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She got into the car with a question.

“Did you know they charged for plastic bags here?�

We were in Palm Springs, California, visiting our newborn granddaughter — she’s perfect, by the way — and it was our first time in a state that has banned single-use plastic bags.

The California State Legislature did so in 2014, though a referendum delayed implementation until after the November 2016 election. In California, if you want to use recycled paper or plastic bags you have to pay 10 cents a piece for them. .

Missouri is not one of them. In fact, the Missouri Legislature passed a law making it illegal for cities to consider plastic bag bans. For mayors in the Mississippi River basin, that’s a problem. A year ago, the mayors of the Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiative to reduce plastic waste in the river by 20% in 2020.

It won’t be easy.

Thirty-one states drain into the Mississippi River, and few of them have done much of anything to stem the tide of plastics building up in America’s most important river basin. In fact, like Missouri, several river basin states — North Dakota, Iowa, Minnesota and Mississippi — have passed preemption statutes stopping cities along the river from taking action on their own.

Spend any time in the river on a canoe — and especially in the slower-flowing Missouri — and you can hardly paddle without hitting a plastic bottle, seeing plastic bags or other litter floating in the river or gathering on its banks.

This is climate change defiance in action.

The week before we headed out west, Rachel Bartels, founder of the Missouri Confluence Waterkeeper, the Mississippi River for microplastics, according to St. Louis Public Radio. She’s not alone. Several universities, including St. Louis University, to study the buildup of plastics in the river for the past couple of years.

What does this have to do with plastic bags from a drugstore in California?

Everything. Those bags are a massive contributor to climate change, according to a report issued earlier this year by the Center for International Environmental Law.

“If plastic production and use grow as currently planned, by 2030, these emissions could reach 1.34 gigatons per year — equivalent to the emissions released by more than 295 new 500-megawatt coal-fired power plants,� . “By 2050, the cumulation of these greenhouse gas emissions from plastic could reach over 56 gigatons — 10–13 percent of the entire remaining carbon budget.�

This is a massive problem for the next generation, like my granddaughter.

That’s why a group of teens led by Swedish 16-year-old Greta Thunberg appeared at the United Nations this week, urging world leaders to act on climate change, and shaming them over their failure to take meaningful steps to reverse man’s contribution to the increasing extremes in climate affecting countries all over the world.

“The world is waking up, and change is coming,� , “whether you like it or not.�

Some leaders, particularly Republicans like President Donald Trump, who mocked Thunberg, or the Republicans in the Missouri Legislature, who mock plastic bag bans, don’t like the change that is coming.

But it is. It’s not just Thunberg who is making it happen, either.

In 2015, an Oregon 19-year-old named Kelsey Cascadia Rose Juliana and 20 other young people from all over the country sued the federal government for damages, citing the government’s failure to take meaningful steps to combat climate change.

That lawsuit is still pending, in part because of the actions of a retired judge who grew up in St. Louis.

In April 2016, Oregon federal district court Magistrate Judge Thomas Coffin, a 1963 graduate of St. Louis University High School, ruled that the case could go forward because that next generation that politicians love to talk about had made a compelling argument.

“When combined with the EPA’s duty to protect the public health from airborne pollutants and the government’s public trust duties deeply ingrained in this country’s history, the allegations in the complaint state … a substantive due process claim,� Coffin wrote.

My wife and I survived our weekend without plastic bags.

For the sake of a grand baby girl with a healthy set of lungs and a bright future, perhaps it’s time to stop using them altogether.