To know Paris is to know a great deal. — Henry Miller

It was a sun-drenched April day in New York. Outside the United Nations headquarters on First Avenue, the temperature was in the mid-70s and gentle spring breezes swept northward as they often do in the middle of April. Inside the building, the mood was equally radiant. At the Press Center, reporters from all around the world were waiting for Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to come out and announce what he would later characterize as a historic event.

Because, on this day, 22 April 2016, 175 countries, ranging from small ones like Barbados, Nauru, and Palau, to behemoths such as India, China, and the United States, would unify and sign an agreement to combat global climate change. To create that extra pizzazz, celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio were on hand, too. For the last several decades, countries had met all over the world, lastly being in Paris, to decide on the right course of action for mitigating climate change. They had debated and negotiated over how to do this without hampering their own progress. This day would be a culmination of all of those negotiations and hard work. …

A Global Response to a Global Problem

8.3 billion metric tons — that’s the amount of plastic produced so far in the history of mankind. That’s enough to fill the Empire State Building 25,000 times from its base to the radio antenna, the Eiffel Tower 822,000 times, the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur close to 225,000 times, and the Statue of Liberty, from pedestal to torch, 37 million times. And in the ocean? By 2050 — and that is within many of our lifetimes — there are going to be more plastic particles in the ocean than even the number of fish.

Synthetic plastic has become the prototypical material of the modern convenience-based lifestyle since its invention just 160 years ago. Need a way to carry your groceries? A plastic bag is ideal. Want a cheap, flexible, and robust material to produce your goods on a low budget? Plastic is the go-to ingredient. In fact, plastic has become an essential part of our daily life due to its indispensability as the miracle material. But this indispensability comes at a high price. Plastic does not decompose naturally. That means the plastic wrap that you discarded today will stay around for at least the next 5,000 years. During that time, countless storks and turtles will die from being suffocated from leftover plastic fragments, river ways will be blocked, and another million seahorses will mistake plastic waste for twigs they can latch on to for survival. And it is getting worse. The equivalent of a truckload of plastic enters the ocean and 1 million new soda bottles are created every minute. …