THE environmental issues facing our planet are now viewed as an undeniable fact of life in the worlds of science, politics, and the media.

But despite this consensus, which is shared by the large majority of the public, issues such as climate change, ecology, and extinction still have a knack of getting lots of people very hot under the collar.

Scientists, politicians, and journalists will all be familiar with the bile and fury that often accompany the comments sections of their posts on social media.

Suggest we curb our reliance on meat to reduce methane from cows, and you will be greeted with remarks like: “What difference will that make? What about China? Fool!”

Venture the opinion that flooding of towns and villages will become more common as our winters turn wetter, and some worked-up angry fella will retort: “Oh ya? And how do you know that exactly? There was flooding in the 1920s, y’know?”

Not too long ago, I reported on a Cork ecologist’s hope that lynx will be re-wilded in parts of rural Ireland, and this inevitably prompted comments along the lines of “But what about the children?!”

However, there is one environmental issue that I assumed nobody could fudge or deny - or simply ignore in the hope that the problem will go away.

Plastic.

We all know that we have been producing too much of the damn stuff for too long, and we know it hangs around for decades or even centuries.

We have all seen the photos of fish and other aquatic animals tangled up in plastic, the crabs using bottles as makeshift homes... it’s in our seas and rivers, on our grass verges,........

© Evening Echo