Reusable straws (both plastic and metal) are available, as are paper and non-paper compostable straws. I don't know of any disability that requires people to use single-use-but-stays-around-forever straws.
If businesses aren't accommodating disabled patrons with any of the legal, readily available, reasonable solutions available, that seems like an ADA issue, though anyone who needs or wants straw should probably be proactive in preparing themselves in case facilities fail, which is simple enough to do.
I suspect the problems here are transition issues that'll disappear fairly soon (and will probably be dealt with better in the future as new jurisdictions adopt bans but have the benefit of seeing where the transition was rocky in the early places.)
Many of these alternatives are usable in some contexts for people with some disabilities requiring them to use straws, however, they're all also dangerous or unusable to some disabled people (paper straws can be a choking hazard, rigid straws of all kinds are dangerous for people with tics or other conditions that may lead to them biting down involuntarily, non-paper compostable straws pose allergy risks and are rarely labeled in such a way as to communicate whether they contain possible allergens, several types of reusable or compostable straws can be dangerous in sufficiently hot drinks) and disabled people with some combinations of conditions can end up having all of the alternatives potentially unsafe for them, save disposable non-compostable plastic.
> anyone who needs or wants straw should probably be proactive in preparing themselves in case facilities fail, which is simple enough to do.
That would be simple for most abled people to do, yes. It would be less simple for those disabled people for whom fetching a straw they brought with them and putting it in their drink would require assistance, which, as it happens, are also people who are rather likely to need straws to drink.
> I suspect the problems here are transition issues that'll disappear fairly soon
You don't seem to be aware of the problems that disabled people have been pointing out, so I think your suspicion may not be very well founded here.
Why are people so helpless? Jesus christ, it takes half a second to figure out this solution for yourself.
Metal straws are dangerous due to for many disabled people due to the risk of injuring themselves by biting down involuntarily because of the same disabilities which necessitate their use of straws in the first place. For many others, the inflexibility of metal straws mean that they do not actually enable them to drink independently.
> Why are people so helpless? Jesus christ, it takes half a second to figure out this solution for yourself.
It is indeed very easy to think of this approach. For people with disabilities which make metal straws unusable or dangerous, it probably doesn't take very long to think of why it isn't a solution for them.
(As a minor aside, as a person lacking any such disability: metal straws can be quite a painful experience with hot beverages. Although I'm given to understand that it's traditional in Argentina with mate, and my Argentine in-laws seemed much more comfortable doing so at a higher temperature than I was, so I guess it is probably possible to get used to that.)
The scope of people you mention with that disability is very very small. And still, they could work around metal by using a piece of rubber on the tip. Hell, someone could invent a special straw just for disabled people (we could make it longer and more flexible, you might call it a tube!).
Instead of ripping apart my lay ideas and complaining about our attempts at fixing climate change, perhaps we ought to be thinking of better solutions for our friends with disabilities. Because ultimately, climate change will take the lives of people with disabilities before it takes the lives of able-bodied people.
Environmentalism would be better served if environmentalists focused on deeper solutions and did not waste societal attention and resources on distractions of negligible outcome. Black-and-white thinking and choosing to die on every hill only serves to breed false self-satisfaction and alienate potential supporters.
We need to think about a world without throw-away plastic. Banning plastic straws is an exploration in to that world. If it turns out that there is absolutely no way to live in a world without plastic straws, then I am sure the ban will be undone. But I think we can get ahead of this challenge, it’s not that big.
There's no reason why the needs of disabled people must conflict with taking care of the environment. The apparent conflict in this situation was introduced because people developed their environmental policy proposals without any awareness of or care for the interests and needs of disabled people: if we do not account for the effects of policies on disabled people when deciding which policies to prioritize and how to implement them, some policies will look artificially more appealing because of our inattention to some of their costs and the policies we do choose to pursue will end up implemented in needlessly harmful ways simply because we weren't paying attention to whether we ended up causing harm to some people.
> Why are people so helpless?
I... you are literally talking about disabled people. A decent society should have some care for the needs of these people, and not ignore them when they tell us what is important to them.
Disabled people aren't helpless, they generally will do everything they can up until their disability stops them. I'm really struggling to think of a disability where someone would be prevented from putting a straw on their persons.
There are solutions to her problems, she just doesn’t want to change. The solutions she presents are regressive (“keep plastic straws behind the counter”) or dismissive (“don’t take away MY straws, take away someone else’s plastic”). I understand and I sympathize but I want to reduce plastic usage more than I want her to maintain her drinking strategy.
Not everywhere, they won't. Santa Barbara just passed a straw ban without any exceptions for disabled people who actually need plastic straws. In other places, it's still legal for restaurants to keep straws around for those who need them, but the restaurants don't all know that.
From what I can tell, reading what straw-using disabled people have to say about this, it's as frustrating for them as if there were suddenly a ban on toilet paper in public restrooms. They absolutely need this disposable item, and they have never needed to carry their own before, or ask about it in advance. Now all of a sudden they're stuck having to be super-prepared at all times they're out in public, or they risk not being able to meet a basic bodily need.