Well, interestingly, your post was next on my internet browse after reading an article about Trump's pulling back on Obama-era regulations on car emissions. So, I'm angry right now and very sympathetic to this author's ear. We have all fallen into two camps on this forum, and in general: those who believe climate change, unfettered capitalism, and the upset of the ecological web of life is a real problem, and those who don't.
Is the author of this piece being hyperbolic? Maybe. His tone is a bit despairing.
I didn't get that he disapproves of having children--he was stating a fact: increasing the burden of a human population that refuses to rein in practices and behaviors that are simply not sustainable is just going to make things worse faster.
I am optimistically hoping that before it's too late, we can back-pedal on our mass-suicidal tendencies to gobble up all the resources that sustain us as part of the web of life. His best paragraph was toward the end:
Living ethically means understanding that our actions have consequences, taking responsibility for how those consequences ripple out across the web of life in which each of us is irrevocably enmeshed and working every day to ease what suffering we can. Living ethically means limiting our desires, respecting the deep interdependence of all things in nature and honoring the fact that our existence on this planet is a gift that comes from nowhere and may be taken back at any time.
I know some of us on this forum are in the first camp, and those who are in the second. I'm not going to disparage this author's fears. I share them, frankly. It's odd that it isn't enough to overfish, kill coral reefs, melt the Arctics, smog up cities and make people sick with asthma and cancer, drive to extinction millions of species, drive away the livelihoods of indigenous people in order to make profit, and deny the findings of 95% of scientists worldwide who say greenhouse gasses are creating havoc and will continue to do so, while we watch extreme weather flatten whole towns. That's not enough. Because we, in the first camp, are just a bunch of snowflakes.