A Thanksgiving tribute to global warming and CO2: Is Watt okay with that?

By Vijay Jayaraj

What if we celebrated Thanksgiving with a tribute to global warming and the relative abundance of carbon dioxide (CO?₂) in our atmosphere? An outrageously outrageous thought, right? Propose that we respect what global elites and their complacent media insist will bring certain doom. Yet this is precisely what sound thinking requires.

Just 50 years ago, in the 1970s, news editors spread dire warnings about an impending ice age. Some scientists spoke of planetary dimming and the need to take drastic and immediate measures to prevent the return of continental glaciers.

At least the fear of cold-induced catastrophe has some historical basis in the struggles of past societies during cold periods. The Little Ice Age, which lasted from approximately 1300 to 1850, was a period of widespread and sustained cold in which, according to historians’ accounts, “everything that grew on earth died and starved.”

Frost fairs were held on London’s frozen Thames. Crop failures became routine, leading to widespread famine, poverty, and political instability throughout the northern hemisphere. This was not a theoretical crisis; It was a brutal reality in which a slight drop in global temperatures threatened the survival of communities. People who battled hunger and disease during the Little Ice Age would have given anything for warmer conditions.

The typical American household rarely, if ever, thinks about this long arc of climatic history when preparing a Thanksgiving dinner. Food is sourced from stores filled with produce harvested in all sorts of places: apples from colder regions and grapes from warmer regions. Some vegetables are grown locally and others travel across continents before reaching consumers.

The first step in this chain – plant growth – benefits from the warmth of today’s climate, which is much milder than that of the Little Ice Age. Today, however, the alarm is about supposedly destructive heat, a concern that history contradicts with repeated warm periods in the past that produced prosperity and flourishing civilizations. Among them were the Roman Warm Period 2,000 years ago and the Medieval Warm Period more recently. During both, crops were grown in areas that are too cold for them today.

The modern story of abundance is deeply intertwined with the quiet but dramatic greening of the Earth since the 20th century. Satellite data confirms that the world has become greener since the 1980s, especially in arid and semi-arid regions. Because? The main drivers are higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide due to industrial emissions and a naturally warmer climate.

Carbon dioxide is plant food, an essential ingredient, along with water and sunlight, for photosynthesis. The great irony of the climate alarmist narrative is that the rise of CO₂ has unleashed one of the most beneficial environmental changes in recent history: thriving ecosystems and record harvests.

Also important for food production are modern fertilizers (mostly made from natural gas) that supply the nitrogen needed for high-yielding crops.

Energy-dense fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas, demonized as sources of carbon dioxide, remain the backbone of food distribution, especially in the developed world. They power irrigation pumps, fertilizer plants, delivery fleets, agricultural machinery and refrigeration. If these energy inputs were eliminated, the barns would shrink. Famine would no longer be a relic of history; I would be knocking on the door.

What about warnings that global warming will destroy global food security? This claim does not survive scrutiny. Over the past 40 years, yields of commodities such as wheat, corn and rice have skyrocketed. Famines, unfortunately still present due to regional conflicts or corrupt governments, are no longer the global norm. The world now supports a population of 8 billion people with higher living standards than ever before.

Why then have so many people become convinced that every unusual weather phenomenon is a sign of doom? The answer lies in relentless media attention to risk, coupled with distorted representations of natural history. Earth’s climate has always changed, on time scales ranging from decades to millennia. Megadroughts, catastrophic floods, and periods of unusual heat and cold are nothing new.

So, Thanksgiving revelers, remember the simple truth: Much of it is due to the heat of the sun, the invisible work of carbon dioxide and fossil fuels that power the transit of table bounty from field to feast.

This comment was first posted by media on November 27, 2025.

Vijay Jayaraj is a science and research associate at the CO₂ CoalitionFairfax, Virginia. He holds a master’s degree in environmental science from the University of East Anglia and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the United Kingdom, and a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Anna University, India.