I don't know how often you go shopping, but 132 shopping trips is a lot. If you go shopping once a week with the same bags every time, your four-year-old bags would have crossed the threshold less than a year ago.
It's good that your bags are recycled, and I have no idea if the author's metric was assuming recycled materials. However, since the recycling process is not particularly clean, I suspect the numbers still aren't great.
> if you are going grocery shopping, just bring your bags?
The problem is, what happens when I get to a store and I don't have a bag with me? I'm going to need to buy a new one. If this happens on more than 1 out of 132 shopping trips, I'll end up with a greater carbon impact than if I'd used a single-use bag.
Now, maybe you'd argue that I should never forget my bag. Maybe so, but I can tell you that I'm going to forget, and I'd posit that a lot of other people are going to forget too. The question is not what people should do, but what this law will in fact cause them to do.
IMO, a simple 10¢ surcharge per plastic bag would be far more effective.
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(It is admittedly worse for me because I live in Manhattan and don't have a car. I often go to stores I pass while on a walk, when I don't have a bag with me because I was not explicitly planning to go shopping. Even so, I suspect car owners will also forget their bags from time to time. Also, environmental policies should encourage no- and low-car lifestyles.)
And then it would make it an actual problem for the poor, more so than OP hypothesis that the law "affects poor people the most as they are the most likely to reuse single use bags as garbage liners".
Because a surcharge on single use bags is essentially turning them into a luxury, i.e. if you are poor, you may not go grocery shopping without planning it first.
I don't see how that's fair.
Secondly... I consider myself on the liberal side of the political spectrum, I think income inequality is a huge problem and we need stronger social safety net. However, I really reject the idea that if some comfort wouldn't be available to poor people, it shouldn't be available to anyone. We want to achieve equality by raising the standard of living at the low end, not lowering the high end. The latter just makes everyone worse off.
It seems that the author main point is that they are "inconvenient":
> This law is a huge inconvenience for most people in the state. How can I tell? Because from my experience, the overwhelming majority of people choose not to walk around with a bag full of reusable bags.
To which anyone would reply that, if you are going grocery shopping, just bring your bags?
I mean, I'm old enough to remember when stores didn't give bags away, and people were doing just fine. Why the fuss over bringing a good practice back?