The population of the world when I began typing this sentence was 6,665,854,432. Since then, five seconds have passed so you can add 4.2 births for each second.

Last week, the head of the International Rice Research Institute told Lateline: “As a world, we've been eating slightly more than we've been producing for about the seven years and so we've been gradually running down food stocks.”

This person is not talking about foie gras or that divine quince paste you get from the Queen Vic Market. She’s talking about rice.

And it’s not just food supplies under threat. In South Gippsland a patch of foreshore near a national park is earmarked for a desalination plant. We’ve drunk the rivers and the dams dry, now it’s the sea’s turn. It’s not the breeders’ fault for going at it night and day, you see, it’s nature’s fault for not planning for us properly. Nature is a bad host.

It’s amazing: debate about food and water always centres on how we can get more. A TV program recently featured a man standing in the middle of Russia in a field somewhere, crowing that here was enough land to feed the world. A world, which, incidentally, now contains 6,665,854,911 humans.

When you start looking for breeder supporters you find them everywhere. Our Premier John Brumby remarked this week that 72,000 Victorians were born last year. He wasn’t weeping, wringing his hands or even looking concerned. He was rubbing his hands together like a blue ribbon-winning pig farmer at the Royal Show.

I was horrified to discover last week (well, not horrified - that's a rhetorical flourish) that we pay people to breed. I mean, I knew about Howard's $5,000 lump sum payment per squab, a cynical incentive for people who can’t afford one to pop out a child so we maintain a home-grown pool of parking attendants, sweat shop workers and cadet journalists – every society needs its slave class, right John? But I didn’t know we also give them money to support their offspring, tiny individuals who will go on to consume more resources than their parents, resources we don't have. They should be paying people not to have children.

Thank God for homosexuals! Until recently, at least, we occupied the moral high ground when it came to reproducing; that is, we didn't. But that’s changing as our brothers and sisters fight for their right to christening party. I believe legal equality is a goal worth fighting for. But that doesn’t mean I ought to exercise every right I 'receive'. A government could award chimpanzees the right to drive at high speed on the freeway, but no sane chimpanzee would exercise that right if she understood the consequences. Similarly, a right is not an obligation: I don’t believe in marriage, but I know there are many same-sex couples who like the idea so I support that struggle. (Let’s hope they don’t decide to breed once hitched.)

Finally, I would like to mention a particular case, a breeding pair who spawned four offspring with no regard for the consequences to this planet. In the belief that they were contributing to the survival of our species, they devoted their entire lives and all their finances to raising their children, wearing themselves out in the process. They now reside in a retirement village, poor sods.

Let’s call them mum and dad.

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