Why do people only ever talk about the carbon footprint when plastic bans are discussed?

This is not the case. Ai, crypto, airplanes, cars, meat production, fertilizers, etc are more are on my radar than bag bans. Suggesting otherwise feels combative. I agree that we should reduce both greenhouse gases and plastic waste. I didn’t say or even suggest we shouldn’t reduce plastic waste. My last sentence (“… we need to foster a culture that consumes less and reuses more.”) is inclusive of reducing plastic use and waste.

many people do not recycle or reuse their plastic bags. I would assume this measure is aimed more at them then at you.

And that’s why my response was about the behavioral and cultural change. The unintuitive fact about plastic vs paper bag carbon emissions was something I heard about a decade ago and it helped push my understanding of environment impact beyond simply “plastic bad, paper good,” and focusing only on waste and not manufacturing and distribution, as well. Regulation is just one tool, and a blunt one at that, but individual choices matter and can operate with more nuance for better results. To be clear, that’s not an argument against regulation, it’s an argument for acting beyond the baseline that regulation sets.

Edit: formatting, brevity, clarity, typo