system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: Choosing to have no children to "save the planet" is terrible reasoning

To start off, let me say that there are plenty of good moral reasons to not have children, like choosing to adopt because of all the neglected children already in the world, or maybe you have some genetic disease you don't wish to pass on (although I would never advocate for someone do to so).

My problem is the specific view held by rich (by world standards) liberal westerners who espouse the notion that them not having children is morally good because it limits overpopulation. I believe this is a ludicrous idea. 

For starters, rich, western countries do not have a problem with overpopulation. In fact, it seems to me that many have the opposite problem; too few babies. If each person in a country has on average below 2 children, then the "population pyramid" will begin to tip over. This, and the lengthening lifespan of people thanks to advancements in medicine, means that in several decades the vast majority of people will be retired elderly people who need a pension and the workforce will be much smaller. I think that, from an economics standpoint, this is not desirable. 

The problem when it comes to overpopulation is poor countries with lots of people. The good news if that as people get richer and more educated they *choose* to have fewer children. And the really good news, poor countries ARE becoming richer and more well educated. People are being pulled out of poverty now faster than ever in history! If you really cared about overpopulation, your goal should be to help make the world more rich, not have no children. 

Finally, I'd like to address the idea that there are already too many people on Earth, and that we need to decrease the human population drastically in order to not destroy the planet. Firstly, I don't think this is possible, given how the population pyramid will flip on it's head and the consequences of that. Secondly, I think this would be a poor solution anyway. The solution to global warming and the destruction of out planet is not to downscale society, where we all live off food grown in our backyard and refuse to use any technology because building that Iphone used child slave labor in Cambodia or wherever. 

The solution is massive societal change in how we make and use energy, how we dispose of our waste, how we build technology, how we do everything basically. We need to find a way to live in harmony with nature, not diminish our presence in it. And how do we achieve this? With technology, science and engineering. We need smart people working hard to solve all the problems that humanity currently faces as well as all the problems it will face in the future. In other words, we need more babies dammit! More babies who will grow up to be the next Elon Musk or the next Boyan Slat and make huge positive change in the world by being clever and working hard on the right problems. 

So, that's my view and I would like to have it challenged.
gpt
You forgot about immigration.  The fewer children born in rich countries, the more immigrants from poor countries they can take.  So the result of a rich American having 2 fewer kids can be "no change to number of kids growing up in America but two fewer kids growing up in India".