President Donald Trump‘s executive order ending the federal government’s push to transition to paper straws is a good reminder that environmentally-obsessed Democrats regularly botch “The Science.” This is especially true when it comes to their climate policies.

Trump’s executive order naturally earned a response from climate groups such as Oceana, whose “plastics campaign director” warned that “the world is facing a plastic pollution crisis, and we can no longer ignore one of the biggest environmental threats facing our oceans and our planet today.” Plastic straws, we were told, are a massive environmental threat. That’s why multiple Democratic states and cities have banned or restricted them.

However, the idea to ban plastic straws stemmed from a study that found that Americans use 500 million plastic straws per day. That “study,” though, was an estimate from a 9-year-old child. It became gospel truth around 2018 among liberal media outlets, politicians in California and Hawaii, and environmental activist groups such as the Sierra Club.

In reality, however, the United States is hardly a global player when it comes to plastic pollution. The U.S. is responsible for less than 1% of global mismanaged plastic waste, with plastic straws making up a fraction of that share. China, in comparison, is responsible for more than 20% of global mismanaged plastic waste. Meanwhile, on the straw question specifically, a real study from Belgium found that paper straws have a higher concentration of “forever chemicals” than the plastic straws they are replacing.

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This is how it so often goes for Democrats trying to “save the planet” with their heavy-handed restrictions. Bans on single-use plastics, including plastic bags, led to New Jersey residents tripling their plastic consumption and using reusable grocery bags that are worse for the environment. California’s fast-approaching ban on gas-powered cars in favor of electric vehicles has several drawbacks for the environment, as does the state’s insistence on banning nuclear energy as part of its carbon-free energy grid.

The Democratic Party’s junk science on environmental matters makes the environment worse and life more inconvenient for people. Nothing shows that better than the bizarre panic over plastic straws. It is a statistically insignificant portion of global plastic pollution that rose to prominence based on a “study” from a third grader, which managed to make it all the way to the desk of the president.