A dog is man’s best friend. Some friend we’ve turned out to be in return! Apparently we’ve messed things up so bad that in a last ditch attempt to shift the blame, we’ve pointed a finger right at Fido and claim we can no longer afford the environmental costs of his carbon footprint. Or so we should, according to Time to Eat the Dog: The Real Guide to Sustainable Living
Authors Robert and Brenda Vale suggest that owning a large dog is tantamount to driving an SUV, mainly because of the carbon footprint of meat used for dog food. Continuing with the comparisons of animals to automobiles, the authors propose that cats have a footprint slightly less than a Volkswagen Golf. Two hamsters equal a plasma TV (no, don’t try trading in your hamsters for one), and a goldfish equates to two cellphones. The calculations were done by comparing the size of land needed to sustain (feed) the pets, as opposed to the size of land to needed to fuel/build the vehicles, etc.
Besides the dietary impact, the book states that dogs and cats devastate wildlife populations, especially birds, and spread disease through faeces that end up in rivers and streams. Sounds serious. What solution is suggested? If you must own a pet, get one that lessens its eco-footprint by providing some helpful service. Think of snuggling a hen, a ‘pet’ that can give you eggs to eat. Rabbits are certainly cute, but are only useful “provided you eat them.”
Should the pleasure and companionship of owning a furry friend be outweighed by the havoc they are apparently wreaking on the planet? Or should we perhaps look at the suspects at the top of the food chain first, before ‘eating the dog’?
On the other hand, some pets are treated better than the Queen and turn into quite the spoiled animals, without so much as a single care for their environmental impact. And when you talk to them about it, especially the cat, and ask her not to kill the birds at your feeder, she never listens. Perhaps a little balance on both sides would be nice.
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A comment about the amount of our environment used up by our pets. Ha, I know you must be joking as some of the humans on this planet use up far more than their share as is proven by their over-weight mass, the number of vehicles they use to drive to the corner to buy their gas to drive to the store to buy their junk food to take to their camp to fill the waste sites so that they can enjoy the clean fresh air and water, and pristine landscapes that they kill by covering it all with poisoned gases from planes and vehicles and pollute by throwing their garbage anywhere convenient, allowing their own feces to escape from poorly improvised toilets into our beautiful waterways. Oh yes, let’s get rid of those dirty pets, after all, this planet needs more space for humans. Ha!!!
Ha Ha! Some eco-nuts just have too much time on their hands! Maybe they should go out and pick trash instead of staying inside to think up such silliness.
Cats and dogs have been living with humans for millenia and it would be just as harmful to the environment and cruel to them simply to turn them out of our society – something akin to letting cows go wild!
However, there are ways to greatly reduce their carbon footprint: dogs are omnivorous and many do not mind a semi-vegetarian diet. Cats are a bit more difficult, but one can always share a grass fed steak or some sustainably-caught fish. I’m offsetting my two cats’ carbon footprint by using them as my main source of heat in the bedroom: way better than a hot water bottle, with a built-in alarm clock to boot!