In the mid-20th century, world leaders deliberately ignored the interests of future children and political equity when shaping reproductive rights. This likely stemmed from their unwillingness to invest in racially equitable birth, development, and emancipatory conditions.
Both left- and right-wing leaders defined power narrowly—as the violence of the state rather than any form of human influence. This meant that while people had the right to terminate pregnancies, they now face deadly heat waves without any real influence over climate policy or the means to afford air conditioning.
The failure to invest in equitable beginnings directly fueled catastrophic population growth and extreme inequality. These factors have caused significantly more harm than subsequent philanthropic efforts—many of which were motivated by the desire to exploit that growth—have ever managed to repair. Today, projections show that millions will die due to the climate crisis.
These omissions also led to a system that treats children of color as deserving only a fraction of available resources while exposing them to exponentially greater risks. As a result, billions today face extreme climate threats despite contributing little to the crisis.
The Hidden Harm of Inequitable Growth
We know that avoiding children’s interests has done more harm than good. By bringing them into conditions that violate their fundamental rights, we have degraded the very ecosystems they rely on for survival.
This inequitable growth has also weakened democracy, disenfranchising the average voter and obstructing their ability to stop these unfolding crises.
There is no way to assess value in the world without measuring it relative to infant health and life prospects, including self-determination. Infant health and development form the objective basis through which humans experience all value—serving as the foundation for health, equity, democracy, and other unifying ideals. It is the minimum standard for political legitimacy.
Philanthropy’s Role in Concealing the Problem
Many philanthropic efforts today avoid addressing how inequitable growth has reversed progress in infant development. Instead of fixing the problem, they obscure it.
By omitting discussions of birth conditions, these efforts conceal liability—and the right to self-defensive reparations—for the climate crisis’ deadly impact on millions of children of color, who are born into extreme disadvantage compared to the children of wealthy white funders.
The Solution: Measurable Standards for Justice
The most effective solution is to adopt measurable standards for true social justice and ecological restoration. Climate reparations must be directly tied to the self-determination of each child entering the world.
Because our positionality—our standing relative to others and the environment—is legally preemptive, we must take bold action to reclaim reparations and correct these systemic injustices.
A Call to Action
The primary function of law is to protect the most vulnerable. A system that fails to ensure basic welfare at birth is inherently unjust. If oppression begins at creation—through a status quo that denies minimum welfare standards for children—then dismantling that status quo requires an objective foundation, such as offset or zero baselines, to measure and enforce change.
TAKE ACTION: Support efforts at the United Nations to replace dysfunctional reproductive rights systems with Fair Start policies.
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