If you want to be green, get rid of your dog
They tell us not to drive Hummers.
They tell us to disconnect our cell phone chargers, once our cell phones are juiced. They tell us to switch off our laptops, burn candles rather than electric light, and sail boats rather than fly planes.
But do they ever tell us to wean ourselves off the animals that we cynically use as substitutes for our failed relationships with other humans?
I only ask because an article from the New Scientist has wafted in front of my breakfast bowl and slapped me about my flappy jowls.
Quoting such luminous organizations as the Stockholm Environment Institute at York, UK, the article purports to suggest that our pets have all the eco-friendliness of that Northwest Airlines flight that forgot to land in Minneapolis and just kept on going to Wisconsin.
Please, I understand that dogs and cats are lovely beings that just want to love you and lick you as long as you feed them and wash them.
However, the SEI seems to believe that a cat has almost the same carbon footprint as a VW Golf.
Here is a sentence from the article that I know may make some of you rather unwell: "As well as guzzling resources, cats and dogs devastate wildlife populations, spread disease and add to pollution."
Yes, I know you thought it was only multinational corporations that do that. So please imagine that there is a book, written by Robert and Brenda Vale, called "Time to Eat the Dog?: The real guide to sustainable living."
Because you are more numerate than me, I will leave you to examine their figures in lascivious detail. However, the Vales estimate that a 4.6-liter Toyota Land Cruiser has an eco-footprint that is less than half that of a medium-size dog.
It is largely to do with the amount of meat and cereal that dogs chow, but this is surely a vale of tears for those who need their dogs in so many different ways: to get exercise, to get companionship and to become attractive to members of their target sex.
In case you are not quite thoroughly depressed by this estimation of our ultimate demise, might I offer you two further calculations from the Vales?
Well, should you own two hamsters, that is the eco-footprint equivalent of your plasma. And one goldfish? Well, it's the energy-sucking equivalent of two cell phones.
To continue this cheery mood for just a little longer, please hark these words the New Scientist quotes-- they were uttered by David Mackay, a physicist at the University of Cambridge: "If a lifestyle choice uses more than 1 per cent of your energy footprint, then it is worthwhile reflecting on that choice and seeing what you can do about it."
The average cat, he estimates, represents 2 percent of a human's footprint. And as for dogs, oh, it really doesn't bear thinking about.
It seems to me, therefore, that you have some harsh choices to make in order to save our world.
Your goldfish or your family plan? Your hamsters or, at the very least, the plasma in your bedroom? Your dog or your Audi?
Your animal companions or your technological ones? Life just doesn't get easier, does it?
Chris Matyszczyk is an award-winning creative director who advises major corporations on content creation and marketing. He brings an irreverent, sarcastic, and sometimes ironic voice to the tech world. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. 
or is that -1....
No level of sacrifice will ever be enough. Under the guise of perpetual crisis, they'll demand we give up everything, and force government control into every facet of our lives. Naturally the Enlightened green clergy will be excepted from the crushing taxes, fees, permits, regulations, quotas, and rationing.
We'll start with you and the parent poster. Please have your next of kin inform us when you two have successfully committed suicide.
Thanks in advance for your consideration towards our planet.
Good thing your parents were not as eco-friendly as you. Then again, I think that would not be such a bad idea. Why don't all the environmentalists with ridiculous ideas stop having children? Problem solved.
Bottom line: Your pet isn't gonna make or break the planet.
Hockey: I think he meant having SO MANY babies. You cannot deny that the world is overpopulated. Why? Because humanity is multiplying faster then freaking rabbits. If people would either A) take the nessesary precautions when having sex, or B) not have sex, there'd be less mouths to feed, less people to have housing.
You first. Please have your doctor confirm with us that you have undergone a successful castration/hysterectomy.
Thanks in advance for your consideration towards the planet.
Join a community people. If everyone didn't stay in the their homes just watching TV or surfing the net for hours or obsessing over a career that is running the world into the ground, try growing a little of your own food. All you need is a yard, or a group of people who share the responsibility of a section of an urban garden. Growing your own food is key in balancing the planets overly consumer based collective mindset. A respectable, reasonable and responsible decision making process and some self sufficiency (and the practice there of, use it (rights) or loose it) is the only way to maintain our freedom and independence.
This way having a dog would be sustainable with a much smaller fart and poo footprint. AND governments and corporations wont tax us or control us for our "right" to have a Dog or Cat.
people spend too much time worrying about the trifles...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol
Yes, many Ozone Depleting Substances (OSDs) were banned worldwide. All that can be done, has been done. People are going to move on; to problems that something still needs doing about.
So, problem solved and the Ozone Layer will healing up nicely.
Excellent demonstration of your complete ignorance there.
New technologies that require NO carbon to produce electrical output are soon to come online. Nicola Tesla's vision of free energy is soon to become a reality. And if you don't think this is possible in your lifetime, then I strongly suggest googling "the Orion Project". Soon power producers will be out of business and humanity will be left wondering what all the fuss was about to begin with.
I'd like to see these domestic pets compared both to children and wild animals and see who's first to volunteer in the campaign to say people can't even have one child (especially one that grows up to have a car and eat meat), or that all wild elephants must go.
I'm not sure about this Orion project (saying and doing are two quite different things and I've seen too many 'breakthroughs' that came to nothing. Show me the finished product) and I believe things will get worse before they get better but I do believe that we can get through this without it being a constant game of self-flaggelation. I also don't believe in ridding ourselves of everything and anything that uses resources because, damn, if that wouldn't mean getting rid of all of human civilisation.
Sustainability is the key word.
Besides, how much of this pet carbon footprint is down to technologies which we are already working to replace with more sustainable alternatives?
Err... yeah. Right. So it's going to run off of Fairy Dust and Unicorn Farts, right?
(my employer makes solar panels. Ab't 200MW worth of them per annum. You don't want to see the electricity bill, and the metal frames didn't spontaneously make themselves out of bauxite...)
froyden slip?
This is no place for silly factual correctness!
Tacos rule!
:D
(Sorry about that sarcasm meter. Send me the bill. LOL)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_meat
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_meat
http://www.hsus.org/pets/issues_affecting_our_pets/pet_overpopulation_and_ownership_statistics/us_pet_ownership_statistics.html
An animal does not have the same consciousness as we humans do. I mean what would be the worst case scenario if people wouldn't have petsThey at least have internet. (>.<)
@SlimGem :And I don't know about you but I wouldn't want to eat a cat/dog or any other pet, that is disgusting. There is plenty of cow, sheep, chicken and fish to eat (ok we are at a point where we're overfishing the oceans, but that's a total different discussion) so no need for other kinds of meat. Unless you want to be sick of course.
For those people who wants to be energy efficient you should not eat carnivorous animals( see for more info http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomass_(ecology) ).
What I meant was a biological perspective of energy efficiency I would have to explain what it is and in this case it was easier to post a wikipedia link then explain the whole thing. And it does suffice in that so I don't see a reason not to use Wikipedia. ;)
...so how much do you weigh?
;-)
(Disclaimer: I'm a liberal too. Maybe even a tree hugger. But I'm definitely not scrawny, neither is my sense of humor.)
If you're worried about pet population promote having your pets spayed or neutered, not getting rid of the concept of owning pets due to going green, that's just laughable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildcat
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Wild_Dog
...of course, this does not count various other members of the Canid family (wolves, coyotes, etc), or the Feline families (lions, tigers, jaguars, north american mountain lions, bobcats, leopards, etc etc etc etc...)
In fact, I can easily venture to say that dogs and cats which go feral -- assuming they hadn't been spayed/neutered first -- survive and reproduce just fine without any human help at all.
LOL.
And Slim, you are seriously sick in the head. Take your whiny "the world isn't fair and equal" diatribe over to the Huffington Post. You'll find a much more receptive audience to garbage like this. I willingly sacrifice my hard earned money to provide food and health care for my pets. It's my money; it's my choice. If you want to choose to not have pets, and instead, take the money you would have spent on a pet to someone else's health care or food supplies, have at it. You're obviously a much better person than the rest of us who choose to love a dog.
Bob Barker and Jamie Lee Curtis?
And you're critizing legitmate scientists?
Who else do you have in your bag of puppy chow?
Sounds like you and jakedog030 should hang out and skateboard together, after you get together with
Spicole over at Ridgemont High.
I love and respect animals but I don't have much respect for a lot of animal owners.
Too many of them are like parents of spoiled children. They don't have respect for other people and properties.
"It's my dog and he can do as he wants, when he wants, where he wants, etc., etc."
Not in my animal world! Moe. Or are you Curley?
You really sound like a nice person. I apologize for the smart azz remarks. You sound like a real animal lover and most likely a respectful one too. I just couldn't resist taunting you concerning your references.. I probably am acting like a Spicole. Take care.
Coffecan.
(also spell correction=legitimate)
;-)
- by gerrrg October 25, 2009 4:24 PM PDT
- Having children in fact, produces a greater carbon footprint.
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- by Renegade Knight October 27, 2009 8:06 AM PDT
- Western Civ would do a great job shriking in population and reducing it's foot proint. All the rest of the wrold will fill the void.
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Showing 1 of 4 pages (135 Comments)So don't have children....SEI.