[Amake]

Because the chat is too hot at the moment, and I want to go through the arguments for and against this carefully.

There's an argument to be made that having children, or even adopting them from starving countries, as a privileged first world citizen, is selfish and wrong. It has to do with the unsustainable resource consumption of the first world, which we may only be able to limit by limiting our numbers. If you care about the long-term existence of life on this planet and want to make it your responsibility to limit the damage to our environment as far as you're personally able, your family life may have to take a back seat.

There's an argument against this that seems to amount to "other people are doing worse things", which is true as far as it goes. There's to my knowledge nothing that you and your family unto seven generations combined could possibly do to hurt this world that's even comparable to the auto industry or any one of like five hundred different very large businesses. But if you want to do what's good to the best of your abilities, that should not matter.

Other than that, I don't know anything.

It's my belief that having more human life in the world is in itself a worthwhile pursuit. That comes with being a humanist. There is of course a point where that's just not realistic, because the world - particularly the first world - can only support so many of us. Many bright environmentalists tell me we're already far beyond that point. I want to get this straightened out. I'm sure you have many different well-informed opinions on the matter.