So by all means, let's keep working on 2, in our free time, while we focus on 1. (metaphorically - I understand lots of people can work on lots of different things)
We should absolutely address this! But we don't need to "uncover" or "explore the tip of the iceberg" when it comes to the impacts of climate change - they're big and catastrophic. That's the difference between the two crises.
Agree, yet consider this. During early COVID-19 crisis Earth civilization spent some many billions - I think above some trillions actually - USD equivalent fighting this rather little-known problem. Spending this kind of money on climate crisis can substantially improve things.
> I see 2 as something troubling
Plastic pollution is somewhat similar to early COVID-19 - we don't know long-term effects from this type of poisoning of our environment, so I'd err on the side of caution. It's not a good idea to keep microplastics in human organs - we just don't know how it could turn out to be, and we have reasons to suspect that our bodies, not evolved alongside the plastics, don't appreciate that.