I have two kids. Love the snot out of them. Have given up big chunks of my old lifestyle in deference to their own needs. Don't think I am personally up to the sacrifice of time and attention required to do the job properly for a third child (no worries--I got meself fixed).

However, for those who say their large families are no greater burden to the planet than a replacement-level family, I do have a few question.

First, are your kids going to stay kids forever? You've figured out how to keep them from growing up? Unless you have, those kids are going to move out pretty soon, and start their own households.

And then, they are going to consume right up to their means, either through fancy vacations and big cars, or with large families of their own. The difference between a large family and a replacement family is that a replacement family isn't creating multiple copies of itself.

And even now, do your kids eat? Mine sure do. Humans already eat all the wild fish this planet can produce and more, by employing aquaculture and depleting existing stocks of deepwater fish like Red Snapper (the Red Snapper you eat in a restaurant is likely over a century old). We can talk about changing our diet sources to adapt to more people, but a large proportion of the planet already survives on a subsistence diet. It won't take many more mouths before we eat everything and still go hungry. That's not even talking about the petroleum-intensive agriculture that produces most of our staples.

There are too many people on our planet. We should have smaller families. We should encourage small families through tax policy, and most importantly, through the empowerment of women (the most effective birth control ever).

And we have to cross our fingers and hope it isn't too late already. I just pray that my two kids will have a recognizable world to grow up in. That will be plenty of privilege for me. I don't need a large brood to try and multiply that privilege.

It's been pointed out upthread, but bears repeating.

Nobody is going to use old growth forests for toilet paper. It won't work, and there are far more convenient trees available for tissue production.

Old growth logs are hard, dark, and tough. Paper mills have to break down logs into soft, white pulp. They don't want the trouble a dense old-growth tree would cause.

Here in Wisconsin, where we make a large percentage of the bathroom tissue used in the United States, the tree of choice is Poplar, which grows quickly in swampy areas, has nice, white, soft wood fibers, and which can be easily stripped of bark for processing.

I know this because the father of an old girlfriend of mine logged pulp lumber for a living. Wisconsin is a great place to grow Poplar wood, and the trees are the right size for pulping in about 15-20 years. Poplar quickly fills in areas that have been logged, and quickly renews itself after being cut.

Making paper uses a lot of water, and has had problems with release of toxic chemicals, but it isn't why our ancient forests have been logged away.

I generally don't like Cato, and I have been angry with Glenn several times in the aftermath of Obama's election (I felt like Glenn was looking too hard for dark clouds behind the silver linings).

That said, this essay (and the Portugal report to Cato) are both very interesting, and very timely.

Glenn is quite correct in saying the change is indeed possible. We are seeing change in almost every sphere of life, social, economic, and political.

One characteristic of this change is that when an issue approaches the tipping point, the forces of reaction to hit strain to their utmost. Thus it appears as though all progress is stopped for a period. An analogy is an entire garrison throwing their weight against the failing front gate of a fortress. The gate temporarily falls back in place, but it isn't staying there. All that is holding it is the muscle of the fanatics behind it, and they are getting tired holding it up.

We see the same effect with human rights and probably drug policy as well. Some hysterical efforts to keep the gate closed, some screaming rhetoric of Doom and The End Times. Addicts in the streets!

Anger isn't sustaining, however, and the implacable facts just keep pushing, pushing on that gate.

I am grateful to Glenn (and Cato) for putting together the facts on Portugal's experiment. It is certainly past time the general public heard about what Portugal is doing. I hope the combination of a well-organized study, combined with Cato's media muscle, and a generally more savvy media consumer might mean the news about Portugal's success will finally get some real press.

One more heavy fact shoving shoving that gate down. And once the gate is down, it doesn't go back up again.

We live in interesting times. Everything is up for grabs. Despair is for those who are afraid to face change.

Thanks Glenn. Keep up the good work.

Hey, I read your letter here and enjoyed it so much that I went and read all your other ones! I like Juan Cole, but I feel like he got hung up on semantics in this essay and missed the forest for the trees. Sort of what you said.

I don't agree with you all the time (Tax policy, Israel) but I appreciate that you seem honest and interesting.

If you are a premium member, as one of your posts indicated, you ought to head over to Salon TableTalk and join the discussion.

Go to the White House thread for political stuff. The Politics Thread is infested with lunatics.

You'll probably also want to learn how the Twit filter works (Gawd, if we only had one we could use here!) Saves a lot of heartburn and precious, precious pixels...