David Glick - 50 Ways to F**k the Planet

Fill several dozen bin bags with rhizomes and place in the back of a truck with blacked-out windows. Inside the truck, start shredding the roots into pea-sized pieces, a tedious process offset by the knowledge that each tiny shred is sufficient to start a fresh colony in a location of your choosing. As you leave, be sure to drive over the dig site; scraps of knotweed stuck to tyres have, in the past, facilitated cross-country transfer with triumphant results.

Now for the fun bit. The list of attack sites is innumerable. Some are fairly obvious but, really, it’s up to you. Go crazy. National Parks are particularly fair game as, clearly, is any site considered naturally exquisite. Thrill-seekers might want to share their cargo with the grounds of Balmoral or Buckingham Palace. Prince Charles’s organic estate at Highgrove exerts a certain pull, as does the prime minister’s country residence at Chequers. Catapults armed with pellets of knotweed rhizomes and weighed down with pebbles seem an obvious tactic for penetrating such hallowed grounds. Maybe consider a remote-controlled plane with remotely activated fuselage doors to release knotweed bombs. Target the gardens of folk like Alan Titchmarsh, whose penchant for televised botany more than justifies such actions. The world-famous Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. The Royal Horticultural Society’s showcase at Wisley. The list is endless. Scatter knotweed roots into the Thames to float downstream and impregnate the banks. They might even drift out to sea and contaminate some faraway land. Risk her remains on the playing fields of major sports stadia – Anfield, Aintree or central court at Wimbledon. London’s 2012 Olympic site would have been another indisputable target, but a welcome infestation has already swamped 10 acres of it, amid reassuring reports that it may even delay the games. Hire a hot-air balloon and float above the countryside with several kilos of chopped knotweed for company. Elevate to several hundred metres and release 37,000 snippets of rhizomes at five-minute intervals. Why not head abroad? Enough firearms and drugs are smuggled into Britain every year for you to be certain that a few sprigs of weed root will get through. Sniffer dogs aren’t trained to search out knotweed. Once on the mainland, you know what to do. Incidentally, the precise technique for dispersal is not really an issue. Either hurl into the air and let the weed herself decide where she lays her roots or place firmly into soil. Any soil will do; even the most wretched quality is sufficient for this hardy little sprig.

A word of warning: it is illegal to propagate or even transport knotweed. Although we don’t want to encourage law-breaking, sometimes the ultimate goal – that of completely f**king over the environment – must take precedence. Anyway, the sentence is soft in light of the potential rewards. On the slim chance that you get caught – and as yet no cases have come to light – you will face a maximum two-year sentence. With characteristically good behaviour, you’ll be out in a few months, just in time to witness the first shoots of your labour, before being caught hang-gliding with a sack of knotweed cuttings above the Blue Peter garden.

* Invasive species with predilection for eating knotweed is introduced by government, eradicating the weed within two years. Never.

* Japanese knotweed replaces rose and thistle as official emblems of England and Scotland. The EU adopts it as a symbol of unity. Unlikely.

* Council sued for manslaughter after child disappears down hole in playground caused by knotweed. Lawyers argue that officials displayed sufficient negligence by not heeding warnings. Knotweed control becomes pivotal issue during 2012 UK elections. Possible.

* Knotweed arrives on Orkney in summer of 2010. Arrival is traced back to climate-change charity walker relaxing after traipsing to John o’Groats on tedious walk to raise awareness. Credible.

* New superhybrid of Japanese knotweed, giant hogweed and the dreaded Russian vine is discovered. Tabloids dub it ‘Invasion of the Killer Knotweed II’. Bring it on.

Likelihood of knotweed colonizing most of Europe by 2020:78%

Hormone treatment for all!

* Dole out the contraceptive pill

* Turn sealife female

* De-fertilize fish

* Trout off the menu

Maybe the world will not end with a bang after all, but with a whimper. Instead of Armageddon and its attendant boiling seas and titanic ructions, maybe we’ll just finish up trapped in a unisex world, wondering where the next generation will come from. Already, Mother Nature has started the ball rolling. The feminization of wildlife is well underway amid welcome warnings that this could dismantle an evolutionary process which has taken 3.5 billion years to perfect.

You must aid the process. The experiment will start with fish and your plan is to transform all male freshwater fish into females, a move that will prove to be a less than progressive step for the future of the fish population. Although tests on fish breeding patterns are relatively rare, consensus and common sense dictate that making any species all female will have a profound effect on reproductive patterns. The sexual emancipation of the human female has handed you the perfect weapon. Millions claim that the contraceptive pill is a blessing. Not many expected it to prompt an environmental crisis.

Just above the West Yorkshire town of Castleford, close to the banks of the slow-moving River Aire, protrudes a pipe. Passers-by spare barely a second glance for yet another sewage outfall. They should take more notice. Or at least the blokes should. They are witnessing the cusp of the new sexual revolution. Within these brackish waters something odd is happening to fishing tackle, and we’re not talking rods and floats. The Aire’s male fish are turning into women, with tests indicating that 100 per cent of male fish show evidence of feminization.

The nondescript pipe above Castleford is dispensing, quite literally, the waste of humanity. In West Yorkshire, like in most places, quite a few women take precautions, and so their urine contains the female hormone oestrogen. It seems the fish here have been force-fed the female contraceptive pill. Over time, the males have begun to grow female reproductive tissues and organs. Parts of the testes turn into ovary tissue or, if they are really unlucky, development of the fish’s manhood is merely retarded. In lowland parts of the river, the government’s Environment Agency noticed up to half of the male fish developing eggs. Tests around the world reveal that even the tiniest traces of synthetic female hormone are sufficient to corrupt wild fish populations. Some scientists even suggest that the concentrations sufficient to make fish unisex are below detection limits in place for drinking water.

Your task is to give aquatic males the world over a helping hand in their quest to become women, albeit against their wishes. For this you will require supplies of the synthetic oestrogens widely used in the Pill. The obvious choice is etinyloestradiol, one of the most common components of the contraceptive and up to a hundred times more powerful than any naturally occurring oestrogen. Its potency is enormously reassuring. Medical advice for male-to-female transsexuals dictates that the stuff offers not only a long ‘half-life and high potency’ but, more importantly, gives ‘excellent feminizing effects’. Traces of the Pill have been found in waterways at dosages of one part per billion. If you can only double that, you will be assured of success in your aquatic sexualization experiment. Etinyloestradiol is made in industrial quantities and at face value costs less than 8 pence for a month’s supply. Several large UK companies manufacture etinyloestradiol in their laboratories. Around £10,000 should buy you enough to emulate the effects of 43,000 women taking the Pill, but for one day only. More than 3.5 million women take it every day in the UK, with 100 million worldwide. Clearly, you alone cannot afford to mimic the entire population of British women but, as a start, it will do. Be warned, though: you may have to justify your excessively large etinyloestradiol order by pretending that you are an NHS supplier.