There is no amount of paper straws that will offset anything the rich deciders do. It's a ploy for time for no reason whatsoever.
But we are told that plastic straws are the issue, and switching to paper straws (that you need to use twice as many of when they inevitably dissolve) will solve the problems. Meanwhile, the H&M polyester dress that you wear 3 times before throwing it away takes as much energy as 2000x paper straws to manufacturer.
My actual neighbor, gets a talk then a call to the local enforcement agency if it doesn't improve.
It's unfortunate we can't call a local agency to fix their attitude, but at least we can do our part. What it's worth if you don't even try?
Is there a local enforcement agency for... tidy lawns where you live?
1. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-coal-power-ri...
It isn't a broken windows problem as much as drawing 2 billion people out of poverty is more urgent than most other concerns.
The environmental movement does itself no favours either by pursuing high social cost but low impact interventions like paper straws and ignoring (or outright vilifying) nuclear as a viable path forward.
Finally, there's a huge disconnect between the (supposed) low cost of renewables and what people experience on the ground. Countries like Germany are a good example of this. The constant refrain is that solar and wind are super cheap and are running more and more of the country, but those savings (if real) don't make it to the average rate payer. Something is clearly wrong here. Either the cost claims are incomplete and don't factor in something important or the auction mechanism used to set prices must be discarded. But the disparity between claiming massive cost benefits while having people pay more sours the public on the technology and destroys credibility.
How much energy has the environmental movement put into the paper straw topic compared to the attention it is continuously getting from those trying to ridicule the environmental movement?
None of my environment activist friends ever talks about plastic/paper straws. They tend to drink straight out of the glass/cup/bottle/can if anything. The only people bringing this up are those continuously pushing against change and those not realizing that it is just a big distraction topic to get people worked up.
It is quite exemplary how often the topic has been mentioned independently in just the discussions of this article.
Please stop falling for this.
"the methane emissions alone from Turkmenistan’s two main fossil fuel fields caused more global heating in 2022 than the entire carbon emissions of the UK"
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/aug/31/turkmeni...
"The biggest event was a leak of 427 tonnes an hour in August, near Turkmenistan’s Caspian coast and a major pipeline. That single leak was equivalent to the rate of emissions from 67m cars, or the hourly national emissions of France."
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/06/revealed...
That was a big self-own from a group that thought they have a carte blanche and can just ignore those pesky normies instead of explaining why the changes are good for them, too. And being smarter in picking battles. And minimizing inconveniences from unavoidable sharp edges.
Could we please stop with this strawman (sorry pun) topic of paper straws? Nobody claims that they solve the problems and they have just become this distracting meme that ridicules all efforts at environmental protection. Yes plastic straws are bad, no they are not among the top-10 problems humanity needs to address and yes the topic has been blown out of proportion just to make fun of things. If you care, do you not realize that every time you bring this up you are doing us all a disservice?
So, please, let's drop it and focus on actual issues of regulatory approaches to climate change instead.
Sanitation service is expensive. It's an under valued historical victory in rich countries.
Even in America and among Republicans there's support for using less plastic straws and unless there's some extremely unexpected overlaps in opinion it basically means the only people who think it's a bad move also don't care about climate change and environmentalism seperate from the straw issue.