Sen. Kamala Harris is on board with banning plastic straws in America in the name of saving the planet, but she made it clear at CNN’s climate town hall that she’s no fan of the limp and wimpy alternative.
CNN moderator Erin Burnett asked Harris whether she would support a national ban on all plastic straws as part of a strategy to eliminate single-use plastics. The former attorney general of California said she would impose a ban, despite the annoyances that come with paper replacements.
“I think we should,” Harris said of a national straw ban.
“I mean, look, I’m going to be honest, it’s really difficult to drink out of a paper straw,” she added. “Like, if you don’t gulp it down immediately, it starts to bend and the little thing catches it and, you know …
“So, we’re going to have to perfect that one a little bit more,” Harris said with her signature cackle.
“Innovation is a process, you don’t just (snapped fingers) do it,” she said. “Innovation is a process but let’s encourage innovation. I think we can do a little bit better than some of those flimsy (paper) straws.
“But we do need to ban the plastic ones.”
The plastic straw ban is one of several policies Harris touted during her time on stage Wednesday.
The 54-year-old from Oakland told the audience in New York she would use the presidency to force the Senate to eliminate the filibuster if the upper chamber doesn’t pass the radical Green New Deal, something she would have zero authority to do.
“If they fail to act, as president of the United States, I am prepared to get rid of the filibuster to pass a Green New Deal,” she said without explanation.
Burnett, of course, did not challenge the illegal promise.
Harris also vowed to prosecute oil and gas companies for alleged contributions to global warming, CNN reports.
Harris said “people who profit off harmful behaviors” think in terms of money, so she plans to “take them to court and sue them.”
“When you take away that money because you take them to court and sue them, as I have done, it’s extraordinary how they will change behaviors,” she said. “They have to be held accountable. Maybe this is the prosecutor in me. They have to be held accountable.”
Harris said Big Oil companies are “going to pay fines and they are going to pay fees” if she becomes president.
In addition to a ban on plastic straws, Harris also promised to ban companies from fracking and offshore drilling for oil and natural gas.
“There’s no question, I’m in favor of banning fracking,” she said.
Of course, Harris wasn’t the only presidential candidate to back bans to deal with the alleged climate crisis.
Harris and the other nine Democrats who participated in the seven-hour town hall discussed bans on everything from plastic straws to red meat, incandescent light bulbs, gas-powered cars, nuclear energy, off-shore drilling and fracking, natural gas exports and coal plants.
“Most incredible: CNN asked most candidates if they support a ‘carbon-free America’ and every candidate answered in the affirmative,” Grabien reports. “How America can become ‘carbon-free’ as every living thing on Earth contains carbon was never discussed or explained.”
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