50 Ways to F**k the Planet

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Let’s hear it for the clam

When scientists chose an estuarine site in the West Country to examine clams, which they had naively hand-picked in the hope that they would be free of chemicals, they experienced a bit of a shock. The clams were transsexual, their Devonian testes containing both sperm and eggs. 60 per cent were like this. For you, it offers a thrilling possibility: initial evidence that oestrogen can potentially survive in seawater, battling the salty tides to turn aquamarine life female. Here, quantities of the female hormone had messed around with clams at the bottom of the food chain. Could, you dare dream, the entire sea one day be declared girls only? Embarrassing speedos would become a thing of the past.

Little surprise that those studying the feminization of fish describe the West Country clam as the aquatic equivalent of the miner’s canary, the bird which chirps an alarm long before men are aware of impending doom. With the mines now mostly closed, instead there’s something in the water. The sexual revolution has proved to be intensely liberating for humanity. Now it is the turn of the misunderstood bloke fish who only ever wanted to be a woman. Once we start adding the Pill to the rivers of the world, there is no reset button. The new sexual revolution is underway.

WHAT’S THE DAMAGE?

* Government makes over-the-counter pill more widely available. Certainty.

* Male pill goes on general sale. Female carp duly start growing penises. Unlikely.

* Etinyloestradiol leak reported from factory into river system. Male fish in the area seen wearing matching bra and knickers. Scientists say this could be evidence of feminization. Unlikely.

* Male bull whale gives birth after growing ovaries. Never.

* Overhaul of the disposal of the contraceptive pill announced by government. From 2011 it has to be disposed of in special council bins and safely stored in landfill sites. Possible.

Likelihood of majority of male fish turning female by 2015: 23%