Global deforestation, the environmental disaster forewarned by eco-radicals since as far back as 1980, has finally and irreversibly arrived, spokespersons from Worldwide PulpCo announced Monday. The final tree, a 120-foot-tall Russian fir located near the timber line in a remote region of northwest Siberia, was cut down by PulpCo and converted into 10,000 sanitary straw wrappers for a major national fast-food chain.
With the elimination of trees, the earth’s leading producer of oxygen, biologists believe all oxygen-dependent animal and plant species will soon become extinct.
“This is somewhat of a setback,” PulpCo CEO Douglas Langley said. “But we want to assure our customers that we will continue our commitment to producing top-quality consumer paper products.”
Ecologists predict that by late June, the planet will be littered with the unburied corpses of most, if not all, of the earth’s fauna.
Despite the impending apocalypse, accountants for PulpCo assured shareholders in an emergency meeting that the company’s earnings would continue to grow.
“Last quarter, earnings reached one of the highest levels in our company’s history, and there is no reason to expect our profitability to drop, though we may need to step up our marketing efforts for resume-quality cotton bond paper.”
Environmental groups such as Earth First, Save the Rain-forest and Greenpeace were despondent over the news.
“No one listened to such experts as Sting, Christopher Reeve and Whoopi Goldberg when they predicted that at the current rate, the earth would be deforested by the year 2000,” said Renee Jau-bert, co-founder of Greenpeace. “Well, as usual, some of Hollywood’s biggest stars were right.”
Jaubert added that with the environment now destroyed, Green-peace will focus on the alarming worldwide depletion of hats.
Even more important than environmental concerns, the deforestation has raised the issue of finding new paper sources. According to the Senate Joint Council on Paper Sources, paper company scientists are already developing a new, improved paper source by converting oil and coal into napkins and paper towels.
“We have also found that when certain sea creatures are burned and spun through a high-speed centrifuge,” scientist James DeVries said, “it creates an organic pulp-like substance that closely resembles paper.”
One negative side effect of this process, according to DeVries, is that it takes an estimated 500 whales to make just one sheet of 8 1/2″ by 11″ paper. At that rate, whales, as well as many other aquatic species, could face extinction by year’s end.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” responded Harrison Graves, president and CEO of United Paper, when asked if he was aware of the potential ramifications of whale-based paper products.
Graves, like many of his fellow CEOs who sit on the Senate Joint Council, did express disappointment that they will no longer have traditional firewood for the fireplaces at their Aspen ski chalets, and that they will no longer be able to enjoy steaks and other foods after the extinction of all carbon-based life from the earth.
Said U.S. Rep. Carl Berkin (R–AR), “The U.S. is committed to being a world leader in producing paper, and no lack of trees or end to life on this planet is going to stop us. Remember, the U.S. is number one. Number one, baby.”
