So… my dear friend John posted a link to this article on the Dominion Post on his facebook wall today. It’s about a book called Time to Eat the Dog: The real guide to sustainable living. We got into a bit of a discussion about it.. and I as a member of a multi pet household and a person who clearly has stong feelings about the subject, ended up writing quite the long comment to the post. Maybe too long. But I was so damn impressed with myself, that I decided the I should re-post it here.. besides, this blog is getting spider webs. So – here’s a bit from the article – read the whole thing if yr interested…
Victoria University professors Brenda and Robert Vale, architects who specialise in sustainable living, say pet owners should swap cats and dogs for creatures they can eat, such as chickens or rabbits, in their provocative new book Time to Eat the Dog: The real guide to sustainable living.
The couple have assessed the carbon emissions created bypopular pets, taking into account the ingredients of pet food and the land needed to create them.
“If you have a German shepherd or similar-sized dog, for example, its impact every year is exactly the same as driving a large car around,” Brenda Vale said.
“A lot of people worry about having SUVs but they don’t worry about having Alsatians and what we are saying is, well, maybe you should be because the environmental impact … is comparable.”
They compared this with the footprint of a Toyota Land Cruiser, driven 10,000km a year, which uses 55.1 gigajoules (the energy used to build and fuel it). One hectare of land can produce 135 gigajoules a year, which means the vehicle’s eco-footprint is 0.41ha – less than half of the dog’s.
They found cats have an eco-footprint of 0.15ha – slightly less than a Volkswagen Golf. Hamsters have a footprint of 0.014ha – keeping two of them is equivalent to owning a plasma TV.
And he’s my comment.
I’m going to point out, just how stupid this lady is making herself sound..
First: Comparing the foot print of dogs and cats to SUVs is dumb, and it’s not even “comparable” as she claims. The author herself makes ridiculous unprovable statements.. for example:
“Owning a German shepherd or similar-sized dog, for example, its impact every year is EXACTLY THE SAME as driving a large car around”
– What???!?! “Exactly the same as driving a “Large” car around?” No.. no it’s not exactly the same as anything… for gods sake – The impact of owning a German Shepherd isn’t even EXACTLY the same as the impact of another person owning a German Shepherd. And which large car would that be? A Taurus? A Tahoe? A F-250? A Tank? Last I check they all consumed different amounts of energy. so – right out the gate.. Fail.
Next: In the article, she’s comparing the amount of land it take to create 135 gigawatts of energy to the amount of land it takes to create the food to feed a dogs and cats crappy grocery store food. Last I checked, SUV’s didn’t run on anything you could grow and sustain – they ran on gasoline refined from oil.. at best, gas contains 10% ethanol – which comes from corn. Fail.
Next (and this on is just an opinion): Saying: “Since most people feed pets cheap grocery brand food with eco-bad ingredients (chicken beaks, and cow parts, and mostly corn corn and more corn), that means that people should just instead eat the animals… because most people feed them eco-bad food that has a large carbon foot print, and is crappy,” is a statement that exists in a reality devoid of logic and common sense.
People have choices in what to feed their pets. There are eco friendly pet food makers out there. I feed my dog Merrik campfire which is mostly Trout, Oatmeal, Salmon Meal, rice, carrots, and apples… (no corn) and he get’s 2 cups of food a day. 2 cups. 14 cups a week. I’m suppose to believe that those 14 cups of trout and oats, and veggies are more harmful to the earth than driving 192 miles in a land rover?
And last I checked, people didn’t have a choice about the eco-friendliness of the gasoline they put into their cars.
And, what about pollution? Ozone? Carbon-monoxide? The Acids in a car battery? The leather on the seats? The synthetic carpets? Glues, dyes, plastics? The rubber? The impact of keeping the thing running – oil – air filters – stuff that does not biodegrade when it gets tossed in landfills – or – released deadly toxins into the environment as it rots? When my dog dies, he’ll turn to dust and feed worms which will make the soil great for growing. It doesn’t appear to consider any of that.. only the amount of land needed to produce the electricity that a Land Rover would use (remember gigawatts?), if it ran on electricity.. which it doesn’t.
This actually seems to be written under the assumption that dogs and cats are luxury items (like SUV’s) and provide no service to households (like SUVs). Which, isn’t true at all. Jet (my dog) scares the hell out of people that shouldn’t be hanging around my apt. Someone tried to break into my house a few years ago and he alerted me to their presents and quiet possibly saved my life. Why just this weekend, the alarm went of at my office in NY and I had to come in to check it out.. I brought Jet. Aside from that, anyone that’s ever raised a dog will tell you, they are great couples training for children. If everyone had a dog before having kids, I think parents would be a lot more prepared to have a life depend on you, and kids would be a lot better off being raised by people with some experience.
Also, Cats kill bugs and rodents – that eat yr food, poop under your fridge, and spread disease. I live in Brooklyn, NY. My last apt was on the ground floor of an old brownstone, and two doors down was an abandoned house – which seemed to be a mice generator. Tam (my cat) killed so many mice in that place when we first moved in.. they just stopped coming cuz they could smell him – And we had a rat living outside in our trash can – it jumped out at the elderly lady who lives upstairs and nearly scared her to death. The Cat went to battle with the thing – and murdered it just three weeks ago.
I assuming this woman will be telling me next that it’s less of a carbon impact to pay an exterminator to come once a month and spray the house down with toxins.
Conclusion: She’s and idiot trying to sell a book – she probably hates dogs, and has seven Tahoes.
Beside, by her logic, if we wanted to decrease the carbon footprint of our dogs and cats, we should feed them baby rabbits. Now there’s and idea that she didn’t even mention.. why not I wonder?