There are in fact over 6.6 billion, not 6.5 billion humans on earth that manniwood cited--I know it's hard to keep track. It is the elephant in the room that nobody wants to mention. We can only conserve so much; the number one driver behind consumption and all the environmental devastation, inequity, and poverty in the world is growth in population. Even one baby negates a lifetime of scrupulous environmental do-gooding.

Froggy's pyramid-scheme argument that we need a growing taxpaying population to support our elders and our government is a fallacy. Unsustainable growth is not the answer to a lack of social supports. In any event, it is amply proven that first world population can be maintained through immigration alone, and that the key to sustainable peace and prosperity in the developing world is smaller families.

"Tolerant" anonymous:

It seems absurd to complain that others are utilizing precious resources by having children when one is doing the same by just being alive.

It seems absurd to suggest a moral equivalence between "being alive" (which we did not choose) and "having children" (which is either chosen, or a result of a choice to have most likely unprotected sex and a choice not to abort). The only way to choose to stop existing is suicide. To not have children simply means to practice birth control (or for Catholics, abstinence). Are you suggesting that suicide is morally equivalent to birth control?

AfterThat:

If you aren't interested in having children, please don't. But, and this is a big but, please don't pat yourself of the back too much. You are still an American and even if you are living "green" you are still using a lot of those resources for yourself. I won't suggest that you should off yourself to fully realize your desire to limit global warming.

I give you credit for at least recognizing that the only way to not exist is suicide and that existing is not a moral choice. I give you no points for not acknowledging the obvious consequence that by having children, regardless of how "green" you choose to be, you are multiplying your environmental impact by the number of children you have and the number of offspring they have. Plus there is no guarantee that you will instill your "green" values in your offspring. After all, you've already set an example by having children.

Come peak oil and its aftermath you are quite correct that we will discover that we are in overshoot. A horrible scramble for life may ensue. I see no reason that I or my offspring shouldn't have a shot at making it through the population bottleneck.

This is what boggles. Obviously you and I deserve a shot to "make do" as we may in the awful event of this kind of population overshoot and resource bottleneck. But to say that "your (potential) offspring" should have a shot illlustrates the selfishness and exactly what the earlier letterwriter meant by saying that you should find another way to achieve immortality. By having "offspring" you are increases the resource contention, American-level consumption, and correspondingly reducing the "shot" that everyone else living no this planet has to "make it."

There's no need to reproduce, at all. Others are doing it for you, just fine. The human species is in no danger of extinction because people choose not to have children.

Brightstar, this kind of arms race mentality is a loser. You are never going to spread good ideas by outbreeding the fanatics.

The world can most certainly not handle far more than 6 billion people (there are over 6.6 billion already). There is very good evidence that the world cannot handle the number of people present already, even with most of them living in misery on a small fraction of American-level consumption. You blame "warlords and strife" for this level of human misery. Actually you have it backwards--war, strife, and misery are direct consequences of overpopulation. In any event, how exactly are global warming, exhaustion of the worlds fisheries, oil, natural gas, and fresh water, pollution and mass extinctions a consequence of "warlords and strife?" Rather than pointing the finger at developing countries, we should recognize that overpopulation is a global problem and that every person born into western countries contributes far more to these problems (even, as pointed out, living very "modestly" by western standards) than those unfortunates born into the dollar-a-day set.

The idea of "having a lot of kids" to indoctrinate them with your superior intellect is not only incredibly self-indulgent, but makes the problem much worse. Good ideas and good behaviors must spread on their own merit, not through a hypocritical and futile attempt to seed the gene pool.

You yourself reply to the "baby haters" (your term) with a non-sequitor attack on singles living alone. Leaving aside the obvious point that singles living alone still use far less resources even within the first generation than couples with multiple children, not breeding has nothing to do with being single or living alone. Lots of singles do have roommates for economic or social reasons, lots of couples choose not to have children, and anyone can "increase their family" by adopting any of the millions of children out there in need of homes already.

It's not an "either/or" proposition. Your astute rant is akin to "You claim that I should recycle aluminum cans, but CLEARLY vehicle emissions have a bigger impact on the environment, you hypocrite, so everything you say is nonsense. Now pardon me while I drive my Hummer to the landfill."

And the issue of whether to conceive is hardly irrelevant to this recurring topic of when it is appropriate to conceive. Either you don't want to discuss it, in which case you shouldn't be reading the letters, or you only want to hear one side of the issue.