We've ruined the sea

[naimless]

I think I'd rather think that this could be solved with a sieve. After all, me not using plastic for the rest of my life still isn't going to give me a clean conscience when I have to pay taxes to a government that thinks depleted uranium missiles are a good idea.

Now we see why you can't communicate.

Ironically, you're manner of thinking for the quoted above is precisely how the common parsnip... I mean person thinks.

Let's diagram it out:
1) You encounter a problem (garbage plastic in the ocean)!
2) You think up a simplistic solution that will never work.
(Please note said solution may have parts of it included into a much greater and more complex solution)

3) You come up with a Prohibition-style answer if the former simplistic solution would not work
3A) You do not notice that Prohibition is a simple answer in it of itself and suffers from the same faults the first solution runs into

4) Bargaining. You bargain away your disappointment at there being unpleasant solutions that you thought of by exchanging it with another "evil".

5) And that's where you give up.
Surprisingly, I've grown very used to defusing precisely the above, but only if I can inject before step 2 something like:
" 2A) Assuage yourself or the other that it is not hopeless/lost/impossible."
" 2B) Setup a collaboration between learned experts to consult on methodologies from solving 1)"
" 2C) Based on the cost-benefits analysis of 2B, decide upon a course of action to support."
" 2D) Continue on evaluating through your ideas and compare/contrast."

The long term cost-benefit analysis to humanity is very different to the cost-benefit analysis of a politician funded by business lobbyists. Generally the latter have an "exit strategy" or just a realisation that their death is probably coming a lot quicker than the death of humanity.

It's never the facts or the severity of nature that bothers me... it's just trying to co-exist with people who I know can't comprehend it in a similar way and probably never will, no matter how many ways I try and communicate it.

If I can teach a six year old girl on the public subway the essential background of wave/particle duality using shoes, mirrored surfaces (windows) and arm gestures, what makes you think that the other (they) can't comprehend it in a similar way?

The primary rejection of external, deeper thoughts for most people is an identification of the other as "not friendly".

When you assuage them, build a rapport, have them trust your approach, you'll find other people to give you many deep and interesting insights of their own.

In my experience, six year olds are genuinely a lot wiser than adults who are already socially conditioned and have a lot invested in plastic.