Humanity may be at risk of being strangled by a plastic straw

But the realization of potential dangers also brought counter measures to protect the species. Advancements in medical research helped mitigate the deadly impact of communicable diseases. International treaties and a fear of mutual destruction have so far saved the world from a nuclear war.

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In the last few decades, the overwhelming belief has been that climate change is the big danger that could bring about the end of humanity. As awareness of the consequences of climate change grew widespread, it was clear that the best counter-measure to tackle this peril would be to encourage sustainable behaviour among nations, corporates and ordinary citizens around the world.

Changing any human behaviour and then ensuring that such a change is sustained as a habit are some of the most difficult tasks anyone could take up. One reason why behavioural change is so tough to achieve is that many of the problems that necessitate this change do not have visible proof.

For example, creating a habit of hand-washing is challenging because the germs present on one’s hands are not visible to us. If one’s hands look clean, it is very difficult to convince someone that they need cleaning.

Even if a problem is visibly evident, it is not easy to convince people to adopt corrective behaviour.

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The display on a vehicle’s speedometer, for example, clearly indicates the speed at which one is driving. But when the needle crosses a safe limit, does that awareness translate into appropriate action? Does the driver’s foot move from the accelerator to the brake pedal? The driver will adopt the right behaviour of slowing down the vehicle only if he or she can correlate a refusal to do so with a potential accident in the future.

But it is not easy to get humans to anticipate tragedies that could befall them. The human brain is very poor at forecasting dangers. This is even more so if the probability of an adverse outcome is very low. The problem of poor risk assessment becomes more acute if the possibility of a tragic event is farther in future and is seen as just another uncertainty (which, unlike risk, can’t be quantified).

Several human-behaviour experts, like Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, are deeply pessimistic about getting ordinary people to adopt eco-friendly behaviour. People hear from experts that the real consequences of climate change will only come to bear a few generations later.

These individuals do not get to see any visible proof of the fallout of their unsustainable behaviours. They do not actually see Antarctica’s ice melting or feel the level of carbon dioxide increasing in the atmosphere. So they are unsure about the scary future scenarios that environmentalists have been painting for long.

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With so much uncertainty around, it is difficult to convince an ordinary person to accept short-term costs and reductions in their living standards to save future generations of humanity from the perils of climate change.

But a video clip did help change this situation. A decade ago, a video of a sea turtle with a plastic straw stuck in its nostril went viral. That image suddenly made plastic pollution a here-and-now problem and gave it an emotional charge. The problem now had a visible face: the plastic straw. No wonder the video spurred a wave of activism that was aimed at curtailing the use of plastic.

The rational side of the plastic-straw problem was also staggering. Studies show that more than 390 million plastic straws are used every day in the US. These straws are not recyclable because they are so small. They take at least 200 years to decompose.

President Trump has resurrected the ghost of climate scepticism.

In a way, it was fortuitous that the plastic straw was a daily-use product in the US. Each ‘straw usage occasion’ became an opportunity to remind people about the problem of environmental unsustainability.

So the lowly plastic straw played a pivotal role in reminding ordinary citizens that they too were responsible for destroying the environment, which in turn meant that each of them had a role to play in taking care of the planet we inhabit.

It is in this context that we should evaluate the executive order of US President Donald Trump to revive the use of plastic straws. This decision is perhaps even more consequential than his decision to pull out of the Paris accord. The latter was a decision that is easily reversible. The US can rejoin the Paris accord yet again. But the daily use of plastic straws is about popular attitudes.

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It was with much difficulty that environmentalists had managed to convince Americans at large to adopt sustainable behaviours like using paper straws. But with President Trump’s executive order, they have begun walking back to the very behaviours they had abandoned for a better world.

From now on, every time someone in the US uses a plastic straw, that person may be reminded of arguments against the warnings of environmentalists. President Trump has resurrected the ghost of climate scepticism. His executive order has put paid to all the effort made so far to encourage planet-first behaviour.

In this changed context, it will become increasingly difficult to encourage sustainable practices. Yes, the future of humanity is exposed to the risk of being strangled by a lowly plastic straw.

The author is chief evangelist, Fractal Analytics.