Beth Heflin, age 11, of Rockford, Illinois, for her question:

What will it cost to end pollution?

With money we can buy shoes and sodas, buns and bicycles    but money won't solve all our problems. A messy room won't clean itself if you offer it a dime. A dollar won't bring a dog back to life. World wide pollution kills countless numbers of animals and ruins the health and happiness of many people. It won't get better by itself, not even if we cover the whole world with money.

Of course, we need to spend many billions of dollars to pay the people who work on the stupendous clean up job. But unless all of us strive to make it work, the job will never be done. Each one of us must want, really want, a clean world, and we must toil to keep our own little corners spick and span. Down with vandals and litterbugs! Each one of us must plan and promise to help make things better. This, of course, requires work without pay    but it won't cost us a penny. This is more important than all the money we shall have to spend to clean up our massive, messy pollution.