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Cats and Dogs Contribute Significantly To Climate Change, Says UCLA Study (patch.com)
New submitter Zorro shares a report from Patch.com: When it comes to global warming, Fido and Fluffy are part of the problem, a new study by UCLA indicates. Pet ownership in the United States creates about 64 million tons of carbon dioxide a year, UCLA researchers found. That's the equivalent of driving 13.6 million cars for a year. The problem lies with the meat-filled diets of kitties and pooches, according to the study by UCLA geography professor Gregory Okin. Dogs and cats are responsible for 25 to 30 percent of the impacts of meat production in the United States, said Orkin. Compared to a plant-based diet, meat production "requires more energy, land and water and has greater environmental consequences in terms of erosion, pesticides and waste," the study found. And what goes in, must come out. In terms of waste, Okin noted, feeding pets also leads to about 5.1 million tons of feces every year, roughly equivalent to the total trash production of Massachusetts. The study has been published in the journal PLOS One.
64 million tons eh? That sounds like a big scary number. Oooh scary. That should get the panic merchants panicking. Of course since the atmosphere contains 2.996×10^12 tonnes already, one might imagine that an additional 0.002% is really not going to make much odds.
All true, but modern pet foods can provide the nutrients without the high meat content. And the other stuff like fruit, gravy and jelly just provide some extra volume and flavour/smell. Keep in mind that modern meat has a lot more nutrients than what those animals would eat in the wild too.
Obviously we want pets to keep eating meat, it's good for them. I was just suggesting that the reason why it's becoming a problem in terms of emissions now could be due to the changing nature of pet diets, which are generally designed to appeal to pet owners as the primary consideration. Maybe they can be designed to be more sustainable and still provide a good diet.
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That's some kind of pitiful argument. No wonder they're losing.
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And who is going to enforce that? How? Crippling economic sanctions on countries that are already at desperation levels of poverty? Invasion? Recolonialization?
The surest way to drop the birthrate in poor countries, proven to work time and time again, is to raise the standard of living. Richer people have fewer children - it holds true for every level of "rich" outside of the multimillionaire class. Children are an important resource to subsistence farmers and it's natural to have many of them when there is a high likelihood that many of them will not survive to adulthood (even though, in aggregate, many do).
Children are an enjoyable burden to urban and middle class people - when women work outside the home, there is a huge incentive to have fewer children.
The down side, of course, is that richer people use more resources, but we can work on that from a technology perspective. But if you want fewer people, make them rich(er).
This study is completely wrong. Cat and dog food are made with the offal, the meat by products that humans don't want to eat. Thus the cat and dog food contribute 0% to the impacts of meat production in the United States.
When you use a waste stream you don't contribute to the problem, you contribute to the solution.
This study reads like propaganda. Unfortunately ill-informed people will believe it.
The reason it's a problem now is that someone decided to publish a study on its impact. Regular pet food hasn't changed significantly in years.
In the grand scheme of things, pet ownership is barely a blip on the radar. This is just another "sky is falling" study - overhyped nonsense that obscures the real work that needs to be done in terms of decarbonization.
Its not like a truck full of cows shows up at the typical pet food factory. Pet food tends to be made from human food byproducts.
"The raw ingredients used in rendering are generally just leftovers of the meat, poultry and fishing industries."
- http://www.petmd.com/dog/nutri...
There is no additional impact from cow farts by using animal already raised for human consumption to begin with. If the study got the manufacturing of the food this wrong, how badly was the rest botched?
Except that developing countries tend to, you know, develop {...} Better to control the population growth while the development is happening,
Except that demographic transition IS A THING.
And as the countries are developing, the birth rate is getting lower.
So better control of the population is auto-happening and has been measured everywhere.
(Basically, as society develops, children aren't an advantage - helping hands in the farm - but are a burden - need education, etc.
So overtime parent have less incentives to have as many as possible,
which in turn compensate the fact that modern medicine is having less of the them dying of diseases.
That's an actually observed phenomenon)
So "one child policies" aren't the best method.
Having them access education, better jobs, even better farming equipment will accelerate the transition.
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I'm not originally from Massachusetts, and I've lived in a whole bunch of states (Alabama, Connecticut, Maine and now Iowa), and I can see why people from Mass have this attitude about environmental issues. It is very clear that on environmental issues both large and small, not only is Mass better than they in terms of regulations but also in terms of people simply being willing to do minor things in their day-to-day lives like reusing things rather than throwing them out, or keeping their heating and air conditioning at temperatures that reduce use, etc.
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