Opinion: A call for Thanksgiving compassion

Dreamstime / TNS

Dreamstime / TNS Dreamstime / TNS

By JOHN BUTTRICK

Published: 11-23-2024 6:00 AM

John Buttrick writes from his Vermont Folk Rocker in his Concord home, Minds Crossing.

Thanksgiving is less than a week away. It is a day of family, football, and parades. Many gather around the dining room table for a traditional meal that includes turkey, stuffing, gravy, cranberries, and a variety of pies. I prefer pecan pie!

Harkening back to the shared feast between the pilgrims and the Wampanoag people, we have origin stories centered on thankfulness for a land of bounty, a successful harvest, and the end of starvation among the pilgrims. The shared feast was accompanied with expressions of inclusion, cooperation, trust, and peace between the natives of the land and the new settlers. We can imagine it was a joyful time.

Today, a joyful Thanksgiving may be overshadowed by an overstressed environment and the inauguration of a new president in a little more than seven weeks. The Thanksgiving table will be set in the midst of global warming with its consequences of devastating storms, wildfires, floods, depletion of resources, and pollution of the land, air, and sea. Our conscience will be put to the test by the words of a Native American.

“We’re just devastated to see a second Trump presidency,” said Jacob Johns, a Hopi climate activist based in Spokane, Washington. “It’s a blow to us. The environmental protections he’s trying to strip are going to be devastating, and they’re going to have impacts across the world.” Thanksgiving may become giving thanks that I am one of the lucky ones to have a table laden with a feast, at the expense of environmental abuse.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump has announced the appointment of Lee Zeldin as the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, empowering the former congressman to roll back scores of regulations and dismantle landmark climate regulations. Coral Davenport and Lisa Friedman have reported in the New York Times, “Beyond pulling out of existing treaties, the Trump administration is expected to expand fossil fuel production, roll back regulations limiting pollution and reduce incentives for clean energy. People working on the transition have already prepared a slate of executive orders and presidential proclamations on climate and energy. They include withdrawing the United States from the Paris climate agreement, eliminating every office in every agency working to end the pollution that disproportionately affects poor communities and shrinking the size of national monuments in the West to allow more drilling and mining on public lands.”

Yet, if this continues, Sherry Madera, chief executive officer of CDP, notes that “each year the world falls behind (in environmental protection) increases the risks of more extreme weather that will put millions of people at risk and threaten global economic growth.”

I wonder if those coming into power have any awareness of the many people who will suffer under their plans. I wonder if any of them have ever walked with a farmer over his water-deprived parched cracked land or perhaps looked over a flooded crop never to be harvested. I wonder if any of these global warming skeptics have ever listened to a Native American speak about Mother Earth losing her ability to care for her earth children.

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I wonder if any, of those advocating an end to climate regulations for economic reasons, ever consider the impoverished life in an overheated, non air conditioned inner-city apartment, or in the neighborhood of an air-polluting refinery, or next to a hazardous trash dump. I wonder where compassion exists for the most vulnerable who must live under such conditions in the polluted environment.

The ethical motivation for cleaning up the environment comes down to compassion for the earth and empathy for all that dwell therein. Without it, care for the environment may be left behind. Without a concern for the effects of climate change, all that is left are manipulative discussions about economics, regulations, maintaining energy consumption, and discussion about political will.

Perhaps this Thanksgiving, compassion may change the climate debate. Some may choose to distribute Thanksgiving food baskets or invite the hungry to gather for a special meal. Or perhaps when we sit around the Thanksgiving table we may include a pause or a prayer that forsakes thanks for the abundant food for the privileged, but instead listens to the groans of the earth, its flora and fauna, and its people.

Perhaps we may acknowledge our part in the suffering and give thanks that it is possible for compassion to be a part of the human condition. Let the feast set on the table be the promise of nourishment in a future of environmental well-being. Also, pray for and urge the incoming administration be motivated with compassion in all that they advocate and do. Let Thanksgiving be a day of compassion – along with football, parades, and turkey!