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Eat your dog (or cat), save the planet

1 November 2009 Posted by J.Roff 68,098 views 6 Comments

puppy

Here’s some sage advice from the Courier Mail, Brisbane’s very own tabloid newspaper:

THEY’RE faithful, friendly and furry – but under their harmless, fluffy exteriors, dogs and cats, the world’s most popular house pets, use up more energy resources in a year than driving a car, a new book says.

In their book Time to Eat the Dog: The Real Guide to Sustainable Living, New Zealand-based architects Robert and Brenda Vale say keeping a medium-sized dog has the same ecological impact as driving 10,000km a year in a 4.6 litre Land Cruiser.

The average cat’s eco-footprint, 0.15 ha, weighs in at slightly less than a Volkswagen Golf, but still 10 times a hamster’s 0.014 ha – which is itself half the eco cost of running a plasma television.

Needless to say, it’s probably more ecologically sustainable to eat children instead, but if the calculations are correct, the ecological footprint of things we take for granted is pretty interesting. (Read the full article here)

J.Roff is a PhD student at the Centre for Marine Studies, University of Queensland. His research is focused on the inshore Great Barrier Reef, with broader interests in coral bleaching, coral ecology and the emerging field of coral disease. Jez is responsible for the ‘behind the scenes’ work at Climate Shifts, editing WordPress themes, general HTML and database upkeep.
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6 Comments »

David Horton said:

I’m searching for a phrase … oh yes, “lies, damned lies, and statistics”. This is reminiscent of the nonsense proposition that because solar panels are black we shouldn’t use them because they absorb and radiate energy and so warm the planet (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/10/an-open-letter-to-steve-levitt/).

# 1 November 2009 at 1:04 pm

J. Roff said:

David – the numbers do seem a little skewed (see here for some discussion from dog owners over at Slashdot). I guess what interests me here is the footprint of things in daily life that we take for granted (ever wonder why we still get a copy of the Yellow Pages each year?). The Real Climate discussion of Superfreakonomics is pretty incredible, but for some reason your link doesn’t work – try this instead: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/10/an-open-letter-to-steve-levitt/)

# 1 November 2009 at 2:57 pm

David Horton said:

Odd, the link looks exactly the same, perhaps it’s the opening bracket?

I don’t disagree with the idea of examining daily footprints. I just think on the list of things we might consider need to be done about greenhouse gases, this would be somewhere between 100 and 200 at best. I also think we run the strong risk of telling people that nothing they do in daily life can continue. And this is the kind of misconception that denialists prey on (back to the stone age etc). Telling people to kill and eat their pets because they are a major contributor to global warming is going to at best invite (quite rightly) derision and at worst have people say “oh stuff it, I’m not going to do anything if that’s what they are going to try to make me do”.

# 1 November 2009 at 3:23 pm

boxer said:

When they all stop using electricity, heating, gas, etc. pet-loving people will consider stop having pets. Not any sooner.

# 19 December 2009 at 3:11 pm

J. Roff said:

Hi Boxer, We just picked up a 2 month puppy from the RSPCA this weekend. Unfortunately, he doesn’t look very palatable… maybe when he grows a little larger?

# 19 December 2009 at 5:59 pm