I wonder if some third-grader could explain how a plastic straw that I put into the trash in Forest Park ends up in the ocean. When I went to school, I was taught about the hydrological cycle, which explains how water evaporates in one place and precipitates in another, but that doesn’t happen with plastic. My plastic straws are never going to end up in the ocean unless someone in the waste collection/recycling chain dumps them there. And if that is happening with straws, it is happening with other trash as well.
So the problem would not be with straws at all and we should deal with the real problem and not be distracted with feel-good green religion penance. I don’t fault the third-graders at all but the adults who are filling their minds with this propaganda and the editors of this paper who support it.
The climate activists are shamelessly filling the heads of children with nonsense and turning them against their parents. Read up on the Hitler Youth if you want to know how that turns out. Let’s have an adult debate on plastic straws if you want but leave the children out of it. Does anyone really believe that third-graders are smarter and wiser than adults? If you do, then put them in charge of everything. I guess they’re wiser than the school board who was convinced by them. But we all know they are just repeating what they’ve been told. Too bad they can’t add and subtract, but I guess that’s just old-fashioned, unenlightened education. Let’s teach our children instead of abusing them by using them as political pawns. Let’s teach them basic skills and critical thinking instead of political activism.
Richard Wright
Forest Park
