Your Thanksgiving Carbon Footprint is a Total Bummer
How much energy does it take to get you to Thanksgiving dinner and get dinner on the table in the first place?
Pie. Planes. Political arguments at the family table. It all takes energy – but how much exactly?
As the busiest travel days of the year intersect with back-to-back days of excess consumption and consumerism, it’s a good time to take a step back and assess the energy impact of Thanksgiving.
Michael Webber, deputy director of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin, is just the person to do that. He put together a look at the carbon imprint of Thanksgiving, and what he found will likely bring you down a bit. Sure, there are those flights and car trips that require fuel, but there’s also the massive amount of energy needed to get all that food on the table.
Take a listen: