The truth about cats' and dogs' environmental impact

[Binary_Bark]

With many Americans choosing to eat less meat in recent years, often to help reduce the environmental effect of meat production, UCLA geography professor Gregory Okin began to wonder how much feeding pets contributes to issues like climate change.

All that meat has important consequences. Okin calculated that meat-eating by dogs and cats creates the equivalent of about 64 million tons of carbon dioxide a year, which has about the same climate impact as a year's worth of driving from 13.6 million cars.

"I like dogs and cats, and I'm definitely not recommending that people get rid of their pets or put them on a vegetarian diet, which would be unhealthy," Okin said. "But I do think we should consider all the impacts that pets have so we can have an honest conversation about them. Pets have many benefits, but also a huge environmental impact."

In a paper publishing Aug. 2 in the journal PLOS One, Okin says he found that cats and dogs are responsible for 25 to 30 percent of the environmental impact of meat consumption in the United States. If Americans' 163 million Fidos and Felixes comprised a separate country, their fluffy nation would rank fifth in global meat consumption, Okin calculated, behind only Russia, Brazil, the United States and China. And it all has to go somewhere—America's pets produce about 5.1 million tons of feces in a year, as much as 90 million Americans. If all that were thrown in the trash, it would rival the total trash production of Massachusetts—from the humans, at least.

Compared to a plant-based diet, meat requires more energy, land and water to produce, and has greater environmental consequences in terms of erosion, pesticides and waste, Okin noted. Previous studies have found that the American diet produces the equivalent of 260 million tons of carbon dioxide from livestock production. By calculating and comparing how much meat 163 million cats and dogs eat compared to 321 million Americans, Okin determined how many tons of greenhouse gases are tied to pet food.

His calculations start with publicly available information, like the number of dogs and cats in the country and the ingredients in market-leading pet foods, producing estimates that create a starting point for conversation.

He found that the nation's dogs and cats eat about 19 percent as many calories as the nation's people, on par with all the calories consumed by the population of France in a year. Because dog and cat food tends to have more meat than the average human diet, this means that dogs and cats consume about 25 percent of the total calories derived from animals in the United States.

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-08-truth-cats-dogs-environmental-impact.html#jCp

 

[Raithlin]

Kill all the animals and live off plants.

 

[Ninja'd]

Spaces between paragraphs makes the article look better. Just a friendly note.

Kill all the animals and live off plants.

Yes, let's hold one gigantic meatfest before becoming herbivores.

 

[Geoff.D]

While you are at it why not kill off all animal life on Earth and eliminate all species including the human species. That will solve the greenhouse gas issues generated by animal life and certainly the AGW problem and therefore the ACC problem.

That is what is so wrong with all this BS!

 

[bokdrol]

These people are crazy.

 

[Techne]

Let's not forget that cats are genocidal maniacs killing billions of birds. Funny when you think of cat ladies and man children as environmentalists.

 

[cerebus]

Let's not forget that cats are genocidal maniacs killing billions of birds. Funny when you think of cat ladies man children as environmentalists.

I loathe people who allow their cats to roam the neighborhood. Like our next door neighbours, for instance.

 

[bokdrol]

I can sympathise. My cats are not allowed out of my garden. They are perfectly happy, and above all, safe. But are constantly being harassed in their own garden by other people's cats I have now installed a motion sensor sprayer to run at nights. Works quite well.
Really pees me off. I work so hard to keep my cats healthy and safe but have to contend with other people's flea-ridden cats coming in.

 

[Nick333]

Let's not forget that cats are genocidal maniacs killing billions of birds. Funny when you think of cat ladies and man children as environmentalists.

As a man child, I resent that remark. My tiddles can kill as much of the environment as she likes as long as she leaves it outside.

 

[Techne]

As a man child, I resent that remark. My tiddles can kill as much of the environment as she likes as long as she leaves it outside.

How is the toxoplasmosis?

 

[Nick333]

Pfft, barely notice it.

 

[bwana]

Agreed - vegetarian diets are unhealthy.