Bob Sternfels and McKinsey & Company have released a report on fertility decline, lamenting its impact on economic growth. But here’s the problem: Their conclusions contradict the reality in places like Japan, where degrowth and strong economic performance coexist.
McKinsey is worth over $100 billion. Yet Sternfels and his firm are not just mistaken—they are actively concealing their liability for countless climate-related deaths. Their vast wealth was built on externalizing costs, benefiting from systems of entitlement that never accounted for the true costs of climate degradation, autocracy, and inequity.
The Cost of Injustice
Sternfels and McKinsey’s economic analyses start with a fundamental violation: ignoring children’s right to a fair start in life. Their model assumes unsustainable growth, achieved by depriving children—especially children of color—of equitable resources and safety.
Their wealth came at the expense of our freedom—environmentally, socially, and politically. We feel those costs every day.
Justice cannot arise from injustice. No nation can claim legitimacy when it fails to ensure functional protections for children at birth. The economic growth McKinsey promotes is built on a foundation of exploitation, as identified by Nobel laureates. This model has contributed to millions of deaths worldwide.
McKinsey’s practices have degraded the Earth’s ability to support infant health while exacerbating inequity and political disenfranchisement. This loss of freedom is measurable through widely accepted sustainable development metrics.
Accountability and Reparations
Sternfels and McKinsey did not create value; they extracted wealth by violating birthrights. They owe that wealth back. Redirecting even a portion of their wealth could save countless lives.
Sternfels and his family have benefited from privileges they have denied to others:
- Seeking minimum thresholds of personal welfare while allowing at-risk children to suffer preventable deprivation and abuse.
- Expecting equal access to opportunities while others remain trapped in systemic servitude due to birth disparities.
- Participating in political and legal systems that claim to represent all citizens while structurally silencing marginalized voices.
- Enjoying a safe and stable environment while others are born into the deadly consequences of environmental racism.
- Exercising reproductive choices in secure conditions while others face extreme risks and uncertainty.
This is not a partisan issue. We are all complicit in perpetuating systems that fail to fulfill children’s fundamental rights. No one can claim legitimacy while ignoring this foundational injustice. Denying this reality obscures liability for climate reparations that could save millions of lives.
Sternfels: A “Legitimating Barrier”
Sternfels is what some call a key “legitimating barrier,” spreading misinformation to protect wealth that rightfully belongs to future generations. By doing so, he and McKinsey have done more to harm shared global values—such as access to clean air, water, and food—than to further them.
Sternfels has enriched his own children at the deadly cost of countless children of color. Extensive research suggests that this “death debt” could be inherited and enforced through crowdsourced mechanisms of accountability.
How Do We Hold McKinsey Accountable?
Many high-emission nations have been running fraudulent environmental and animal protection campaigns, claiming progress while emissions and negative infant outcomes continue to rise. These reductions have been nullified by growth-based political inequity, pushing more children and animals into conditions where they lack the resources to cope with worsening environmental crises.
Human birth and development shape all societal outcomes. It is the fundamental driver of the climate crisis—not just emissions, but also the political influence to control them and the resilience to survive them. Yet wealthy funders who drive social justice reforms continue to conceal their liability, costing millions of lives and trillions of dollars.
The Fair Start Movement operates as the world’s first constitutional watchdog to expose these systemic failures. Our mission is to fact-check public entities and interest organizations, assessing their claims against objective measures of political equity and democratic representation.
The Fair Start “Tell the Truth” Campaign
Under this campaign, we:
- Identify key influencers and separate them into those who uphold fairness and those who perpetuate inequity.
- Demand full disclosure from individuals like Sternfels, contrasting their claimed impact with actual harm caused by violations of children’s rights.
- Expose how unaccounted-for inequities have exacerbated global crises and undermined democratic legitimacy.
The Cost of Ignoring Growth and Inequity
For decades, nonprofits, media, and business leaders have crafted a fantasy of progress, preventing real climate reforms. This failure will kill millions.
Language matters. Freedom is impossible without truthfully acknowledging how we become legally obligated to others from birth. How can we claim to uphold justice without ensuring that all children are born and raised in conditions that respect their rights?
If McKinsey and Sternfels acknowledge their debt to future generations, they must act. The solution is simple: Shift a percentage of their wealth to fund measurably fair starts in life for all children. True legitimacy begins with rights-based relations, and our campaign exposes those who refuse to derive their authority from empowering all constituents equitably.
Take Action
Urge Bob Sternfels to redo McKinsey’s fertility report—this time accounting for the true costs:
- How children are born into conditions that violate their rights.
- How inequity and climate degradation threaten infant health.
- How political disenfranchisement prevents meaningful change.
In future reports, we will contrast the wealth Sternfels’ children enjoy with the deadly cost borne by countless children worldwide—so the full extent of his liability is clear to all.
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