‘Ponder’ Your Turkey’s Carbon Footprint, Climate Group Tells Axios on Thanksgiving Eve

Axios suggests red states produce more Turkey Day emissions

A climate group spent Thanksgiving Eve warning Axios about turkey’s “carbon footprint,” leading the publication to report that you should “ponder” how the “beloved bird” produces “the greenhouse gas emissions responsible for global warming.”

“Raising and processing a four-ounce turkey serving is the equivalent of nearly three miles’ worth of tailpipe emissions,” the Environmental Working Group’s Iris Myers insisted Wednesday to Axios. The publication reported that turkey contributes less to global warming than beef but more than chicken.

How much damage your meal does largely depends on where you live, Axios reported, using blue states and red states as examples of how geography affects environmental impact. In Washington and Vermont—both solidly Democratic states—Thanksgiving dinners “emitted the lowest amounts of carbon dioxide,” according to a 2016 study. Deeply Republican Wyoming, West Virginia, and Kentucky, by contrast, “had the highest Turkey Day emissions.”

Even as the Environmental Working Group issued its carbon warnings, Democrats have largely abandoned their apocalyptic rhetoric on the subject. Billionaire Bill Gates, who spent at least $2 billion fighting what he called “climate disaster,” admitted that global warming “will not be the end of civilization” and that ineffective climate protests are “diverting money and attention from efforts that will have more impact on the human condition.” California regulators this year repealed their mandate that large companies buy more electric trucks, a win for the Trump administration.

Axios in its Wednesday piece admitted that climate change is “fading in importance on some U.S. lawmakers’ priority lists,” though “activists say even small steps from the public are needed,” according to the report.