In my opinion, this over the top idea isn’t sustainable at any level. On a personal note, my cat eats with a footprint more like a Volkswagen microbus. I think I’ll give “Minners” a can of doplhin safe tuna tonight, just for spite.
By TANYA KATTERNS – The Dominion Post
Save the planet: time to eat dog?
The eco-pawprint of a pet dog is twice that of a 4.6-litre Land Cruiser driven 10,000 kilometres a year, researchers have found.
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 by popular 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.”
In a study published in New Scientist, they calculated a medium dog eats 164 kilograms of meat and 95kg of cereals every year. It takes 43.3 square metres of land to produce 1kg of chicken a year. This means it takes 0.84 hectares to feed Fido.
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.
Professor Vale says the title of the book is meant to shock, but the couple, who do not have a cat or dog, believe the reintroduction of non-carnivorous pets into urban areas would help slow down global warming.
“The title of the book is a little bit of a shock tactic, I think, but though we are not advocating eating anyone’s pet cat or dog there is certainly some truth in the fact that if we have edible pets like chickens for their eggs and meat, and rabbits and pigs, we will be compensating for the impact of other things on our environment.”
Professor Vale took her message to Wellington City Council last year, but councillors said banning traditional pets or letting people keep food animals in their homes were not acceptable options.
[Gee, ya think?]
Kelly Jeffery, a Paraparaumu german shepherd breeder who once owned a large SUV, said eliminating traditional pets was “over the top”.
“I think we need animals because they are a positive in our society. We can all make little changes to reduce carbon footprints but without pointing the finger at pets, which are part of family networks.”
Owning rabbits is legal anywhere. Local bodies allow chickens, with some restrictions.
Full story here: Save the planet: time to eat dog?
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h/t to WUWT reader GA
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I wonder if Andy Revkin will now write an article musing about how too many people have pets and Rush Limbaugh will suggest IF Andy feels that way, he ought to kill his dog.
I’m not normally prone to invective, but these people can go ____ themselves.
What does any of this have to do the actual reasons people keep dogs and cats as pets? As if to say, “if you’re not going to eat the animals you keep, there is no benefit”.
The message taken to the extreme: Don’t engage in any activity or pursuit unless absolutely necessary for your survival because it produces CO2.
Tell you what, any greenie who loves their dog can send me a check, and I will keep a chicken for them, for about six or seven weeks anyway.
Maybe they should just make edible cars. You can have a car that runs on vegetable oil – it should come from the dealer with different plots from tomatoes to corn and maybe a small rabbit too. When the car finally dies, you just bury it in the ground and plant more veggies – I feel better now.
When times are rough, I’ve thought about eating my boxer “Cyrano”. Two things stop me: First, I think he would taste a little too gamey and second, I don’t think he’d ever forgive me for not eating the cats first. I suppose I should just micro-wave my pets so that I could live like the high and mighty in the environmental movement.
This incredible article could backfire quite dramatically.
Many people care more about their animals than they car about their kids and I’m shore they don’t want to hear this hog wash.
The time has come to quit this nonsense before our societies are turned into a public Goelach.
We are building the equivalent of the Iron Wall around the free world as we are adapting the same low to the ground practices and propaganda that was used by the Stasi in the former DDR.
It’s time people read Vaclav Klaus’s book titled Blue Planet in Green Shackles, wake up to the reality and start shaking the three that houses the fat cats who are responsible for this BS.
I recall from Dr. Strangelove that one man can service 10 women if they are sufficiently beautiful, etc.
I have this idea to drastically reduce carbon emissions and since I thought it up, well …
The Greenies’ motto should be ‘Humans Must Go” Idiots!!!!!!!
By the way, eating dogs is a perfectly normal habit all over Asia.
But so is Communism.
I reject both.
I wouldn’t mind being able to raise my own chicken and other small farm animals in my backyard… at least I would know what I eat.
Keep the pets; eat the architects.
This one will NOT go over well with the PETA crowd. Or with just about anyone with a pet.
Great way to alienate supporters of AGW.
Spread the word far and wide!
Kill people, kill pets, what’s next? Maybe we should start with …
I note in passing that during the last desperate moments of the Little Ice Age the people in Greenland ate their dogs. This was one of the most extreme actions on their part. Their dogs were positively precious to the Vikings. To kill and eat one was almost a sacrilege. It certainly pointed to the extreme nature of their problem. When they were visited later in the 1400s, nobody was home. The settlers had all died or possibly migrated. Given that Eric the Red discovered Vineyard in what we would now consider a cold environment and grapes or meadows were growing on what has now become a barren and somewhat frigid landscape per their reports before the Skrælings chased them out at the height of the medieval warming period we may conclude that extreme climate change had happened. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norse_colonization_of_the_Americas
Miles (16:21:22) : “Maybe they should just make edible cars…”
I owned a lemon, once, but I didn’t eat it.
I guess this gets the Chinese off the hook for all those coal fired power plants, I’ve often heard you never see any stray dogs or cats in Chinatown, and before all you PC types land on me, I’ll add that I heard it most often from my Chinese ex- brother in law and his family.
I suppose that one could take this to the extreme and justify cannibalism too.
I’ll gladly offer my pet fat, er, cat, to save the planet. Where do we drop ’em?
Mark
I’d eat shark, but these morons have jumped it.
Our “stomach that walks like a cat” will never see or hear of this . . . much too distressing. She’ll think the humans in the house of gone bonkers.
Rabbits???
Banned from my apartment buildings. Years back I had a roommate that had a rabbit. I never have seen so much destruction from that damn furball chewing up the place.
When I finally bought my first apartment building I banned all rodents as pets. As for the carbon footprints of my two cats.. it can’t be that high. They pretty much sleep from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm and from 8:00 pm to 3:00am. If they were any less active, they could pass for furniture.
Keep the Pets, get rid of the Socialists.
Gidday
Gawd I love being a Kiwi. Recently a Tongan family (NZ residents) BBQed their pet dog and invited friends around to enjoy their canine delight.
http://news.msn.co.nz/haveyoursay/850620/should-you-be-allowed-to-eat-your-pets
Could just catch on if Obama/Rudd/Brown/UN get traction with ETS/carbon trading.
Is http://www.ediblefamilypet.com taken? Or http://www.caninecuisine.com.
TJA,
You might want to fatten up those chickens far a few more weeks, but then maybe you don’t care for roast chicken.
But best you stay away from my flock.
Ray,
What’s stopping you from raising a few animals?
As for me I’m going to have my attack cat pay those pet eaters a visit.
What’s going on here?
Prepping the country for the rules of peasantry to be shortly induced, I can only imagine.
Disgusting and totally offensive.
I smell a foreign influence at work here pushing thier values upon us.
Let’s see, in what part of the world do they eat canine & feline cuisine? I wonder.