Angela Logomasini, a senior fellow at Competitive Enterprise Institute, told Tate that "the idea that you're going to ban straws and save the world is ridiculous."I sometimes feel that environmental concern, or "care for creation" as it's known in The Episcopal Church, is just another exercise in the weird, middle-class pornography of chic causes. The people who tell me that it's an emergency never really act as if it is an emergency.
Plastic pollution in the ocean is a real problem, but only about 1 percent of it comes from the U.S. Of that 1 percent, only a tiny fraction comes from plastic straws.
How can that be? Celebrities tell us Americans use 500 million plastic straws every day. "Polluting water and killing sea life," according to actor Adrian Grenier.
The 500 million number is repeatedly used by the media. But it comes from a nine-year-old's school project. The real number is much less—closer to 175 million.
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