Interview: Professor Mark Maslin - ’We really have contaminated everywhere’

Mark Maslin - Professor Mark Maslin (UCL Geography) discusses the damage that humans have caused to the planet and how to save the world. If you ever want a fact that exemplifies how the climate crisis has reached a new low, just look downwards. 'Something that struck me as iconic was when divers found a plastic bag in the bottom of the Mariana Trench, seven miles below the surface of the ocean,' says Mark Maslin, a professor of earth system science at University College  London  and author of punchy new book How To Save Our Planet. 'That, for me, was just like, oh my word, we really have contaminated everywhere. As an oceanographer, you think, no, nothing can get.. oh yeah, it did.' Here's something else that will bring you back down to earth when it comes to plastic pollution: there are now more Lego people in the world than there are real people. 'There's something like ten billion of them,' he says.