LinkBack URL
About LinkBacks
Reply With QuoteAh yes, time to do away with all animal life in order to save the environment.
Polluting pets: the devastating impact of man's best friend
by Isabelle Toussaint and Jurgen Hecker Isabelle Toussaint And Jurgen Hecker Sun Dec 20, 3:23 pm ET
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 ***** 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.
Copyright © 2008 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserv
To sit down with these men and deal with them as the representatives of an enlightened and civilized people is to deride ones own dignity and to invite the disaster of their treachery - General Matthew Ridgway
Ah yes, time to do away with all animal life in order to save the environment.
I wonder when they will start to blame excess number of people...
Wait, they already do. Except they never blame places where excess people live.
"Only Nixon can go to China." -- Old Vulcan proverb.
I'm confused. Are they figuring carbon footprints or land use footprints? They start out talking about carbon footprints and suddenly they're talking about hectares. What the heck?
I enjoy being wrong too much to change my mind.
Apparently the only "good" form of life is a shrub... or a turnip.
Better kill all the whales. What is the carbon footprint of a gigantic blue whale? Or a humpback? What good do they do? Swimming around, making moo-sounds...
Originally Posted by chogy
)
When our perils are past, shall our gratitude sleep? - George Canning
They are just making a conversion based on the energy production of land- the number they use is 135 gigajoules/year/hectare.
So the energy used for the SUV or dog is calculated based on that formula, and the results are given in hectares.
They could pick any unit of measure, it wouldn't matter.
Except that dogs don't drink gasoline, and SUVs aren't big meat eaters. They can't be just converting energy usage into land usage- meat uses much more land per joule than cereals (around 10 times as much, I think), and SUVs use much, much more energy than dogs. A crude calculation assuming 2000 kcal/day and 20 mpg at 6200 mi/year gives 3 gigajoules/year/dog and 41 gigajoules/year/SUV. Not to mention that it doesn't make any sense at all to convert consumption of fossil fuels into land usage. And that still doesn't explain the carbon footprint question. Carbon footprint is measured in carbon. Not joules.
Last edited by ArmchairGeneral; 30 Dec 09, at 15:35.
I enjoy being wrong too much to change my mind.
All right AG,quit trying to distract us with simple logic......if the gods of global warming say it should be measured in hectares of land usage then it shall be so!!!Sacrilege say I,sacrilege!!!
"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories." Thomas Jefferson
Awww, come on. This is a topic far too important for anyone to rely on facts. Facts are restrictive & confining when in a crisis, and allow insufficient flexibility. We must free ourselves from facts. Emergencies require exigencies. Plus, we've discovered that the use of numbers implies scientificness. Or scientificism. Or something impressive. If only our pundits would figure out how to use the word "parameter" correctly we'd rule the world. On our way, or would be if talking heads could learn.
Prof
Yeah AG,what Prof said(Although mine WAS slightly more dramatic)
"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories." Thomas Jefferson
All right AG,quit trying to distract us with simple logic......if the gods of global warming say it should be measured in hectares of land usage then it shall be so!!!Sacrilege say I,sacrilege!!!
Jesus, Shamus. Uh. Simultaneus & near identical responses. Spooky. Channelling the Mick.
Prof
RE: PrecedingYeah AG,what Prof said(Although mine WAS slightly more dramatic)
F*ckin' weird.
Prof
Scary eh?
"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories." Thomas Jefferson
This ain't so much the gods of global warming- just bad science reporting. Which pisses me off more than global warming, to be honest.
I enjoy being wrong too much to change my mind.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions
Share this thread with friends: