The arts world is currently running a laudable campaign to stem population growth. It started in celluloid with I Don’t Know How She Does It, We Need to Talk About Kevin and the recently released Friends With Kids — three 100-minute ads for getting your tubes tied, so miserable do they make motherhood appear.

Now, making the case with greater intent, comes Ten Billion at the Royal Court, the title a reference to the likely size of the global population by the end of this century.

Ten Billion isn’t really a play, more an impassioned sermon. It is given by a real Oxbridge scientist, Stephen Emmott. This modern-day Malthus, who accidentally channels Hugh Laurie in House thanks to a back injury and a shared “thinking woman’s crumpet” appeal, paints a bleak picture of the environmental impact of our rapid multiplication.

It feels well-timed. This week the first slew of data from the 2011 Census was released, showing that England and Wales are currently in the middle of a mini baby boom. The number of children under one is up a fifth on a decade ago.

This was expected. Immigration means there are more women of child-bearing age, immigrants tend to have bigger families and those (mostly British-born) women who delayed having children in their twenties have had them in their thirties and forties instead. And, as the baby-boomers’ children are now having children themselves, fertility may well remain elevated for some years.

Of course, our birth-rate spike is small fry in a world growing ever bigger. But what was typical about the reaction to it is that economics trumped environment. The pessimists fretted about the impact on primary school places and housing, while the optimists — such as Tory MP Elizabeth Truss in the Times yesterday — saw only a financial boost in having more young people to pay for the elderly. It showed how desperately we need more voices like Emmott’s, who can make the case for manageable population decline across the world.

The old argument goes that we will “technologise” ourselves out of enviro-geddon but, as Emmott notes, we have “technologised” ourselves into our problems in the first place. I am a fully-paid up member of the Climate Change Club (a wholly-inadequate £3 a month to Greenpeace) but even those who aren’t should fear resources becoming ever more stretched.

Walking home slightly dazed after Ten Billion, the old (inaccurate) quip by Sam Levenson stuck in my head. “Somewhere on this globe a woman gives birth to a child every 10 seconds. We have to find this woman and stop her.” I suspect by 2100, if we are 10 billion or more, that joke will have worn thin.

Yes, football is our game too

A good year after everyone else started raving about it, I finally saw an episode of Twenty Twelve this week. The mockumentary, focusing on the fictitious Olympic Deliverance Committee, has been widely praised for managing to be farcical and absurd, yet remarkably close to the truth.

So it seemed almost inevitable that after the series discussed fears of empty stands at the women’s football (as the PR executive put it: “They love women, they love football. But women’s football? Eh-er”), gloomy headlines about ticket sales would follow.

Olympic cynic though I am, women’s football can be happy with its performance. For Team GB’s first match, which starts the Games, 37,000 fans are expected — that compares with the 5,000 for the cup final this season. It is also the fastest growing sport in the country. It may not be such a story or of such satirical amusement but women’s football has never been more popular.

Buying British is easy and can end the slump

I began an experiment this week, trying only to buy goods made in Britain. Despite the extensive label-checking this demands, it’s been easy so far, although I did accidentally buy some extraordinarily expensive, start-of-the-season cherries (£7.99 for a punnet, Marks & Spencer? Small wonder you’re struggling).

Despite all we hear about the death of British manufacturing, patriotic purchasing is still possible and websites such as Still Made in Britain and Want to Buy British make finding these products simple. So it’s strange that beyond Mary Portas’s laudable campaigning there hasn’t been a big effort to persuade us to have the Union Flag in our hearts as we shop, a move which could help pull our country out of the financial fug.

Tory MP Richard Drax says one message he is imparting as he escorts foreign VIPs during the Olympics is “to buy British”. Predictably, the Games’s “fanwear” merchandise is being made by Adidas in Cambodian factories where machinists work six-day weeks. How depressing that an Olympic sponsor is failing to practise what politicians are preaching.

Career mums just inspire me

The campaign to make working mothers feel more guilt than Saint Jerome continues apace. Yesterday, Woman’s Hour asked: “Has feminism encouraged women to put their career above the needs of children and neglect the importance of home life?” The show hadn’t jumped Quantum Leap style back to the Fifties: the question stemmed from an angst-inducing book by Angela Neustatter, A Home for the Heart.

It’s strange that this question is only asked of women. As the daughter of an ambitious mother though, I can offer an answer. Her working didn’t emotionally scar me, it inspired me.