Author Topic: Now My Dog is Worse For the Environment Than My 4X4 - Eat Your Pet (Merged Topics)  (Read 37217 times)

Grandpa Shooter

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Save the planet, eat your pet
« Reply #50 on: December 22, 2009, 01:45:45 AM »
Polluting pets: the devastating impact of man's best friend



PARIS (AFP) – Man's best friend could be one of the environment's worst enemies, according to a new study which says the carbon pawprint of a pet dog is more than double that of a gas-guzzling sports utility vehicle.

But the revelation in the book "Time to Eat the Dog: The Real Guide to Sustainable Living" by New Zealanders Robert and Brenda Vale has angered pet owners who feel they are being singled out as troublemakers.

The Vales, specialists in sustainable living at Victoria University of Wellington, analysed popular brands of pet food and calculated that a medium-sized dog eats around 164 kilos (360 pounds) of meat and 95 kilos of cereal a year.

Combine the land required to generate its food and a "medium" sized dog has an annual footprint of 0.84 hectares (2.07 acres) -- around twice the 0.41 hectares required by a 4x4 driving 10,000 kilometres (6,200 miles) a year, including energy to build the car.

To confirm the results, the New Scientist magazine asked John Barrett at the Stockholm Environment Institute in York, Britain, to calculate eco-pawprints based on his own data. The results were essentially the same.

"Owning a dog really is quite an extravagance, mainly because of the carbon footprint of meat," Barrett said.

Other animals aren't much better for the environment, the Vales say.

Cats have an eco-footprint of about 0.15 hectares, slightly less than driving a Volkswagen Golf for a year, while two hamsters equates to a plasma television and even the humble goldfish burns energy equivalent to two mobile telephones.

But Reha Huttin, president of France's 30 Million Friends animal rights foundation says the human impact of eliminating pets would be equally devastating.

"Pets are anti-depressants, they help us cope with stress, they are good for the elderly," Huttin told AFP.

"Everyone should work out their own environmental impact. I should be allowed to say that I walk instead of using my car and that I don't eat meat, so why shouldn't I be allowed to have a little cat to alleviate my loneliness?"

Sylvie Comont, proud owner of seven cats and two dogs -- the environmental equivalent of a small fleet of cars -- says defiantly, "Our animals give us so much that I don't feel like a polluter at all.

"I think the love we have for our animals and what they contribute to our lives outweighs the environmental considerations.

"I don't want a life without animals," she told AFP.

And pets' environmental impact is not limited to their carbon footprint, as cats and dogs devastate wildlife, spread disease and pollute waterways, the Vales say.

With a total 7.7 million cats in Britain, more than 188 million wild animals are hunted, killed and eaten by feline predators per year, or an average 25 birds, mammals and frogs per cat, according to figures in the New Scientist.

Likewise, dogs decrease biodiversity in areas they are walked, while their faeces cause high bacterial levels in rivers and streams, making the water unsafe to drink, starving waterways of oxygen and killing aquatic life.

And cat poo can be even more toxic than doggy doo -- owners who flush their litter down the toilet ultimately infect sea otters and other animals with toxoplasma gondii, which causes a killer brain disease.

But despite the apocalyptic visions of domesticated animals' environmental impact, solutions exist, including reducing pets' protein-rich meat intake.

"If pussy is scoffing 'Fancy Feast' -- or some other food made from choice cuts of meat -- then the relative impact is likely to be high," said Robert Vale.

"If, on the other hand, the cat is fed on fish heads and other leftovers from the fishmonger, the impact will be lower."

Other potential positive steps include avoiding walking your dog in wildlife-rich areas and keeping your cat indoors at night when it has a particular thirst for other, smaller animals' blood.

As with buying a car, humans are also encouraged to take the environmental impact of their future possession/companion into account.

But the best way of compensating for that paw or clawprint is to make sure your animal is dual purpose, the Vales urge. Get a hen, which offsets its impact by laying edible eggs, or a rabbit, prepared to make the ultimate environmental sacrifice by ending up on the dinner table.

"Rabbits are good, provided you eat them," said Robert Vale.
 

jackdanson

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Re: Save the planet, eat your pet
« Reply #51 on: December 22, 2009, 01:52:51 AM »
Quote
Sylvie Comont, proud owner of seven cats and two dogs -- the environmental equivalent of a small fleet of cars -- says defiantly, "Our animals give us so much that I don't feel like a polluter at all.

"I think the love we have for our animals and what they contribute to our lives outweighs the environmental considerations.

"I don't want a life without animals," she told AFP.

ohjesus they are interviewing cat ladies.

I love animals.... as long as they don't live with me.

Gewehr98

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Merged duplicate threads.  ;)
"Bother", said Pooh, as he chambered another round...

http://neuralmisfires.blogspot.com

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Tuco

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>>bumpersticker.....
I ran over your dog who bit my honor student.
...bumpersticker>>
7-11 was a part time job.

Creeping Incrementalism

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Re: Now My Dog is Worse For the Environment Than My 4X4
« Reply #54 on: December 22, 2009, 10:52:30 AM »
Your humor makes my metric brain hurt.

I truly do not understand the rationale for griping about metric.  It's one thing if you want to use English units yourself, if you can get away with it in your line of work, or if you simply use them casually.  It's entirely another to subtly impugn someone else for using world standard (even in the U.S. for many industries' scientific or engineering purposes) units.

Pfff.  The metric system is so slide-rule era.  With the ubiquity of electronic calculators and conversion, everyone might as well go back to units that are used because they are handy, not because they are divisible by ten.

Scout26

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Re: Now My Dog is Worse For the Environment Than My 4X4
« Reply #55 on: December 22, 2009, 05:05:12 PM »

Quote
One hectare of land can produce 135 gigajoules a year...

This makes my American brain hurt.

I just want to know where the socket to plug-in is located.

And is that enough energy to charge the flux capacitor on a specially modified DeLorean time machine ???
Some days even my lucky rocketship underpants won't help.


Bring me my Broadsword and a clear understanding.
Get up to the roundhouse on the cliff-top standing.
Take women and children and bed them down.
Bless with a hard heart those that stand with me.
Bless the women and children who firm our hands.
Put our backs to the north wind.
Hold fast by the river.
Sweet memories to drive us on,
for the motherland.

BReilley

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Re: Now My Dog is Worse For the Environment Than My 4X4
« Reply #56 on: December 23, 2009, 12:12:14 AM »
See, truly environmentally minded people have both cats and dogs.  You just have to look the other way when fido partakes of the kitty litter buffet.  This way you feed two animals and decrease fido's carbon pawprint.  It's the ultimate in recycling. =D

A dog-trainer friend of ours calls this "Kitty Roca".  Think chocolate & nuts type treats...

I have always found it interesting that the enviros push "recycle" the most from their mantra of "reduce, reuse, recycle". They actually have that in the right order regarding effective conservation of resources, but recycling gets all the advertising. Personally, I think it goes back to my Prius Owner theory that things like recycling are more "showy" of someone "doing something" so it's more popular than the other two.

Yessir... after all, doing good doesn't count, unless people know how virtuous you are :(

I don't do it out of guilt or for self-righteousness, but because it seems sensible.  It seems so normal that when I go somewhere where recycling bins aren't available I find myself carrying my containers home.

Likewise.  Paper, glass, and cans(however many are left after a trip to the shooting berm) get bagged up.  We don't yet have recycling service, so we take it all to my parents' house and use their barrel.  I'm not a fool, but it's something small I can do.  If nothing else, it's a good portion of my trash that would otherwise go to a landfill.  In other words, it makes sense :)

coppertales

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The term "the dog did it" didn't just pop out of the blue..........I have 5 cats and eat alot of beans.  What does that come out to?...chris3

Perd Hapley

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I was wondering if any of you had eaten your dogs yet. I mean, if dog meat is good enough for Barack Obama...
"Doggies are angel babies!" -- my wife

Hawkmoon

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Wow!

Thread necro much?
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100% Politically Incorrect by Design

K Frame

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Seren and I will gladly eat the researchers.
Carbon Monoxide, sucking the life out of idiots, 'tards, and fools since man tamed fire.

MechAg94

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It was a while back that Dogbert from the Dilbert comics had a power plant that burned environmentalists.  Might even be older than this thread.
β€œIt is much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones.”  ― Calvin Coolidge

RoadKingLarry

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Seren and I will gladly eat the researchers.

Animal cruelty.
If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.

Samuel Adams

Regolith

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The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. - Thomas Jefferson

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves. - William Pitt the Younger

Perfectly symmetrical violence never solved anything. - Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth