Friday, October 23, 2009

Well, This Hardly Comes as a Surprise

Dogs are bad for the planet.
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 ...

"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."
Dogs. Ugh.

Alternate take: This problem is easily solved by exiling the appropriate number of noisy environmentalist wackos to live in the pastoral squalor of Somalia. The resultant reduction in aggregate carbon footprint will more than pay for Bodie the Wonder Dog and his canine friends.

10 comments:

Jeff Burton said...

I hope all the dog-loving enviro's are seriously conflicted.

K T Cat said...

... or eaten by their dogs.

;-)

Jedi Knight Ivyan said...

Huh, I like the idea of spinning that the other way. If someone gives me grief over my SUV, I'll just say it's no worse for the environment than my dog. That'll leave 'em blinking.

It just goes to show how inoffensive our cars really are to the environment.

jlbussey said...

I've run across some serious bear scat while hiking in the mountains, and boy they definitely must be bad for the environment!

Niall Mor said...

Did these same researchers investigate the environmental impact of cats? Surely Our Maximum Leader can't be bad for the planet, can she?

K T Cat said...

jlbussey - there's the best environmental bumper sticker of all time:

Save the Planet! Gas the Bears!

K T Cat said...

Niall, as befits our Maximum Leader, her ecological footprint is small and dainty. Quite manageable, actually.

Kelly the little black dog said...

I'm pretty skeptical of their numbers. Few SUV's run on biofuels, and I see no indication they take into account the energy cost to convert grains into fuel for their SUV. Lastly, a significant percentage of the meat consumed by pets would never be consumed by humans and would just go into the waste stream.

By their same logic we should start with eating our children, because they certainly have a larger carbon foot print than a pet would.

K T Cat said...

Well, as long as someone gets eaten, I guess it's OK.

:-)

Niall Mor said...

By their same logic we should start with eating our children, because they certainly have a larger carbon foot print than a pet would.

Kelly, what a great idea! Maybe you should suggest that to somebody as A Modest Proposal. I would suggest that the environmentalists set the example for the rest of us by eating their own kids first.