To truly rid the oceans of plastic, what we need to do is two things: One, we need to clean up the legacy pollution, the stuff that has been accumulating for decades and doesn't go away by itself. But, two, we need to close the tap, which means preventing more plastic from reaching the oceans in the first place.

Boyan Slat

The ocean is the lifeblood of our world. If we were to lose our fish that we appreciate so much by overfishing; or if we were to lose some of our favorite beaches to overbuilding and pollution, then how would we feel? It's become a case of not knowing what you've got until it's gone.

Aaron Peirsol

My guess is that while the elites would like cleaner air, they are not willing to give up the convenience of being able to use their cars at will to get it, perhaps because they believe (I suspect incorrectly) that they can protect themselves from the consequences of vehicular pollution by investing in air-conditioners and air purifiers.

Abhijit Banerjee

Today we're dumping 70 million tons of global-warming pollution into the environment, and tomorrow we will dump more, and there is no effective worldwide response. Until we start sharply reducing global-warming pollution, I will feel that I have failed.

Al Gore

Cities all over the world are getting bigger as more and more people move from rural to urban sites, but that has created enormous problems with respect to environmental pollution and the general quality of life.

Alan Dundes

I hope people will learn more about agriculture in America. About locally grown farming and about water conservation. About how much pollution results from beef and pig farming.

Alec Baldwin

In tough times, some of us see protecting the climate as a luxury, but that's an outdated 20th-century worldview from a time when we thought industrialization was the end goal, waste was growth, and wealth meant a thick haze of air pollution.

Alex Steffen

Electric cars aren't pollution-free; they have to get their energy from somewhere.

Alexandra Paul

Without the EPA and the national pollution safeguards it enforces, more children would have asthma. Our water would be less safe. More chemicals would poison our bodies. And more people would die prematurely from respiratory diseases and heart attacks.

Amber Valletta

As a native Oklahoman, I'm dismayed by what fossil fuel pollution has done to the Sooner State.

Amber Valletta

We want people to tell us the possible steps that can be taken to save ourselves from the harmful effects of air pollution.

Arvind Kejriwal

The environment will continue to deteriorate until pollution practices are abandoned.

B. F. Skinner

Must we wait for selection to solve the problems of overpopulation, exhaustion of resources, pollution of the environment and a nuclear holocaust, or can we take explicit steps to make our future more secure? In the latter case, must we not transcend selection?

B. F. Skinner

What they are doing is taking something that otherwise creates pollution and turning it into something useful.

Barbara Lee

Environmental pollution is an incurable disease. It can only be prevented.

Barry Commoner

Seen that way, the wholesale transformation of production technologies that is mandated by pollution prevention creates a new surge of economic development.

Barry Commoner

Like air pollution, flood risk is a threat that government should be protecting us against.

Barry Gardiner

Years of government inaction on air pollution has got people thinking that the state cannot even protect basic public goods like clean air.

Barry Gardiner

Thanks to David Attenborough and 'Blue Planet 2,' we've become aware of the damage to our oceans from plastic pollution. We now know to use textile shopping bags instead of plastic, reuse coffee-cups and refuse polystyrene ones, and avoid plastic straws when ordering a drink at the bar.

Barry Gardiner

I did long-term re-insurance claims. Asbestos, health hazards, pollution. It was very boring. But I've got quite a mathematical brain and it paid well.

Ben Eine

In many people's minds, Everest has lost her crown. She has become a mountain synonymous with death, exploitation and pollution.

Ben Fogle