> The environmental movement does itself no favours either by pursuing high social cost but low impact interventions like paper straws

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.