these savings directly improve affordability. Residents benefit from lower bills, while property managers see reduced operating costs and better system performance.

Federal Sites Are Already Seeing Savings

Across federal facilities, pairing efficiency upgrades with smart controls has delivered 20–40% energy savings, often with strong payback periods, especially when paired with performance-based financing like Energy Savings Performance Contracts (ESPCs) and Utility Energy Service Contracts (UESCs).

These models allow agencies to deploy upgrades without upfront appropriations, using guaranteed savings to cover costs over time, creating a scalable pathway for federal housing providers.

Smart Controls Are Also Improving Air Quality in Commercial Buildings

The value of smart, responsive controls extends beyond thermostats. Real-world applications show how data-driven systems can improve both efficiency and occupant well-being.

Willow recently highlighted how demand-controlled ventilation (DCV) systems use occupancy data, CO₂ sensors, and HVAC controls to adjust airflow in real time in high-traffic buildings like airports, hospitals, campuses, and stadiums. Instead of fixed schedules, these systems increase ventilation when spaces are full and scale back when they are not.

This approach delivers multiple benefits:

• Improved indoor air quality
• Lower energy consumption
• Reduced equipment strain and longer system lifespans
• Operational cost savings without compromising comfort

A Scalable Path Forward

As energy demand grows and grid constraints tighten, cost-effective solutions are more important than ever. Smarter building controls offer a practical way to reduce demand, improve performance, and support grid reliability.

For policymakers, the opportunity is clear:

• Expand access to smart control technologies in federally supported housing
• Leverage existing financing mechanisms to scale deployment
• Integrate efficiency upgrades into broader affordability strategies

Efficiency remains the nation’s “first fuel” and one of the fastest, lowest-cost tools available today.

Delivering Affordability, Reliability, and Performance

Modernizing federal housing with smarter controls isn’t just about energy savings—it’s about delivering lower bills, better comfort, and more resilient buildings.

As real-world examples show, smarter, data-driven controls are already transforming building operations. Scaling these solutions across federal housing can unlock immediate savings while strengthening the energy system for the future.

Resources

• U.S. Department of Energy, Simulation-Driven Smart Thermostat Benchmarking
• ASHRAE Journal, Analysis of Indoor Environmental Conditions and Electricity Savings Using a Smart Thermostat
• Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Benefits of Smart Ventilation
• LBNL, Evaluating GHG Mitigation Potential from ESPC Projects
• DOE, Energy Savings Potential and RD&D Opportunities for Commercial HVAC Systems
• Willow, Improving Air Quality and Conserving Energy with Demand-Controlled Ventilation

As wars escalate, ecological systems collapse, and inequality deepens, traditional, nation-centered ideas of security and peace are no longer sufficient. “Planetary peace” links peace with ecological balance, regenerative economics, social justice, and planetary cooperation in this new human era.

Gas turbine manufacturers are confident they will win the battle over whether Europe’s AI boom will be powered by fossil fuels.

Nate invites listeners to view the constant churn of headlines through a wider-boundary lens. He begins with the misleading framing of recent oil production statistics by the United States, which blurs distinctions between crude oil and broader petroleum products.

The giving imperative Channel Comment brendan 21st May 2026 Teaser Media

In retrospect, Sunday's taxpayer-funded blasphemy fest to "rededicate" America as a Christian nation though it's not and never was looks ever more obscene amidst an unholy regime's mounting crimes and abuses. Its sectarian circus - ICE milled, vendors urged "WIVES SUBMIT," zealots screeched "We welcome Jesus!", speakers attested God is eager for the ballroom - just queasily re-shaped a 250-year-old America into the kind of country it once sought freedom from.

"Rededicate 250: A National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise & Thanksgiving," a "constitutional abomination wrapped in layers of blasphemy and demagoguery," sought to proclaim America "One Nation Under God," but only a white male evangelical God; Muslims, Hindus, Catholics, commies, Jews, atheists, agnostics, black, brown, queer, Native people and even mainline Protestants need not apply. As such, it attacked what Jefferson deemed an unalienable right of conscience "which lies solely between Man & his God," defied the core constitutional tenet of separation of church and state, and "torpedoe(d) the best of American traditions - inclusivity and diversity" with, essentially, "a Jubilee of Christian Nationalism."

Its state-sponsored, right-wing fever dream marked the successful MAGA hijacking of Congress’ bipartisan, 2016 America250 commission, meant to honor the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and its core values of equality and agency before the law. Instead, Trump concocted his own Christo-fascist Freedom 250 to celebrate a racist, corporate, jingoistic narrative of America, rewriting history to create an imaginary, monolithic, jingoistic, white, male, Christian national identity that celebrates "God’s presence in our national life throughout 250 years of American history," and what is this inequality or oppression of which you speak?

Freedom 250 swiftly collected most of the $150 million appropriated by Congress, along with support from patriotic sponsors like ExxonMobil, Mastercard, Palantir, Amazon, Coinbase. Year-long festivities have included a weekly America Prays initiative; a series of Interior Department events celebrating “the triumph of the American spirit” plastered with flags, logos, Trump National Park passes; a fleet of nationwide “Freedom Trucks,” mobile museums offering right-wing takes on US history created with PragerU; a national Freedom 250 Patriot Games - Hunger Games anyone? - competition for high school athletes; a revamped Great American Farmers Market in DC with a "MAHA Monday."

On social media, meanwhile, DHS has begun declaring itself "One Homeland Under God," complete with image of church and cross and highlighted Bible verse; for April 19, it urged, “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding." The Washington Monument was transformed into “the world’s tallest birthday candle," with projections celebrating historic achievements by white men like Christopher Columbus and Henry Ford, with no black, Native, female people in sight. To re-enforce the white-centric narrative, organizers have also promised a Summer Surge of thousands more ICE and DHS thugs to make the nation still whiter.

Sunday's Jubilee continued the rebrand of a newly pristine, godly history, with 14 of 15 speakers Christian, arched stained-glass windows and a looming white cross all "glorifying the name of Jesus over our nation’s capital." "Our nation more than any other was shaped by the idea that faith brought freedom," said Marco Rubio in a prerecorded speech. "This is who we are." Virginia pastor Gary Hamrick concurred, but added the imaginary threat of a "spiritual war," perhaps best personified by the scary scattered signs of protesters urging, “Celebrate Democracy, Not Theocracy.” "This is a battle in our day between good and evil," he said. "Our hope is built on Jesus' blood."

Also, Jesus merch. As the faithful braved three-hour lines in the heat and prayed, arms lifted to the sky, vendors handed out "Jesus Saves" bracelets and buttons that said, “WIVES SUBMIT, HUSBANDS LOVE, CHILDREN OBEY.” There were "Thank you Jesus!" signs, a huge "Jesus Make America Godly Again" banner, $47 Freedom 250 baseball caps, t-shirts that read, "God Guns Family Freedom" and "Forever In Our Hearts, Charlie Kirk." "We welcome Jesus into this place!" declared one speaker. Another noted, "It's hard to believe it would take two centuries for the Lord to raise up a great man to bring that ballroom to stand where it needs to stand." (Jesus.)

Pete Hegseth,on video, was typically unshy about praising Jesus. He dubiously zeroed in on The Prayer at Valley Forge, a 1975 painting by Arnold Friberg of George Washington praying in the snow widely deemed a romanticized legend, not fact. Historians argue Washington was a deist and freemason who rarely mentioned God or Jesus, whose favorite Biblical quote - "But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree, and none shall make them afraid" - symbolizes peace, safety, religious freedom, and who always prayed standing. Still, Hegseth ran with it: Washington "did not lose faith," and "let us pray as he did...without ceasing...on bended knee, for our Lord and savior Jesus Christ."

Trump took an even more sketchy approach: He went golfing and sent in a slurry, pre-taped Bible reading recycled from the last fake Christian event three weeks ago. Then, moments after it aired, the self-described peace president went on a frenzied, genocidal social media spree, posting on his crappy app over 30 times in two hours. He threatened Iran: "The Clock is Ticking, and they better get moving, FAST, or there won’t be anything left of them." He posted bizarre, AI, warmongering images: Manning a spacecraft, firing away with massive explosions and mushroom clouds, personally arresting an alien, a real one. Say what? Praise Jesus.

Still, spineless, smarmy, unholy Mike Johnson was the worst. Having already whined about "naysayers" who view Christian Nationalism as "a derogatory term," he gave a long hollow prayer about his task to "bring us straight to the Lord, whose mighty hand has been upon our (freest and most benevolent) nation since the very beginning." But now "sinister ideologies sow confusion among our people," attacking our history as "one of oppression and hypocrisy and failure." So "grant us the moral clarity to rise above partisan differences," says the guy who keeps shutting down Congress to block Dem policies. Finally, unconscionably, he prayed for “mercy upon our land.”

Mercy. He seeks mercy.

Mercy for the hundreds of people in the Congo and elsewhere dying of an Ebola outbreak after Trump gutted USAID and its dedicated outbreak response team because it helped people who aren't white, thus triggering what could be over 14 million preventable deaths by 2030?

Mercy for those killed at San Diego's biggest mosque amidst a Trump-fuelled rising tide of Islamophobia? Mercy for those ripped off or otherwise betrayed in a rabid mob by a $1.8 billion slush fund, or "pardon on steroids," in the "most brazen act of presidential corruption this century."

Mercy for the estimated 145,000 U.S. citizen brown children who had a parent detained by ICE and are now scattered across the country, or the 22,000 who lost both parents? Mercy for the woman, a domestic violence victim, detained and deported whom ICE is now blaming for the murder of her own child by her ex-partner?

Mercy for the 21-year-old Honduran with no criminal record just arrested and detained by ICE outside a New York immigration court less than 24 hours after a federal judge's ruling such arrests are illegal, because, as one ICE thug responded when shown the ruling, "We don't care"?

Mercy for 18-year-old, Chicago-born, Mexico-raised Kevin González, being treated in Chicago for metastatic stage-four colon cancer when his health began failing? His parents in Mexico sought emergency visas to travel to the US to say their final goodbyes; when DHS denied them, citing “previous unlawful entries into the US," in desperation they tried to cross the border without permission and were detained by ICE in Arizona. Kevin pleaded in vain for their release; ultimately, he checked himself out of the hospital and flew to his grandmother's home in Mexico to be with family at the end. Finally, in Kevin's last hours, a judge in Arizona ordered their release. They arrived at his bedside on the afternoon of May 9. His sobbing mom called him, “Chiquito," "little one”; his father knelt by his son's bed, asking for forgiveness if he ever let him down. Kevin died the next day.

Mercy? Does Mike Johnson want mercy for Kevin and his parents?

Fuck Mike Johnson and all his fucking odious cohort. Fuck their prayers, and their Jesus, and their cruelty, and their fucking despicable hypocrisy, which knows no bounds. What would Jesus do? Not this, any of it.

This April, in Amsterdam (the Netherlands), plastic was on the agenda at one of Europe’s biggest banks’ Annual General Meetings. Campaigners and members of the Break Free From Plastic movement took their concerns directly to the Board of ING Bank, calling out the stark discrepancies between its public sustainability commitments and its far less publicised financing decisions.

Despite the well-documented harms plastic causes to environmental and human health, plastics are missing from many banks’ environmental policies. Banks have faced little accountability for their contribution to the plastic crisis, despite playing a central role in funding the production and proliferation of plastics worldwide.

Photo credit: Milieudefensie/Edo Landwehr, 2026

No policy, no limits

Financing is the oxygen that keeps plastic production alive and that is precisely why bank policies matter. When a bank establishes a plastics policy, it sets clear boundaries on what it will and will not fund, sending a powerful market signal that the most harmful parts of the plastic value chain carry real financial and reputational risk. Without such policies, there are no limitations, and capital flows freely to plastic producers, enabling the industry to expand unchecked. Beyond plastic production itself, banks also finance companies driving demand for single-use plastics and support downstream technological approaches that many campaigners and researchers argue risk delaying the transition to reduction, reuse and refill systems.

Policies also create accountability: once a bank makes a public commitment, it can be held to it by campaigners, shareholders, and regulators. Given that building and scaling plastic production is extremely capital-intensive, restricting access to that financing is one of the most direct levers available for reducing plastic production at its source. 

Photo credit: Fair Resource Foundation, 2026

ING, like many banks, currently lacks a plastics financing policy with clear criteria for limiting or excluding financing for plastics production. ING publicly acknowledges that plastic waste and pollution are a “downside”. It also points out that plastic waste is set to triple by 2060, with half still landfilled and less than a fifth recycled. ING states that it finances clients across the plastic value chain, “from upstream production to midstream users of plastic and downstream collection, sorting and recycling.”

Taken together, this raises questions about how ING’s recognition of plastic pollution translates into its financing decisions, particularly in the absence of clear criteria to limit continued expansion of virgin plastic production.

Claiming our place at the table

Annual General Meetings are spaces where executive leadership reports to a company's shareholders and provides an opportunity to expose the gaps between sustainability commitments and corporate behaviour. Through shareholder activism, civil society organisations have gradually gained access to AGMs using small amounts of shares to pressure  corporate decision-making from the inside. It is a tactic long used by climate groups, and one that is proving just as powerful in the fight against plastic pollution. 

Executives can ignore emails, campaigns and press releases, but they cannot ignore a formal question asked on the record in front of their major investors. By stepping into this space, we gained direct access to the bank’s leadership and had the opportunity to ask a question directly to the board and hold ING publicly accountable. 

Building alliances

Campaigners and activists from across the climate movement attended this year’s ING AGM, bringing attention to the investments ING has in oil, gas and coal. (pictures of protest). Inside, shareholders from these groups and organisations confronted the bank on  a range of policies, demonstrating that civil society is united to show up where decisions are actually made.

Photo credit: Fair Resource Foundation, 2026

Deflection and defensiveness: ING’s answer to our question

At the AGM, ING was asked directly: how, while acknowledging plastic pollution as a material risk, does it justify continuing to finance companies expanding virgin plastic production, including INEOS' Project ONE, the ethane cracker currently being built in Antwerp? The bank was also pressed to provide a clear timeline for client requirements across the plastic value chain, including plastic footprint disclosure, time-bound reduction targets, and a prioritisation of reuse and refill models over downstream and technological fixes.

Their answer was deeply disappointing. ING deflected to the United Nations and the need for a Global Plastics Treaty, effectively arguing that it cannot act until international frameworks are in place. 

A formal letter: demanding better answers

Attending ING’s AGM was just the first step in asking the bank to take meaningful action to address its role in the plastic crisis. This week, the Break Free From Plastic movement, together with members Fair Resource Foundation, Plastic Soup Foundation, Women Engage for a Common Future, and Fair Finance Guide Germany have sent a follow-up letter to ING bank with a series of questions. These include questions about how ING assesses clients involved in plastic production or users of plastic packaging, its policies on financing chemical recycling given its well-documented ineffectiveness, its engagement with ESG rating agencies to improve plastic-related metrics, its plans to reduce financing for fossil polymer production, and its timeline for developing a strategy that supports the investment and scaling up of reuse and refill models.

ING’s response at their 2026 AGM reflects a pattern seen before: acknowledge the problem, defer the solution and continue business as usual. The formal letter sent this week is an opportunity for ING to move beyond deflection and demonstrate that its sustainability commitments amount to more than rhetoric. Financial institutions, as the enablers of the plastic and climate crises, have the power and responsibility to develop meaningful plastics policies that shift capital away from plastic production and toward real solutions. Until then, the scrutiny will continue.

Renewable energy developer launches new, wholly owned subsidiary that will continue to progress its 2.5 gigawatt portfolio of big batteries and wind farms across Australia.

The post Equis founders extend winning formula to new “highly focused” Australian renewables outfit appeared first on Renew Economy.

Big battery signs 20-year service deal to meet its market and regulatory obligations, including the requirements of federal Labor's Capacity Investment Scheme.

The post Big battery seals lifetime service deal as it sizes up to meet market and regulatory demands appeared first on Renew Economy.

The climate wars are back: On one side of politics there is no sign they will act on the science, or even sound economics. The shadow boxing is done with. Now it's a pitched battle.

The post As Australia votes for landmark UN climate resolution, Coalition urges fossil industry to “bare its knuckles” appeared first on Renew Economy.

Chinese power giant Sungrow unveils a series of new storage and micro-grid technologies, including a scaled up battery product that can deliver 1 GWh in 12 days.

The post Miners, microgrids, EVs and other loads: New inverter technologies take battery storage to new markets appeared first on Renew Economy.

Regulator warns that the complete lack of policies to guide this state's customer transition away from gas is creating uncertainty that could drive up costs to consumers.

The post How Australia’s most advanced renewables state has dropped the ball on the gas network death spiral appeared first on Renew Economy.

First of its kind financing platform has room for more giant solar and battery hybrids, now the most readily accessible tech for big energy users wanting to clean up.

The post Largest solar-battery financing deal just the tip of the iceberg, as bankers pile into fashionable hybrids appeared first on Renew Economy.

As President Trump’s Department of Transportation encourages American motorists to get in their cars and drive away from their communities to celebrate the nation’s birthday, one advocate is calling on would-be holiday drivers to stay put and deepen their connections to their neighbors — by closing their street to cars and throwing a party.

Nonprofit Block Party USA recently launched its “American Summer” campaign to inspire communities across the country to organize at least 250 block parties between Memorial Day and Labor Day, with an emphasis on the Fourth of July.

Timed to honor the 250th anniversary of America’s founding in 1776, this push could catalyze not only interpersonal connections, but an overdue conversation about our country’s divisions — and the role that neighborhoods can play in bringing us back together.

“With America 250 coming, there’s so much polarization, and people are really suffering,” said Vanessa Elias, the group’s founder. “It is affecting our mental health; we’re feeling divided and disappointed. And when we look at our history, we have become so independent and individualistic that we’ve lost this sense of community.”

Recommended How Highways Rend Our Social Fabric — and the Challenge of Mending It Streetsblog March 11, 2025

A self-described “mental health activist, parent coach, and block party expert,” Elias launched the campaign out of a deep belief that in-person interaction among neighbors is an essential ingredient for a healthy life, healthy kids and even a healthy democracy.

She founded her organization after one of her local legislators spoke out about the experience of being harassed by a constituent online, only to have a far more positive experience with the same constituent in person.

“That was just a light bulb moment for me,” Elias says. “We need block parties; we need face-to-face connection with random people in our immediate proximity.”

Recommended Car Harms Monday: Cars Make Us More Lonely Mike Lydon June 9, 2025

In human-centered communities, of course, block parties can be a naturally occurring phenomenon.

When we design our roads to treat motorists as simply members of a broader transportation ecosystem — rather than those roads’ exclusive users — we open up space for spontaneous barbecues and pop-up porch concerts, whether or not anyone has organized a formal gathering. This choice also encourages more casual social interactions between neighbors, which studies show are statistically more likely to happen in walkable neighborhoods, too.

Elias says her block party proposal can adapt to more car-dependent places, with gatherings in rural driveways or meetups in parks. But in an ideal world, she thinks everyone who wants to should be able to step right outside their door and into a true community, rather than getting in a car to go find it.

“Part of the work that I do, is to help people understand how they don’t need a perfect cul-de-sac where they can close the road … That said, I would prefer it be rooted in place, and rooted in the area that people are living,” she added. “Rather than finding a pretty park eight miles from where everybody lives, [the ideal block party would] bring people together as close as possible to where they’re living — and I think some communities make it really easy for that to happen.”

Recommended Five Things Missing In The Built Environment For Families With Young Children Barry Greene Jr. June 16, 2023

Elias acknowledged that only 6.8 percent of the U.S. population live in walkable neighborhoods, which means ideal block party sites can be hard to find.

And even within those neighborhoods, some will still find it difficult to secure permits to close streets to cars, or to rally neighbors who barely say hello to one another on the way to check the mail. She stressed that, in an era of social media isolation and deep political division, the built environment is far from the only reason why we don’t always connect.

Despite those steep odds, though, Elias argued the humble block party can be a critical first “drop” that ripples out across a whole community, building social connections that grow and deepen over time — particularly for people who are too young to drive. She emphasized that block parties encourage “free play” for children, which “can make children happier, better problem-solvers, and more energized to pursue learning and develop deep interests.”

No matter why communities gather, though, Elias said the best way to celebrate our country this summer may not be traveling to visit our national treasures, but to make treasured memories in our own neighborhoods — and maybe, to forge the coalitions we need to make livable streets and social cohesion the neighborhood norm.

“Whether you’re six or 106, it’s something that is accessible to you — to meet other people, where you belong,” she added.

Visit BlockPartyUSA.org for more tools and resources to throw a block party in your community.

• The House version of a new infrastructure funding bill, dubbed BUILD America 250, is getting mixed-to-negative reviews (Streetsblog USA).
  • The Eno Center for Transportation has a detailed breakdown of the bill’s language.
  • The Natural Resources Defense Council doesn’t like a new $130 fee on electric vehicles or the elimination of funding for chargers.
  • Democratic senators are also opposed to the EV fee. (E&E News)
  • The bill maintains the car-dominated status quo by raising funding for highways and cutting funding for rail and transit, compared to the Biden administration’s bipartisan infrastructure act, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. (The Equation)
  • The Rail Passengers Association notes that it provides more funding for transit than such bills usually do, but zeroes out funding specifically for rail.
  • In addition, the bill would require congressional approval for any Amtrak restructuring. (Trains)
  • It also requires the federal government to write regulations for driverless commercial trucks. (Freight Waves)
• The EPA announced plans to delay the Biden administration’s stronger vehicle emissions standards, and possibly reconsider them entirely. (Inside Climate News)
• The Austin Transit Partnership has started pre-construction work on the city’s first light rail line. (KXAN)
• Oregon voters rejected a proposal to raise the state gas tax, probably because the price of gas is so high already. (Associated Press)
• New Jersey will not require insurance for lower-speed e-bikes that don’t have a throttle, just the ones that function more like motorcycles. (NJ.com)
• SEPTA will boost service on several Philadelphia transit lines for the World Cup. (Philly Voice)
• A new branch of Montreal’s REM train is bringing transit to an underserved area. (CBC)
• A candidate for Seoul mayor has plans to build seven new rail lines by 2037. (Moovit)
• Transport for London hired three contractors to modernize the city’s tram network. (Safer Highways)

Children bear the consequences of today’s major crises more than most, yet their concerns and experiences remain largely invisible in political life. A childist revolution calls for transforming the political space to cultivate a deeper sense of our social and natural interdependence – including fully democratising democracies through ageless suffrage. 

This article is part of the Green European Journal’s upcoming print edition on demographic futures, out in early June. Subscribe now and get it delivered straight to your door.

Democracies face crises when populations lose confidence in their ability to address fundamental concerns – as is usually the case in periods of rapid industrialisation, runaway inequality, economic depression, mass migration, and war. During such times, they often backslide into authoritarian appeals, but tend eventually to evolve new democratic norms and practices. 

The worldwide crisis of democracy today revolves around issues that centrally concern one of the most disempowered social groups: the third of humanity who are children. It is children above all who face the greatest impacts of climate change, both immediately and in the long term. Children in rich and poor countries alike suffer disproportionate poverty because of global neoliberalism. Young people die in outsized numbers from civilian-targeted modern warfare and terrorism. And they are hit hardest by the ways that new digital technologies manipulate information and foster technological addiction. 

However, children remain largely invisible in political life. Indeed, it is this very invisibility that keeps children’s issues at the margins of democratic policymaking.  

The rise of childism 

The past couple of decades have seen the rise of a movement among academics and activists to respond to these democratic and childhood realities under the umbrella of childism. Childism is a critical approach to societies similar to feminism, anti-racism, decolonialism, and the like. It seeks to empower children and acknowledge their concerns and experiences by transforming historically ingrained assumptions and structures. Its aim is to reconstruct social norms to make them genuinely age-inclusive. 

The word “childism” was coined in the early 2000s in academic literature rooted in the then-emerging field of childhood studies, which seeks to understand children’s agency and experiences as children rather than as developing adults. In the 1990s, the term was used briefly in literary studies to refer to a practice of reading like a child. More recently, it has also been used in a negative sense, akin to sexism and racism. But the predominant meaning in scholarship – and now also in social activism – is in its positive sense of children’s empowerment. 

The central problem that childism addresses is a deeply rooted adultism: the assumption that the adult is the measure of the human. Adultism is the often forgotten side of patriarchy, the historical power of the “pater” or father, which is not only gendered but also aged. Like sexism, adultism is deeply embedded in our histories, cultures, and languages. Adultism in particular asserts a binary opposition between supposedly rational and independent adults on the one hand, and supposedly irrational and dependent children on the other. In this way, it divides social relations in everything from families and communities to human rights and law. 

 Adultism is the often forgotten side of patriarchy, the historical power of the “pater” or father, which is not only gendered but also aged.

Children themselves are already practising an implicit childism. Young climate protesters are demanding age inclusivity in environmental policy. Child labour union activists are calling for recognition for non-adult work. Youth are fighting for schools free of gun violence. Transgender children are pushing their communities to change how they think about gender identity. Children and youth in the dozens of countries with child and youth parliaments are pressing for children’s perspectives on safe streets, access for people with disabilities, and education reform. 

Children’s suffrage 

As marginalised groups over history have found, however, the ultimate right to political inclusion is the right to vote. Suffrage does not solve all problems, but it does confer on those possessing it the status of first-class citizens with equal political dignity. It is the right to participate in the process of forming rights. This is why non-landowners, the poor, racial and ethnic minorities, and women fought so hard to achieve it. And it is why the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights call, without any type of qualification, for “universal and equal suffrage”.  

Children have been fighting for suffrage since at least the 1990s. They have done so in campaigns and legal action by groups like We Want the Vote and KRÄTZÄ in Germany, the National Youth Rights Association (NYRA) in the US, Young Pirates of Europe (YPE), and Green Youth. Adults have joined them with academic and policy support, including through initiatives like the Children’s Voting Colloquium, Amnesty International UK, the Freechild Institute, the National Association of Large Families , and the Child Rights International Network (CRIN). What is more, children and adults have sued governments for ageless suffrage in Germany, California and Massachusetts in the United States, Sweden, and Canada.

The childist argument for ageless suffrage is that it is necessary for the wellbeing of both children and democracies. Children themselves would finally have their lives and perspectives taken just as seriously by policymakers, whose jobs would no longer rely solely on pressure from adults. And democracies would benefit from the full range of the people’s ideas, thus making better-informed decisions. 

A matter of competence?  

The main objection to children’s suffrage has historically been that children lack voting competence. People under the age of maturity are thought to be deficient in democratic thinking skills, knowledge, and independence, and to be too open to manipulation. And they are presumed to lack the experience and understanding needed to contribute to difficult decisions about complex political matters like war, health policy, and immigration. 

But these presumptions misunderstand both democracy and childhood. Working backwards from the aims of democracy, voting competence consists in the ability to give voice to political views. The purpose of democratic voting is not to place decisions in the hands of those with certain types of knowledge, but to hold elected representatives accountable to the people impacted by their decisions. Anyone should be included in the vote who wishes to have a say in what policymakers may do. 

Barring children from voting is, in reality, a form of systemic discrimination. It holds them to a standard of voting competence that is not applied to the rest of the population.

If voting competence is properly understood, children have much more of it – and adults much less – than commonly thought. It is hard to deny democratic capacities to the millions of children who march for climate change policies, fight against racism, or participate in children’s parliaments, child labour unions, or any number of other political organisations. Children worldwide discuss politics at the dinner table, read or watch the news, and hold diverse opinions about current events. There is no magical stage of neurological development at which the capacity to have political views suddenly arises. It is a general capacity of anyone aware of their larger world. 

This capacity of children to participate in democratic life is already legally recognised in Articles 12, 13, and 15 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. These guarantee children the rights to “express [their] views freely in all matters affecting the child”, “freedom of expression” without unnecessary restriction, and “freedom of association”. All of these rights are violated when children are banned from exercising their democratic capacities. 

Likewise, adults exhibit very wide ranges of democratic skill, knowledge, and susceptibility to influence. Adults have the right to vote regardless of ignorance, thoughtlessness, and openness to manipulation. They retain this right even if they suffer from severe cognitive impairment, mental disability, or dementia. History shows that adults frequently make terrible voting decisions. Furthermore, no adult has a deep understanding of all the matters they must vote upon, from economic statistics to military capacities, health innovations, top secret information, legal precedents, and much else. 

Barring children from voting is, in reality, a form of systemic discrimination. It holds them to a standard of voting competence that is not applied to the rest of the population. The European Court of Human Rights defines discrimination as “differential treatment in comparable situations without an objective or reasonable justification”. Adult-only voting excludes children as a class of citizens for reasons outside the objective requirements of voting itself. 

Stronger democracies 

But the most important reason to give children the right to vote is that it would improve life for children and adults and strengthen democracies.  

Children themselves would live in political environments that are required to take their interests into account centrally instead of peripherally. Currently, they cannot vote politicians out of office, which means authorities are not truly incentivised to take children’s experiences and concerns seriously. Children may be objects of democratic beneficence, but like adults, they also need to be treated as subjects with democratic agency.  

If children could vote, they would likely pressure politicians, for example, to finally take the climate emergency seriously, fight child poverty, regulate digital media, invest in meaningful education reform, attend to lifelong healthcare, and create safer streets and greener spaces. They would also have greater recourse to fight social discrimination, such as social media bans, age curfews, exclusion from divorce proceedings, corporal punishment, school discipline, issues with access to medical care, and much more. 

Granting children the right to vote would also benefit adults. Everyone would gain from better climate policies. Parents would be helped by children’s greater economic support. Teachers would be empowered by education policies that better respond to children’s actual lives and experiences. Doctors would find greater resources for child healthcare and research. And business leaders would hire from a better-educated workforce.  

Moreover, democracy itself would be strengthened by becoming more fully responsive to the people’s actual lives. Policymakers would find themselves equally beholden to all instead of just some of their constituents. Democratic leaders could make clearer decisions with – so to speak – a third more pixels added to their policymaking screen. And democracies would make choices about war, spending, and judicial reform in more inclusively informed ways. 

What is more, children’s suffrage could provide the needed antidote to today’s slide of democracies into authoritarianism. The right to vote for all would undercut the assumption that some are natural rulers over others. And it would eliminate the problem of citizens spending the first quarter of their lives being told that their views do not count, which opens citizens to simplistic authoritarian appeals. Instead of looking to father figures, democracies would more likely turn to broad-minded defenders of human rights. 

Children may be objects of democratic beneficence, but like adults, they also need to be treated as subjects with democratic agency.  

Systemic inclusion 

Childism calls for not only new understandings of voting rights but also new electoral practices. Suffrage movements typically shift how voting actually takes place. We have come a long way from landowning men choosing representatives in taverns.  

A good first step is to lower the voting age. In countries that have lowered the national voting age to 16, children have been shown to turn out in higher numbers for elections than young adults and to retain higher voting rates into adulthood. They have also moved policymakers to include more child-friendly interests. However, from a childist perspective, lowering voting ages does not go far enough. It still only enfranchises children who are thought to have achieved adult-like competencies, whereas genuine democracies need to move beyond adultism. 

There are several different proposals for ageless voting rights, but my own is for what I call proxy-claim voting. Under this proposition, all citizens would have a proxy vote from birth to death, which can be used by their legal guardian – a parent, caretaker, or next of kin. This proxy vote would most likely be used on behalf of infants, young children, cognitively impaired children and adults, adults with significant disabilities or health issues, and elderly persons with dementia. But all citizens would, at the same time, have the right to claim the exercise of their vote on their own behalf. Whenever a citizen desired to vote independently, regardless of their age or condition, they could claim their right to do so. 

Some might object that a proxy-claim right to vote would advantage larger families, but in reality, it would advantage the children themselves in these families who deserve their own equal representation. Others might find proxy voting fundamentally undemocratic, yet it already exists in most countries for impaired (or even just travelling) adults, so why not also for the youngest children? Some do not think voting is all that powerful anyway, but is it fair or just to ban one group even from the choice to participate? 

Childism calls for children’s systemic inclusion and empowerment. It suggests, just like first-wave feminism, that the right to vote is a fundamental human right. But suffrage is only a first step. Childism sets in motion a systemic critique of societies’ adultistic biases across law, policy, culture, and family. It insists that children are not second-class citizens but central to infusing societies with humanity. 

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