Yesterday (26 November) was a day of celebration in the United States: it was Thanksgiving, when most families celebrate with a roast turkey dinner. Thanksgiving also came just days before President Barack Obama attends a global climate change conference in Paris (see this week’s Prayer Alert Europe article). There is an interesting White House tradition that has captured the imagination of the public in recent years, of ‘pardoning’ the White House turkeys. Myth says that President Lincoln's 1863 clemency to a turkey, recorded in an 1865 dispatch by White House reporter Noah Brooks, was the origin for the pardoning ceremony. The president pardoned a couple of turkeys again on Wednesday this year; however, the birds took a carbon-intensive cross-country flight from San Francisco International Airport to meet the President, who will depart from the same airport on Sunday to attend the Paris global climate conference and discuss ways to reduce carbon emissions.