Ep 70 - Inventing Another Fake Environmental Crisis
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
159.91815
Summary
Straws are the latest doomsday prophecy of environmentalists. They have found a new villain to fight a new cancer to treat, and that villain is straws. Plastic straws are destroying mankind, and we have to get rid of them.
Transcript
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So you've heard presumably about the latest doomsday prophecy of environmentalists.
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They have found a new villain to fight a new cancer to treat, and that is straws.
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Plastic straws are destroying mankind, and we have to get rid of them.
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San Francisco is the most recent city, I believe, to ban straws.
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They are a safe haven from the tyranny of straws, so you don't have to worry.
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If you're in San Francisco, you don't have to worry about walking down the street and
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tripping over a straw and becoming paralyzed, which is, you know, that's happened to at
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Now, if you're in San Francisco, you still have to worry about walking down the street
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and stepping on a used heroin needle or slipping in a puddle of human feces, but at least you're
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Santa Barbara is coming down very hard, and what they're saying is that if you are caught
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being a straw dealer, you could get six months in jail per straw that you hand out.
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So if you are a waitress at Denny's and you make the mistake of handing out a straw to
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Now, if there's, say, a birthday party at Denny's, which is a great location for a birthday
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party, then, and you hand out straws to everybody, you go rogue and you just start handing out
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straws left and right, you could be looking at 20 or 30 years in prison when all is said
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I mean, you could, if rather than handing out straws, if you had just, if it was like
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a toddler birthday party and you had just poured shots of absinthe for all the toddlers,
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you would get less prison time than if you were to hand out straws to them.
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Now, if you gave them straws to drink the absinthe, then I think you've really got a problem.
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So celebrities have gotten in on the act as well.
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They're recording PSAs, they're starting campaigns, they're raising awareness about
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And it is just, it is turned into hysteria as per usual.
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We have a crisis because everything has to be a crisis.
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So we can't just have a problem or we can't just discuss an issue.
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It has to be, oh my gosh, we're all going to die.
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Now, you may have heard that these anti-straw measures are necessary because our straw consumption
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And the only way to stop our straw obsession is to just go cold turkey.
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According to the figures that you hear in the media, Americans use 500 million straws
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So collectively, Americans use 500 million straws a day.
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That means if you connected all the straws that we use in a year and you connected them just
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and you line them all up, they would stretch four light years into space and actually touch
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And then you would have this towering inferno of straws that would fall down to the earth
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and engulf us all and engulf the earth in flames.
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If the statistics that I just cited sound made up, it's because they are.
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The bit about connecting them into space, I made that up, although who knows, maybe that
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The 500 million bit was made up by a nine-year-old child.
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And his made-up statistic is actually being used by the media and by journalists and by
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Politicians passing laws are citing this statistic that was invented by a fourth grader.
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However, a nine-year-old, this is how he did it.
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Nine-year-old child, I think back in 2011, was concerned about straws, which I mean, it's
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And I know this is not a criticism of the nine-year-old child, but he is nine years old.
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So what he did was he got on the phone and he conducted an informal phone survey with a
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And based on his conversation with them, he guessed that we probably use 500 million straws
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And now that guess by a nine-year-old six years ago is being cited as fact.
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Not even like reportedly we use 500 million straws a day or allegedly we use straws, or it's
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estimated that maybe perhaps we use 500 million a day.
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No, if you read media reports, it's we use 500 million straws a day.
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I mean, do we actually use 500 million straws a day?
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Seems a little high, but nobody's bothered to check it.
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I don't know how to check that statistic, but just because you don't know how to check
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And if you can't confirm it at all, if it can't be confirmed, then that means you just
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You see, once a stat, even a made-up statistic with no evidence to support it, once it becomes
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attached to a movement, it is now carved in stone and you're not allowed to question it.
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Once the movement adopts it, you're not allowed to question it anymore.
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So for another example, think of the statistic that claims that 20% of all women in college
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So you're telling me, if I send my daughter to college, there's a 20% chance of this happening?
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Why would anyone ever send their daughter to college again in that case?
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I mean, why would any woman ever go to college again if there's a 20% chance of being raped?
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But feminists use it knowing that it's false, most of them, at least the ones that are leading
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They use it anyway because they figure that their aims are noble and so it doesn't really
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Environmentalists are notorious for doing this.
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Environmentalists and feminists, I would say, together, those two movements are the most
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inclined to just use fabricated lies to advance their cause because they think that their aim
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is just so noble and so good that it gives them a pass, an ethical kind of hallway pass
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to use whatever measures they think are necessary.
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Here's the problem, though, with using made-up statistics.
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First of all, they're not true, so you're lying.
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If that doesn't bother you, then how about this?
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You're hurting your own case when you use made-up statistics.
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You come in with this crazy statistic and, first of all, you've given people a reason
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to discount not just this statistic but your entire case.
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And then if somebody corrects the stat and the real number is lower than what you said
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but still pretty bad, the only thing people will focus on is the fact that you were wrong.
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So, for instance, if you go, if you're very concerned about drunk driving, let's say,
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and it is something we should be concerned about.
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So, you go and you say, a thousand people die every day from drunk driving in America.
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At first, you're going to think that your ridiculously inflated and dishonest statistic is working
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because a lot of people will hear that and say, oh, my gosh, a thousand people?
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Most people, when they hear a statistic, if it is cited authoritatively, especially in a news article,
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So, it is, at first, you're going to find that using made-up statistics is a very effective measure
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because most people just don't think about that.
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And so, if you tell them something, they'll go, oh, okay.
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That must be true because somebody said it to me.
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But, invariably, some jerk who cares about pesky little things like truth will come along and say,
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Actually, it's not a thousand people die a day.
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And then people, everybody else, the unthinking masses, who had 1,000 a day in mind, they're going to hear that,
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and they're going to go, oh, well, that's not so bad at all in comparison.
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So, you had this thing that is certainly a problem, and now people won't see it as a problem anymore
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because of the way that you chose to approach it.
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If you had just been reasonable and honest and told the truth, maybe you could have made a difference,
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but instead you ruined your whole campaign by basing it on nonsense.
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So, environmentalists really need to get this through their heads.
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Yes, it is a worthy goal to try to reduce our use of plastic.
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And, yeah, straws are kind of wasteful, and I don't think that we use 500 million a day,
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I mean, maybe we use 100 million, maybe we use 200 million.
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I really don't think it's 500 million because that would require every man, woman, child, and infant,
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on average, to use almost two straws a day, every day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
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And I just, considering there, now me, I rarely ever use straws.
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And that's the case for pretty much everyone in my family.
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We don't have, we don't use, there's not a lot of straw usage going on in my family.
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And I think there are a lot of people like me who just don't use straws at all.
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So, it actually would require, considering there are people who don't use straws at all,
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that means that there must be people out there using, like, 10 or 15 straws a day.
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But, and considering the fact that hardly anyone uses a straw unless they're eating out,
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like, you're going to a fast food restaurant, you're going to, you're going to a sit-down
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restaurant, that's, for most people, that's the only time straws ever come up.
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So, that would require there to be a lot of people who are eating out, like, four or five
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I don't think it's enough to get you up to 500 million.
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So, whatever the statistic is, let's say it's 100 million, 200 million, I don't know what it is.
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So, just drop the hysterics, drop the theatrics, drop the propaganda, drop the lies,
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stop trying to force the issue through laws and regulations, and just instead make your point
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and encourage people to moderate themselves a little bit.
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So, you could just say, look, you know, there's, look at, there's 300 plus million people in America.
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We do eat out, we tend to eat out a lot, get a lot of fast food.
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So, that means that there's a lot of straws being used.
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It's maybe not 500 million a day, but it's still a lot.
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And maybe if you go to McDonald's and you get a soda, unless you really need the straw, maybe tell them, you know, I don't need the straw.
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You could just encourage people to take measures like that, and it's fine.
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But when everything has to be a crisis, when everything is leading to the annihilation of life on Earth,
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and when you start using these overly emotional appeals and saying, somebody said to me on Twitter yesterday,
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they said, well, aren't you concerned about your straw ending up lodged in the nose of a sea turtle?
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That does not make my, if I'm going to list the top 100 things in life that I'm worried about,
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I don't think the nasal passages of sea turtles really makes the list at all.
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And also, I think the chances of the straw that I'm, you know, using to drink my soda with,
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the chances of that ending up in the nose of a sea turtle, the chances are vanishingly small.
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Even if I were to take the straw and go to the ocean myself and chuck it into the ocean and say,
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take that sea turtles, even if I did that, there's almost no chance that that particular straw ends up lodged in the nose of a sea turtle.
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Of course, if you were honest, you'd have to admit that plastic straws,
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while they're, maybe it's a worthy thing to try to, you know, just through our own efforts to moderate a little bit,
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still, when it comes down to it, plastic straws really aren't that big of a deal in the grand scheme.
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If we're going to talk about plastic waste ending up in the ocean,
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which this straw conversation all seems to be centered around that,
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this idea that all the supposed 500 million straws a day that we use,
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it's all ending up in the ocean, and it's creating this huge raft of straws
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that is just floating through the Pacific and will eventually crash into Asia
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and then maybe move the continent of Asia, shift it over, which will shift up,
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and then all the continents will come together again.
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And which actually maybe wouldn't be such a bad thing.
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Maybe we could have, it will finally be all one world.
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if you were to actually face the facts and be honest about it,
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you would have to admit that 95%, 95% of the plastic in the ocean
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60% of all the plastic waste in the ocean comes from China, Thailand,
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So, again, plastic from the United States is hardly a problem at all.
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Comparatively, in terms of percentages, it's hardly a problem.
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So, think about it, 95%, 95% of the plastic in the ocean comes from Asia and Africa.
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That leaves 5% of plastic to be split between the entire continent of Europe,
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And so, if you're to divvy it down, how much of that belongs to the United States,
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I don't know, but it's significantly less than 5%.
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And then, of our small percent, let's say it's even, I don't know, 1%.
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How much of that small percentage is due to straws?
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So, it's just such a tiny, tiny percent that the United States, in fact, the entire Western world,
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could stop using plastic altogether, and it would make almost no difference to the ocean.
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Because at least 95% of the plastic would still be there.
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Does that mean that we should make no effort at all to curb our plastic consumption?
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It's, even if we're not worried about it ending up in the ocean,
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You know, there's no reason to use things you don't need,
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A lot of times, if you're at a fast food restaurant,
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maybe they'll give you a straw, you don't even use it,
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So, yeah, we could moderate a bit, and that's it.
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Forget the laws, forget the campaigns, the PSAs,
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forget the lies and the made-up statistics and hysteria.
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Just be honest a little bit, tell people the truth,
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and everything we find in will just live our lives.