The Wowster considers the fag end of our crowded planet

HUMAN BEINGS are altering the landscape and shaping our crowded planet in a way that has never happened before.

It took until 1800 for the planet’s population to hit 1bn and it is set to hit 7bn with a billion being added in the next few years alone.

Reductio ad smokem
The numbers are mind-boggling. Take any human activity and you can multiply it to the point of absurdity. 47bn cigarettes were sold in Britain over the past 12 months to 14m smokers.

It is estimated that there are over a trillion fag butts lying discarded in the UK.

There’s tar in them thar hills
Cigarette butts are not readily bio-degradable and will take around 30,000 years to break down. The result of this is that the Earth’s crust will gradually be replaced by a carpet of them.

Imagine it – we will eventually be living on top of a dense stratum of fag ends.

The Ciggiezoic Era
Future geologists will study the Cenozoic, the Neogene and Holocene periods – all overlain by the Ciggiezoic era.

Plate tectonic pressure will, over hundreds of millions of years, create new geological formation – the Rothmans Rift Valley, the SuperKings Range and the Berkeley Massif. The Great Tar Lakes of the North-East will be a future rich source of petro-chemicals and other goodies, coughed up by the emphysemic earth.

The Time Machine
Step forward 100m years. The Butt Escarpment surrounding Newcastle contains the remains of fagzillions of butts and boozeillions of cans of Red Bull and bottles of Newcastle Brown.

Here and there the precious fossils of street drinkers protrude from the ossified strata – petrified where they lay 200m years ago. Scientists manage to extract DNA from a jawbone in a futile attempt to understand our crowded planet and how we got here.

Apocalypse now. A warning from sunny California…

Do you agree with this fag end analysis and what happens if they discover the fossilised remains of Simon Cowell? Will anyone understand? Feedback welcome

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