> doesn't seem like a science-driven approach, but more of a faith-based science-denialism.

Only if you are deliberately framing these points that way. I'll try to explain how these points can actually be explained as science-driven

> Banning plastic straws

In the US alone, 500M straws were used per day (https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/news-...). Given that many of these end up in the environment as consumers simply discard the container wherever they are walking, this is a serious reduction in litter.

> asserting that men should compete against women in sports if they identify as women

This one is a really hard debate, however... hormone distribution varies enormously between the two major biological genders so we're already (effectively) selecting athletes with the "best" ratios. Add to that people with intergender bodies (e.g. XY chromosome set but fully presenting as "female", XX chromosomes but have "male" body parts), and it becomes a real mess to define what is a male, what is a female and where a specific individual should be allowed to compete in - even if you're only going by purely biological metrics (hormone levels, appearance of gender-specific body parts). Add to that the "faith-based" stuff aka social gender norms and gender equality/anti-discrimination, and it gets very messy very soon.

tl;dr: for this point, there cannot ever be a "scientific consent" on what's correct and what's wrong. Personally I'd argue for a body-weight differentiation in sports (as it's done in boxing) instead of gender-based, since that way you have at least some common factor that is closely linked with physical strength.

> and eliminating SAT scores

Scoring of almost all kinds has provable issues - and especially in education:

- social background has massive effects on scores: rich parents can afford a lot of things closely linked to higher educational outcome such as private tutors, each child having their own room from a young age, send their children to well-funded public or private schools, or offering a stress-free environment for the child in general whereas poor parents are stuck with whatever the public school system offers, children often not having their own rooms which means they can't effectively learn if their baby sibling is crying in "their" room, and parents passing on their stress (poverty, overcrowding, homelessness, messy divorces, domestic violence) onto their children

- ethnic background: children of minorities have been proven to be discriminated against by teachers even at a young age, not to mention stuff like systemic under-funding of schools in geographic areas where school funding is based on the taxable income of the people living in this area, which is (again) closely linked to ethnic background as a result of segregation and gentrification

- government background: additionally to that, public schools may differ wildly in quality of teaching based on the funding priorities of county and state

- scoring leads to teachers "teaching for the test" aka "bulimia learning" instead of actual long-lasting knowledge transfer. This is something tests aren't primarily at fault for, but nevertheless play an important role

- scoring disproportionally affects students with mental health problems (e.g. test phobia), with dyslexia / dyscalculia and other learning impediments, and also those whose talents are outside of language and math

tl;dr: scoring is deeply flawed as a concept, where especially children from poor backgrounds (no matter if the family or the government is poor) suffer from massive discrimination.