Tipsheet

Environmentalists Wage War on Thanksgiving Tradition

Amy Curtis
Amy Curtis  |  November 26, 2025 7:30 AM

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and most families will gather around the table to enjoy a turkey with all the trimmings. Such scenes are as American as apple pie and baseball, forever immortalized in a Norman Rockwell painting called Freedom From Want.

But it wouldn't be the holidays without the usual scolds showing up to try to guilt-trip us into questioning whether we should enjoy that time with our family or spend it worrying about Gaia. This year, it's Axios leading the charge and warning us about the carbon footprint of the Thanksgiving staple.

Here's more:

You probably won't ponder your carbon footprint when you sit down to devour that Thanksgiving turkey — but some food and climate activists say you should.

Why it matters: With climate change fading in importance on some U.S. lawmakers' priority lists, activists say even small steps from the public are needed.

The big picture: The beloved bird is considered more environmentally friendly than beef. But turkey still produces, in production and post-production, the greenhouse gas emissions responsible for global warming — even more than chicken, according to the Environmental Working Group.

  • "Raising and processing a four-ounce turkey serving is the equivalent of nearly three miles' worth of tailpipe emissions," said Iris Myers, the group's senior communications manager.

Exactly how is much your overall meal's carbon footprint? A lot depends on where you live and what kind of energy you use for cooking — natural gas, electricity from coal or something else.

  • In 2016, Carnegie Mellon researchers calculated the state-by-state footprint of a typical feast, including roast turkey stuffed with sausage and apples, green bean casserole and pumpkin pie.
  • They found that meals prepared in Washington state and Vermont emitted the lowest amounts of carbon dioxide. Hydropower and wind provide about two-thirds of Washington's energy. while renewables provide almost all of Vermont's.
  • States that rely more on coal, such as Wyoming, West Virginia and Kentucky, had the highest Turkey Day emissions, the researchers found.

This writer used to attend Thanksgiving with a vegetarian who ate tofurkey. It was the nastiest thing she'd ever seen, and there's no way the carbon footprint of that highly processed soy-based garbage wasn't more than that of a real turkey.

Literally no one — not even the climate activists — actually cares about this. The control and the destruction of the very American holiday that is Thanksgiving is the entire point.

This is somehow worse than all the Leftist think-pieces on confronting your MAGA uncle over the holidays. At least that was entertaining. Stupid, but entertaining.

While they all flew from their big mansions in private jets to Brazil for a conference that could've been a Zoom call. It's almost like they only want us to live like serfs to "save the planet."

Back in July, CNN's Harry Enten shared a poll that showed only 40 percent of Americans were concerned about climate change. That's after years of Leftist fear-mongering on the issue, dire warnings about New York ending up underwater, and predictions of carbon-induced cataclysmic global destruction.

None of that happened, of course, which has ruined the credibility of the "experts" who want us to eat bugs and live in "15-minute cities."

And much like the Native Americans lost to the settlers, they're going to lose because sane Americans just don't care about stuff like this anymore.

They're certainly trying. Imagine having one of these people at your family gathering tomorrow.

Maybe sit them next to your MAGA uncle.